PokerBot Pro - Another Online Scam
Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can't help calling the guy on his bullshit. He's certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the…
Pauly emailed me this link the other day and I just can’t help calling the guy on his bullshit. He’s certainly not the first person to make such absurd claims but he happened to be the one I decided to pick on. :-)
First off, let’s just define a bot of any sort. It’s a piece of software that can go out and act on its own. Bots are neither good nor bad. The way Google finds all the pages to index in the Google search engine is to send out bots who go from page to page to page following links and reporting back what they find. Other bots, like perhaps those being used by spammers to harvest email addresses from websites, are evil. All a bot is is a piece of software that does what it was programmed to do. It has no intelligence of its own, per se, though artificial intelligence researchers have been successful in building software that “learns” as it goes along.
So what about poker bots? Well, poker bots are bots that have been programmed to play poker. A poker playing bot normally starts off with some sort of optimal strategy which is hard-coded into the bot and then the bot checks, bets, raises, or folds based on that optimal strategy. I purposely used the phrase “some sort of optimal strategy” because, as we all know, the optimal strategy in one game might not be the optimal strategy in another. As I noted in my post about the soft games at the Hustler, I got creamed in a $2/$4 game but then crushed the $15/$30. Did my overall poker strategy change? No … and that was the problem!!! I haven’t played in a game with seven people to the flop in so long that it took me a bit to adjust. Many of the strategies I am successful employing against more sophisticated opponents (which doesn’t necessarily make them good players) don’t work against a guy who will call you down with an under pair to the board.
And that’s the problem with bots. Bots that have a single or small database of well defined strategies don’t work very well against human opponents. Now, you could build a bot with artificial intelligence that would constantly adjust to players, limits, and a million other conditions but the cost of building such a bot would be outweighed by what the writer could make just playing poker (or creating the next Google). Why do you think that most of the artificial intelligence chess and poker bots come out of research facilities like universities or IBM? Someone sufficiently smart enough could build a very sophisticated bot but the vast, vast majority of poker bots are built by mediocre software engineers and thus are of the most simple nature.
That brings us to David Glazen, the person behind PokerBot Pro. Despite his claims at being a professional poker player, the only thing you will pull up doing a Google search on “David Glazen” +poker is a lot of pre-canned stuff. Nearly every site that Google finds has the same re-hashed press releases. Interestingly, the only people who have original thoughts about David Glazen are people who point out that he’s running a scam. According to this site, Mr. Glazen (using several different names) is running a series of scam sites. Two of them sell you the secrets of cheating at poker and the third is Mr. Glazen’s bullshit poker bot site. My favorite part of the scam alert on Mr. Glazen is that one of the “cheats” he recommends is to install remote desktop software either on your opponent’s computers or the computer of poker site! Of course, he doesn’t tell you how to do either because if you knew how to do that you would know more than Mr. Glazen and fully realize how full of crap he is.
Tech guru and poker pro David Glazen reveals
How YOU can EARN $750-$1500 tax free dollars…
Every Day…With Almost Zero Effort…
Yes, believe it or not, this is the opening copy on the website. Considering that most of his “testimonials” are from people living in the US, the fact that he’s advertising gambling winnings as tax free should be the first red flag set off on the bullshit detectors.
Dear Fellow Poker Player,
If you are averaging less then $100 an hour playing online poker and find yourself spending hours in front of the computer while your bankroll barely grows - then this letter just might be the most important thing you ever read!
You must listen to me very carefully and read every single word of this explosive letter. You are about to get the chance to earn a GREAT living from online poker - 100% GAURANTEED!
STOP giving your money away and start taking control of the tables:
* You do not need to endure another losing night at the table, watching in disbelief as you get robbed of another pot by bad beats and inferior players.
* You do not need to struggle in vain anymore - no more worthless books on poker “theory”, no more “unbeatable systems”, not one more unprofitable hour playing online poker.
* You do not need to guess whether your opponent is bluffing or if a check-raise is the right move. Have full confidence that you are always making the right play!
Again, bullshit detectors should be going off when a guy offers an unqualified guarantee on the earning potential of something like poker. Also, the implication that you won’t have a losing session is … absurd. No bot, anywhere, has such a record. Hell, even the best poker players in the world don’t have such a record. So, if the pros can’t do it and the world’s leading computer and AI scientists can’t do it, one would have to wonder what this chucklehead knows that they don’t. Hmmmm … perhaps how to swindle people out of money?
