Maximum decision time and AI bots

[Furan]

Hello everybody,

I just stumbled on articles about poker AI bots. And this made me think of one cash game room I was playing yesterday because one of the player was always using the maximum decision time in every hand before doing anything, whether it was folding, calling or raising, before or after flop. As I am new to online poker I wonder if this is a common behavior at tables (maybe to have a psychological impact ?) or if this is suspect ?

[GR1ZZL3R]

Hi @Furan and welcome to the community. 

Some players do indeed attempt to try to tilt their opponents, don't let it bother you and play at your own speed, within reason. Don't be tempted to slow down yourself, if you do you might eventually get the whole table doing the same. If it really does tilt you leave that table. It's unlikely bots, if any, would be programmed to take all that time, surely they are designed to take as much money as possible in the shortest time possible.

[Stubbe-Unibet]

Welcome to the community, @Furan!

As you speculate yourself and @GR1ZZL3R mentions above, it will occasionally be used by players to try and tilt the opponents. It could also be that one is simply playing a few too many tables and just needs max time to be able to act on all tables.

If someone is violating the T&C's by cheating, it'd be quite stupid to deviate in behavior from the general pool 🙂 

[Furan]

Thank you for your answers @GR1ZZL3R and @Stubbe-Unibet , it makes sense and I know what to expect now !

13 hours ago, GR1ZZL3R said:

Don't be tempted to slow down yourself, if you do you might eventually get the whole table doing the same.

And I am glad you mentioned that because I was starting to wonder if I should intentionally play more slowly.

[P0kerM0nk]

I always program my bots to take the maximum amount of time, just saying 🤭 😜

One of the reasons I dislike tournaments, some people use their whole time bank just to drag it out so they end up in the money, makes some sense when you are almost at a final table but not to get within the top 1000 for a 20p reward 😐

Edited August 11, 2022 by P0kerM0nk

[CuteRaven]

On 8/10/2022 at 4:32 PM, Furan said:

common behavior at tables (maybe to have a psychological impact ?) or if this is suspect ?

I think it's healthy to be a bit paranoid about players being bots since that is an existing threat nowadays. It would be very easy to program bots to randomize their timing, so if a bot has consistent timings it would be an oversight by the creator.

I wouldn't say the long timing thing is super common behaviour for players. Some players are overly concerned with staying balanced, but I would say that's usually not the case if it happens preflop too.

If you see some player seemingly never making mistakes and playing a lot of tables, and taking difficult to find, profitable but low EV lines, but not really trying to exploit opponents, then maybe they are a bot (or just a really good player who didn't use reads or tilt when they played with you). I would guess bots usually have somewhat consistent timing but not super long or short, probably much more consistent than humans do on average?

On the other hand if someone is playing similarly but only one table and taking lots of time for every postflop decision, then maybe they use RTA.

But in the end the poker sites have all the data so we kind of have to rely on them to find the cheaters, but personally I haven't seen anything too worrying at the Unibet lower stakes at least.

[GLENGYLE]

theres a guy on the SNGs doing this, it boils my blood, hes not a bot hes just playing far too many tables, he changes his name every day but i know who he is within 2 hands 🤣.

 

ive actually stopped playing SNGs for a good while because of him, im usually playing 6 at a time but he still frustrates the life out of me

 

if yer reading this m8 please wisen up you will drive traffic away from here