The Humans and the Bots

Had a thought today about the world in which we currently live. It was poker-related, too -- in fact, online poker-related -- so I figured I might share it here.

Post-Black Friday my online poker playing essentially dwindled to some half-hearted noodling on a couple of the small, remaining sites, then disappeared entirely save the occasional play money game on PokerStars.

Not long ago I got an account on this new site called Coin Poker. It went live in November, and I believe it was sometime in December or maybe early January when I hopped on there for the first time. The site is “powered by blockchain technology via Ethereum,” and in fact the games are played with a newly invented cryptocurrency, “Chips” or “CHP” (now listed on a couple of exchanges).

The site had an ICO (Initial Coin Offering) -- actually a “pre-ICO” and then two stages of ICOs -- in which a good chunk of these CHPs were sold for Ethereum. Meanwhile the site has been conducting tournament freerolls to give away the rest of the CHPs. There were a lot of those early on, though the schedule has thinned a little lately.

It’s through the freerolls that I won some CHPs and began a modest “bankroll” on the site, something with which to play in the “cash” games. I haven’t explored where exactly things stand as far as depositing and withdrawing are concerned, and don’t really anticipate doing so soon (unless perhaps I were to run my small total up significantly).

Playing on the site has been diverting, though, and for the first time in several years I have found myself genuinely invested in the games when playing poker online. I’ve even revived some of those earlier online poker memories of pleasure and pain associated with wins and losses, to a lesser degree of course.

When I first started on the site, I’d join the freerolls which like all the games on the site are played either four-handed or six-handed. Very frequently there would be players at the table shown as sitting out, something I grew accustomed to quickly. At a six-handed table there might be three or four seats occupied by the non-playing entrants, and occasionally at four-handed tables I might be the only live one there just scooping up blinds and antes until the field got whittled down.

At the time I assumed the site was filling the empty seats with these “dummy” players just to make the freerolls last a little longer, or perhaps to foster the impression of more traffic than there really was. Whatever the reason, I haven’t noticed the sitter-outers as much lately, or at all, really. As the site has grown a bit more popular, I imagine if there were such a strategy employed before it has now been withdrawn. (I’m only speculating.)

I wasn’t bothered too much by all the players sitting out, although the presence of all of those silent “zombies” at the table did cause me to recall the controversies and occasional hysteria surrounding the use of “bots” in online poker. Coupled with some of the news from the past few weeks (and months), that in turn has made me think about the significant influence such software applications running automated tasks or scripts online now have upon our lives.

It’s an enormous subject, but in particular I’m thinking about those indictments handed down last Friday by Special Counsel Robert Mueller that charge 13 Russian nationals and three Russian entities with conspiracy to defraud the United States via their attempts to meddle with the 2016 U.S. presidential election. If you’ve read through the 37-page document spelling out what happened (or heard it summarized), you’re familiar with some of the methods employed by these agents to manipulate news and opinion consumed by Americans during the campaign, especially via social media.

The report describes in detail how a Russian company called the “Internet Research Agency” (a name sounding equally generic and sinister) employed hundreds to help generate content published via fake accounts with invented personas on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, content that was in turn disseminated far and wide “via retweets, reposts, and similar means.”

The network has been characterized as a “bot farm” and even this week there was evidence of the network or something similar continuing to operate via the rapid spread of various messages (including false ones) in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Lakeland, Florida a week ago.

One of the more curious aspects of the “disinformation operation” (as some have described it) is the way invented news and opinion gets picked up and further distributed by unsuspecting social media users (i.e., Americans not involved with the operation). The indictment describes “unwitting members, volunteers, and supporters” of the campaign the Russians were supporting as having performed such work along with others “involved in local community outreach, as well as grassroots groups.”

In other words, certain messages and information “campaigns” begun by this Internet Research Agency were initially promulgated by a vast number of fake accounts with programs or “bots” helping extend their reach and influence. Then actual, living and breathing humans receiving those messages (and unaware of or unconcerned about their origin) passed them along as well, increasing their audience and influence.

