Yeah, but wouldn’t a “maniac player” be the perfect “disguise” for a bot? Hyper aggression should be the norm for bots in fact. Why? Because it’s easier to get calls (and hero calls) that way. What is the purpose of a bot? To make money, right? What is the easiest way to get called by marginal hands and maximize value? Hyper aggression. If the bot knows your hand and the runout on top of that it is an amazing and unbeatable advantage because then he will easily know when to bet enough to make you fold your winning hands and when to bet enough to get max value when he’s got you crushed, and he will also know when to fold when you’ve got the nuts.
What is the easiest way to stack a tight player? Set him up on cooler situations where he’s already set up to lose, but he doesn’t know it. Especially if you know what the runout (flop, turn and river) will be and especially if you know the opponents hole cards.
Whether this is possible to know or has been done before or proved before is irrelevant. It is the internet. It is a computer. I’m sure hackers and CPU programmers can find a way to cheat on unregulated poker sites without being noticed. Why would they want to be noticed if they’re cheating? The ideal cheater would never get caught. To dismiss this possibility saying it’s never been done or proven or that it is impossible is heavily naive. As well as there is the possibility of the website collaborating with a few human players, giving them access to other player’s hole cards, and to the runouts. What some would call a house player. For example, like it happened to me in two different hands where I got stacked twice recently on a PLO8 table.
The hyper aggro player has been raising pot every hand whether in position or out of position, and cbetting huge on flops turns and rivers whether he hits or not. You’ve been missing flops with premium hands over and over again against this guy. You finally flop and NFD with a gutshot and backdoor low draw. He pots, you call, you miss the turn, he pots again, you call, you river nut flush, he rivers full house, game over. Against the looseness that this player had displayed already, you HAVE to call there. 100%. He had been betting similar or exactly the same line with absolute trash or air, and doing it hand after hand. Non-stop. There’s no folding to be done when you finally hit a decent hand against a player like this. He could be betting river with worse flushes, with rivered trips, with missed straight draws, etc. After getting stacked, I rebought, he raises, I pot 3bet, he calls, he flops non-nut low with a gutshot I flop two pair, I pot, he 3bets all in, I’m ahead, he turns a straight. Game over. Stacked again.
Yes it could have been just a human playing and excessively reckless hyper aggro style that bluffs excessively and just got very lucky cooler situations. But the fact that he’s already stacked me twice and has 4 times the table buy in while the rest of the players at the table are in the red (AKA losing) is very suspicious. The fact that he continually and consistently beats tight players by playing crap hands and binking gutshots, 2 outers, 4 outers and other forms of suckouts against sets, flushes, straights in spots where a fold should be easy is suspicious as well. Another suspicious thing is when players continually call your pot bets with marginal hands against your nut hands and always river the nuts against your former nuts. That is literally the easiest and best spot for someone to get value out of you. When you have the nuts on the flop and turn and get rivered after potting flop and turn, in many cases you’ll be pot commited depending on how big the pot has gotten and how much of your stack is already in by the turn. Yes, some of these things can happen sporadically or periodically against a human player that’s not cheating, what is suspicious is the amount of times it happens and how consistently or frequently it happens. Against a normal player it may happen a few times and sometimes two or three hands but against a cheating house player or a bot it would likely happen as if it was the norm.
