How do poker sites stop players using software???

[Sco]

I am really interested in this, how poker sites actually stop players from using for example statistical packages to aid them. I mean surely this is cheating no? How do they exactly detect this? Another thing, what exactly would stop a cheating player from re-writing some software that connects through the same ports as the client software and ezxploiting the server some how? is there like encryption and stuff in place? Thanks if anyone can help Sco

[GaF]

Re: How do poker sites stop players using software???

I am really interested in this' date=' how poker sites actually stop players from using for example statistical packages to aid them. I mean surely this is cheating no? [/quote'] Hi Sco - I don't think it is classed as cheating - and some of the Poker sites actually encourage the use of the software - for example Noble Poker are currently running an offer with Calculatem - if you deposit $20 with them, then you get calculatem free for a year. Others encourage it by making it so easy to get at the data - Party Poker for example, "dumps" all the information to a txt file, every step of the way in play - this is easy for software to use "live". Betfair also dump the data to a text file, but this is at the end of every hand, so can't be used as "live" during the hand - but software uses screen scraping technology to overcome this (though this is harder to do I presume than reading txtg files). Others - like Betfred for example produce no txt files or previous hand history, making it far harder to put any data into software (and I'm not aware of any software that works for this site). Simple Calculators like this aren't classed as cheating because they use the same information that is available to the players. In any case, as I understand from others, even if you play to perfect odds, you will lose, because of the psycological element to poker - I find that hard to believe - if we can generate Chess Programs to beat Chess World Champions, surely we can produce poker programs to beat your average muppet!! Where it crosses the line and becomes cheating I believe is where you start "collaborating" - i.e. more than one of you play at the same table, and share your card information - so you have more information than is available to you as an individual player. I also think the poker rooms draw the line at "bots" - i.e. programs that play for you whilst you are not at the table..... Someone recently highlighted some software that does this and I had a look - it seems that the likes of Party Poker scan your machine for known software and regularly take screen dumps to check what you have on screen. The software also claimed that it could get round this by using an equivalent of PC Anywhere (and a second machine). As they are so open about this, I would hope, and trust, that Party Poker are onto them and are tackling it.