Setting aside questions of legality and jurisdiction (and ignoring entirely the many other areas being explored by Mueller and his team), I just want to isolate that phenomenon of an automated message sent via a “bot” being received and then resent by a human. The fake accounts being directed by the scripts are simply executing commands. The humans who then receive and resend those messages do so consciously, although they, too, act by rote in a sense, simply hitting “like” and “retweet” in what is often an uncritical fashion. (Bot-like, you could say, depending on your predilection for irony.)

When playing against the “dummy” non-players in those freerolls, I could comfortably bet or raise against them every single time, knowing full well that even though they might resemble “human” players sitting there at the table, they weren’t going to play back at me. They were programmed simply to fold every time the action was on them. If you’ve ever played against “the computer” in crude games (including poker games), you’ve probably similarly been able to pick up on the program’s patterns and exploit them to your favor.

Of course, increasingly sophisticated programs have been created to run much more challenging poker playing “bots,” including those powered by artificial intelligence. These programs can in fact exploit the tendencies of humans who often find it very difficult to randomize their actions and thereby avoid detectable patterns. It’s much harder to know what to do against these, as some of the more recent efforts in this area have demonstrated.

Many of those who forwarded along memes, photos, articles, and other bot-created content during the 2016 presidential campaign weren’t aware of the original source of that information (were “unwitting”). They were -- and are, still -- being exploited, in a way, by others who know how they tend to “play” when using social media.

The “game” is getting a lot harder. As far as social media is concerned -- and news and politics and everything else in our lives that has now become so greatly influenced by message-delivering mechanism of social media -- it’s becoming more and more difficult to know who is human and who is a bot pretending to be human.

Especially when the humans keep acting like the bots.

(EDIT [added 3/19/18]: Speaking of CoinPoker and bots, there’s an interesting new article on PartTime Poker sharing some research regarding the site’s unusual traffic patterns. The title gives you an idea of the article’s conclusion -- "CoinPoker’s Traffic is a Farce.")

Image: “Reply - Retweet- Favorite” (adapted), David Berkowitz. CC BY 2.0.

Poker vs. Chess in Russia

Interesting item from yesterday’s Chicago Tribune regarding the rise of online poker in Russia over recent years, one point of which is to suggest how poker has now more or less overtaken chess as the national game, at least in the view of certain observers.

The article’s title, “Online poker’s killing the Russian chess star,” kind of awkwardly reprises that of the Buggles’ prescient 1980 pop hit “Video Killed the Radio Star,” the effort to do so probably misplacing the article’s emphasis somewhat.

The article does include some generalized nostalgia about the Soviet era’s chess “celebrities” -- people like Mikhail Botvinnik, Garry Kasparov, and Anatoly Karpov (none of whom is actually named in the article). And it does remark on the growth of online poker in Russia, citing figures such as the fact that 16% of Russians in 2013 played poker (up from 11% two years before) and that Russians account for 8.4% of all players on online sites.

But it doesn’t really provide a convincing causal link between the fall of chess and rise of poker. That’s not to say there isn’t a link, but the article doesn’t dig too deeply and thus doesn’t really show how poker “killed” (or is “killing”) chess.

In fact, interestingly, the real emphasis of the article has to do with current legislative efforts in Russia to legalize online poker, which as happened many times over here in the U.S. has led to studies about potential revenue and debates about whether the game’s skill component sufficiently distinguishes it from other forms of gambling.

I say the link between the decline of chess and the ascent of poker isn’t so obviously established in the article, but there is one interesting connection described. Speaking of possible federal regulation of online poker, it sounds like some of the potential revenue would be earmarked to help reinvigorate chess among the country’s population.

“In a nod to sensitivities about the decline of chess,” writes the author, “the government plans to use the tax proceeds that result to fund the National Chess Federation, so that it can foster passion for the game once more.”

