[MaxfordAndSons]

Yes in the fullest. For one thing it's against the ToS of every site. But it's also just plainly unethical. Even the most elite players are merely reaching a moderately accurate approximation of optimal play, which completely pales in comparison to a bot that can find it on every hand. Of course a bot that simply assumes opponents are playing co-optimal strategies will only be minimally exploitative, but more sophisticated bots can easily incorporate historical data and find correct maximally exploitative deviations against opponents in real time, which again is something that even the best players are only able to do accurately a fraction of the time.

Also it's laughable to suggest that playing optimally is "just the given" in MTTs, which are arguably the softest format available where almost nobody in a given field is playing anywhere close to optimal. And even more laughable to suggest that modern bots are akin to players adhering to SuperSystem, a poker strategy book written nearly 50 years ago which was already extremely outdated before the advent of solvers 10 years ago.

[piltdownman]

Oh no! Not the ToS that hides inappropriately behind AML/KYC to stop you withdrawing cash, or arbitrarily lets a platform ban your account and seize funds with little recourse to any legal authority (as they're generally operating out of weird territories like Gibraltar/Isle of Man or Malta to circumvent other rules).

As for unethical, things like PioSolver, MonkerSolver, and PokerSnowie are basically de facto standard for play at high level online - and are absolutely used at breaktimes in live play. Then you have people multi-monitoring, or running GTOWizard in a VM, as a given.

You're basically claiming that all bots in action are Pluribus style, which is just nonsense. I bring up SuperSystem since its the earliest reference I can think of by a Pro to the concept of range advantage.

The modern poker sites basically just teach game theory optimal... which ends up with people running GTOWizard as a given. The best bots I've seen that avoid detection are basically doing some variant of the strategies outlined in modern guides like RIOs From the Ground Up.

[MaxfordAndSons]

It's a wild false equivalency to imply that using GTOw or Pio as a study tool is the same as using them for real time assistance.

And even if bots are imperfect, people and especially recreational players, don't sign up to real money poker sites to play against bots. Everyone knows intuitively they're at a massive disadvantage over a bot that can execute any strategy perfectly ad infinitum, even if the strategy itself is imperfect.

If you're going to be cheating scum, just own up to the fact that you're a bad guy; don't make intellectually dishonest justifications for it.

[piltdownman]

If you want to pretend you know what you're talking about, please at least reference Jonathan Tomayao at the WSOP this year. Person at the rail is four-time WSOP event winner and owner of the DTO Poker Trainer app Dominik Nitsche.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2024/07/wsop-controversy-poker-solv...

Bryan Paris - "“Having this extra feedback between hands is helpful but a far cry from the automation of the game. Even with this feedback, Tamayo very much earned his victory,”

Tamako - "Joe and Dom actually helped. If they weren’t here, I likely do not win this tournament.”

As for the rest, I personally accept the imperfect world and play RTA-less - I'm not a naive child throwing slurs about because I can't accept the world has moved on.

{Example of an Upswing Couch and Pro who previously played online 6-max for a living, and his incredulity due to hilarious RTA in a live televised tournament) https://www.reddit.com/r/poker/comments/1ebi5aq/do_you_want_...

[MaxfordAndSons]

I know what I'm talking about - this thread was about someone who admitted to running a BOT online for real money. Like, fully automated no human in the loop. Which again, is just straight up cheating people out of their money. That's wildly different from what Tamayo was doing, which I don't consider cheating either, at least not by the current rules. Though I do think it would be fairer if tournament rules were changed to disallow coaching while the level clock is running but I digress.

Literally nobody respectable in the poker world argues that you should be able farm human opponents with bots, regardless of how close to optimal the bots are programmed to play. Except you, I guess.