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how hard would it be to program this...


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I was wondering how hard it would to do this.

Basically I'm interested in creating a poker bot. What I would do is take this image here and transfer it over to another computer, on the other computer is where I would do all the programming. You have to do it this way because if you have a program running that is reading the poker table the site will catch you can shut you down. That is why you need to copy the image over to another computer and do the process there.

so...

How hard would it be for the computer to read the text that is in the box, this will of course tell the computer what is happening in the game, and then from here I can write code to decide how to play?

And any idea how how hard it would be building the infrastructure to create a bot. I'll do the bot programming myself, but I'm a little confused how to get this started.

Thanks

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I was wondering how hard it would to do this.

Basically I'm interested in creating a poker bot. What I would do is take this image here and transfer it over to another computer, on the other computer is where I would do all the programming. You have to do it this way because if you have a program running that is reading the poker table the site will catch you can shut you down. That is why you need to copy the image over to another computer and do the process there.

so...

How hard would it be for the computer to read the text that is in the box, this will of course tell the computer what is happening in the game, and then from here I can write code to decide how to play?

And any idea how how hard it would be building the infrastructure to create a bot. I'll do the bot programming myself, but I'm a little confused how to get this started.

Thanks

I don't have any experience in online poker, so bear with me. Do the sites use client-side programs to tell that you are using external programs? If you aren't planning on releasing this to anybody, I'd be willing to bet you could just run it on that computer, since their program would most likely just check against a list of known bots, and yours wouldn't be known to them.

If that's the case, your first step is to figure out how to read the data. If it's something like flash or java, it might be easiest to just capture an image of the screen and read the pixels to figure out what's on the screen. If it's a win32 application, you could use some APIs to read the controls, but it's possible that they check for this, too, which means you still have to do it the first way I mentioned.

After you read the data, figure out what to do and do it.

Input -> Process -> Output

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Thanks for the reply... I've heard of people getting their accounts closed because they are trying to read stuff from the poker client. The only way would be to send the image over to another computer.

Since this imagine is basically a .jpg, do think that reading the screen would be much easier that reading the screen text box.

post-232380-1238946253_thumb.jpg

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im not sure about the programming part (it is possible and easy to do) however i know that if you do it you are guilty of Fraud and can go to prison for it... at least in the US and UK anyway not sure about other countries though.

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Have fun creating the bot from a programming/technical standpoint. Then enjoy your account being closed and money held and possibly being done for fraud :p

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Have fun creating the bot from a programming/technical standpoint. Then enjoy your account being closed and money held and possibly being done for fraud :p

His name says it all. :rolleyes:

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If you do program it, use it wisely and sparingly. Have it occasionally make bad moves to make it more 'human'.

There's nothing more suspicious than some new member quickly racking up a large winning streak/margin. Big Poker Brother is watching :)

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With your vague description it sounds like something an undergrad comp-sci student could bang out in a few weeks (12-16 weeks, most time spent on the image recognition logic). The basic rules of poker are known and there are numerous implementations that play for you. I don't recall any case of a cheat program being banned based on image recognition. The two I can recall worked by:

  • allowing players to see the cards of other players -- one of the poker sites had a poor design where it was possible to do by replacing the texture for the 'back' of the card with something transparent.
  • poking about in memory locations to read state data that told them things they shouldn't know (like next cards to be drawn, etc.
  • While not so much a program, some people were busted cheating based on flawed code (debug routines) left in the game that the originally developer knew about

The exact method of cheating doesn't matter and the penalties are the same, though they vary from nation to nation.

If the site has taken steps to make straight image recognition difficult then this could become a very-hard problem.

And any idea how how hard it would be building the infrastructure to create a bot. I'll do the bot programming myself, but I'm a little confused how to get this started.

proof of concept in say 3-months assuming they're not going out of their way to make it difficult. A more reliable and robust version could take twice that time.

The only way would be to send the image over to another computer.

That's not true at all. If your approach is based on reading the screen buffer then moving the "wtf is in this picture" code to another computer is no less likely to be detected than running it all in one place. Assuming they've got something like Blizzard's warden working against you, they'd know you're running something that's poking around. What you do with that data isn't likely to matter to them -- the act of looking would be enough to trigger their suspicion.

Your two computer networked approach would fail at the goal of transparency. I'm not sure you've studied this problem carefully enough given that a much better solution is immediately apparent.

If you do program it, use it wisely and sparingly. Have it occasionally make bad moves to make it more 'human'.
All cheaters make bad moves intentionally. You end up being detected based on the statistical improbability that you'll make money. If over time you end up positive somebody is going to notice.

Even things that aren't cheating (like blackjack card counting) can get you turfed if you're winning.

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All cheaters make bad moves intentionally. You end up being detected based on the statistical improbability that you'll make money. If over time you end up positive somebody is going to notice.

Even things that aren't cheating (like blackjack card counting) can get you turfed if you're winning.

Under the umbrella of cheaters you have a large portion that are just desperate and, well, dumb. But they probably wouldn't be the ones coding the program anyhow.

Just the ones downloading it off some random site with the added spyware bonus. :)

So yeah, my comment doesn't really matter. I just remember when people were downloading and running bots and macros for the Microsft Live Search Club. It took a while, but eventually Microsoft caught on.

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Under the umbrella of cheaters you have a large portion that are just desperate and, well, dumb. But they probably wouldn't be the ones coding the program anyhow.

Just the ones downloading it off some random site with the added spyware bonus. :)

I was thinking about the intentional, 'professional' cheaters that show up in casinos. There was a great documentary about this but I can't recall the name. It covered things like the MIT blackjack team, roulette shoe computers, and slot players.

You can intentionally throw a hand when you stand to lose a little money and play well when you stand to win a lot. The casino doesn't count wins vs losses and say "that's about what we'd expect", they count total winnings/losses and compare that to averages. You're not going to be a successful cheater if you don't make money so this approach lets them capture the dangerous cheaters and syphon money from the dolts. Cheaters may get unlucky or play poorly but when the overall trend is out of the ordinary they'll be investigated.

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Neowin doesn't support illegal activities. You're going to need to get help on this somewhere else.

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