In any event, it sounds like the status quo isn’t going to hold much longer in Russia as far as online poker is concerned. It’ll be interesting to see what happens next. And whether or not the government’s next move helps online poker continue to grow in popularity (and chess, too, I suppose). Or, as happened in the U.S., it has the effect of checkmating it away.

Photos: “Chess,” Tame M. CC BY 2.0; “Poker XII,” Bastian Greshake. CC BY-SA 2.0.

WCOOP Back in Action

The 2013 World Championship of Online Poker is well underway over at PokerStars, having begun last Sunday. This week in fact marked 12 years of real money games on the site, and this year’s series marks the 12th year of the WCOOP, with a record 66 tourneys on the schedule this time (up one from last year’s 65).

The WCOOP remains the biggest online tourney series around, and the prestige associated with winning WCOOP bracelets has increased considerably as well.

Over the last couple of years whenever the big series crank up at PokerStars I’ve found myself looking back to those pre-Black Friday days when the U.S. could participate and comparing figures. In 2010, for instance, Americans comprised about a third of the 141,126 entrants in the 62 events of that year’s WCOOP. With no U.S. players the next year there came a dip to 119,832 (again, in 62 events), then in 2012 there were 126,041 entrants (in 65).

I’d expect this year’s total either to hold steady or nudge up further to rival the pre-BF number. Indeed, the total prize pools for in the Spring Championship of Online Poker have gradually increased to the point that they now exceed the pre-Black Friday amounts (with a few extra tourneys added over the years).

The U.S. being on the rail for SCOOPs and WCOOPs also gets me curious about how countries whose players are able to participate are faring in the series, relatively speaking. I’ll resist slipping back into complaint mode about my country’s convoluted, often hypocritical attitude toward gambling in general and poker in particular, and instead look at Canada -- where a number of U.S. players have fled to play on PokerStars -- and see how that country is doing with regard to continuing its recent success in the COOPs.

The 2012 WCOOP was fairly dominated by Canada with the country claiming top honors for bracelets won (14), final tables (80), total cashes (2,166), and total winnings ($9,567,359.96). This year’s SCOOP also saw Canada crushing, finishing that 132-tournament series first in cash won ($12,016,956.34), first in final tables (133), and second in titles with 18, which was just one behind the U.K.’s 19 wins. Those stats were fresh in mind this summer, actually, when Canada jumped out to a quick start at the WSOP, ultimately collecting 10 bracelets before the summer was done.

Just looking at the first 10 events of this year’s WCOOP, the U.K. has gotten a headstart on Canada and everyone else, winning no less than four events. Toby “810ofclubs” Lewis was one of the Brits to win a title, just a few days removed from having won a piece of Tom Middleton’s victory at EPT Barcelona as I was mentioning earlier this week and as Rick Dacey writes about over on the PokerStars blog. Jonathan “OMGjonyctt” Concepción, Dave “CrabMaki” Shallow, and “Aduobe4” also have all earned WCOOP wins as U.K. players so far (although I believe technically speaking Concepción is from the Canary Islands).

Through the first 10 events the U.K. also led other categories, too, including “Money Won By Country” ($1,497,970.05) and “Final Tables by Country” (10). But Canada finally broke through to grab it’s first WCOOP title of the year in Event #11 (won by “Tha Giggy”) and ranks highly thus far in most categories along with Russia and Germany. Indeed those four -- U.K., Canada, Russia, and Germany -- have the most participation by a wide margin currently in PS series, and thus unsurprisingly produce the most success.

Of course, when looking over these results one also has to note how besides the U.S. being missing, so, too, are Italy, Spain, and France not part of the equation as Stars has separate licenses for each of those countries with segregated sites (.it, .es, and .fr) for each. There are a number of other countries for which Stars has players register on separate domains (Belgium, Denmark, Estonia, Sweden, Poland, Romania), plus a handful of countries go through the .eu domain (Finland, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Slovenia). But I think in all of those cases the player pools are shared with the .com and thus players in those countries can participate in WCOOP.

So again, while it’s not quite the entire world playing in the World Championship of Online Poker, it’s a lot of it. I’d tend to think Canada will probably forge a comeback here to challenge the U.K. Meanwhile, unscientific, occasional monitoring of the other big tourneys on Stars over the last year or so suggests Russia has moved ahead of everyone when it comes to supplying players -- and winners -- on the site. (Russia currently leads w/the most entrants in the WCOOP and will probably continue to do so.)

A Sporting Chance for Poker

Last week was “National Poker Week” here in the United States. Lots of lobbying on Capitol Hill happening in an effort to try to get lawmakers to view poker not as an immoral, unsavory vice, but as a legitimate pursuit that rewards the skill of its participants and is thus undeserving of any sort of ill-founded governmental proscription.

As far as I know, no one in Washington, D.C. last week was explicitly advancing arguments about poker being a “sport.” Probably just as well. Complicates things.

Recently the Russian government officially revoked poker’s status as a sport, thereby making it illegal to operate any non-government-sanctioned poker rooms. The change also means that poker rooms are forbidden from operating within 1,000 kilometers of Moscow, with just a few remote locations (including in Siberia) now being allowed. Big news in Russia, a country whose gaming industry had grown significantly since the early 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reports are that “tens of thousands” already find themselves unemployed as a result of this change.

To give you an idea of the scope, more than 520 casinos were operating in Moscow prior to the change in designation for poker, meaning more than 10,000 people in the Russian capital instantly lost their jobs. The Russian Association for Gaming Business Development has estimated that ultimately something like 350,000 people eventually will lose their jobs across Russia as a direct consequence of the change, and more than $2 billion of tax revenue will be lost. Not all agree with those numbers -- other estimates of lost jobs and tax revenue are considerably lower -- but you get the idea.

Meanwhile, poker and other forms of gambling can only now take place in Siberia and other far-away spots.

Something kind of uncanny in hearing those references to poker having been “exiled” to Siberia. That’s because Siberia was one of the places where the Soviet Union (up through the 1950s) had located hundreds of labor camps -- by order of the governmental agency known as the “Gulag” -- where prisoners were sent to work as punishment. The labor camps predated the U.S.S.R., actually, with Russia having similarly sent prisoners to Siberia to work back in the 19th century. Indeed, at the end of The Brothers Karamazov (published in 1880 and set a couple of decades before), when Dmitri is on trial for murdering his father, he’s facing the prospect of being shipped to Siberia for a life of hard labor should he be found guilty.

Meaning the name “Siberia” automatically evokes for many ideas of exile, punishment, and the severe exertion of governmental authority.

This anti-gambling law went into effect on July 1, and appears to have caught many off guard, including the European Poker Tour which had a scheduled a tour stop in Moscow next month. It shouldn’t have, though, as former Russian president Vladimir Putin had signed the bill -- called “About the State Regulation of Activities on Gambling” (a.k.a., the “Russian Gambling Bill”) -- into law way back in November 2006. Not like the EPT and others couldn’t have seen it coming. (EDIT [added 1:30 p.m.] -- See comments for clarification here; while the anti-gambling law went into effect 7/1/09, the change in poker's "sport" designation that forced the closure of poker rooms only came more recently.)

Sounds like the whole “poker as a sport” thing was one of those peculiar idiosyncrasies that resulted from someone -- namely those running the Russian Physical Training and Sport Committee that made the list -- not really recognizing the government’s authority in such matters when they included poker on the list (back in 2004, apparently).

Since all the casinos in Moscow have been closed, the EPT has moved its August event over to Kiev, the Ukraine capital.

Where will the event take place? The Kiev Sports Palace (pictured at left). Where they host things like the Eurovision Song Contest, fairs and exhibitions, and other big public gatherings.

And various sports, too. You know, like poker.