Then he calls poker theory books worthless. Of course, this bot must be programmed according to some theory of poker so obviously poker theory is not worthless. Poker, like many games, is mathematical. While you can’t always predict the exact outcome of any particular situation, you at least know the odds of various outcomes. That is poker theory. If that is worthless, and he’s basing his program on something other than this supposedly worthless poker theory, the flaws in his system should be glaringly obvious.
This is NOT another Poker Strategy Guide …
I want to be crystal clear about this.
This is not an e-book of so-called “powerful secrets” (read rehashed common knowledge).
This is not an “insider’s guide” to poker (how exactly does one become a poker insider anyway? lol).
This is not more useless “winning strategies” (the only ones to win from these strategies are the shameless authors who sell them!)
“This is a completely unique, totally ingenious, 100% guaranteed, money-making Poker Bot.”
I am offering a fully functional, push and go PokerBot that will go undetected, and take down pot after pot!
For the first time ever YOU can get your hands on what the others only talk about and PRAY do not exist! An online Poker playing computer program that crushes human opponents… Again and Again and Again!
Have you had enough of making silly mistakes that put your money into other people’s hands? Are you tired of wasting your valuable time for miniscule(if any) profits? Do you want to be 100% positive that you always make the right play?
If so then you are ready for the most advanced technological weapon available to ANNIHILATE your enemies at the poker table - The PokerBot Pro!
Okay, so let’s get all of the standard marketing bullshit out of the way. Yes, yes, yes, this is unlike anything else out there. Yes, yes, yes, other books and systems are inferior to your bot. Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Here is just some of what you can do with this incredible download:
* Instantly start earning hundreds or even thousands of dollars a night (just pick a table - start your bot - and watch the money pour in!)
* Dramatically improve your poker skills (watch and learn from these brilliant poker playing machines - your friends will be amazed!)
* Spend more time doing what you want to do (stop wasting your life away in front of the computer, technology is here to help us free up our time not consume it!)
* Never play a less then perfect hand again (just sit and watch as your bot takes down pot after pot, and you never have to worry about tilting again!)
* Stop wondering if bots really are playing online (and start learning how to use them to your advantage!)
* Conquer your fears of technology (embrace rather then fear technology and you too can begin to unleash this incredible money making opportunity!)
My favorite line out of all this drivel is:
Never play a less then perfect hand again (just sit and watch as your bot takes down pot after pot, and you never have to worry about tilting again!)
Ok, so poker theory is worthless yet in order to play a hand perfectly … doesn’t one need to know what perfect is? That definition of perfect could only be derived from … poker theory.
How would you like to finally kick emotion out of your game for good? How would you like to have your own poker pro with the power to process millions of complex mathematical calculations per second playing on your behalf?
The truth is that you are only human and that means that despite your best efforts you WILL at times get impatient, angry, nervous, or cocky at the poker table. Furthermore the human brain is extremely limited in the amount of information it can process.
I’m sure many AI researches would be surprised to find out that the human brain is exremely limited in the amount of information it can process because they’ve yet been able to duplicate it.
Things get even worse at online poker because while we still find emotion guiding our play (who hasn’t tilted after a bad beat?) we are in a worse position to exploit the emotional play of others (because we are denied the crucial physical cues we enjoy in a live game).
So, all this is all about removing the emotional aspect of the game?
It did not take me long to understand the unparalleled advantage a poker playing computer program would have over human opponents. So I set out to prove my theory and enlisted a few techie friends from university to help me build the Ultimate Poker Bot Machine!
Well not only did I build a working Poker Bot but I was thrilled to discover that it was making money every time it played! My account just kept growing and growing!
Anybody who has ever played poker before knows that you can’t always have a winning session. The claim by the author that his bot makes money “every time it played,” is pure and simple bullshit.
Just LOOK AT THE AMAZING RESULTS from just one of my poker accounts. This particular one was funded with about $400 3 months ago. It now holds over $45,000. You do the math!
Because you just can’t fake a screen shot :-) And most importantly, he doesn’t state that this was all winnings at the poker table.
Anyway, he goes on and on about this product and each claim is more absurd than the next. The best I can tell is that it has basic poker theory programmed into it and it gives you the most +EV play. Of course, these type of basic theory bots are astonishingly easy to beat. All you have to do is deny the bot the right odds on certain types of hands. That’s why bots have such a hard time beating anything other than the micro-limit tables and even then they barely squeek out a profit.
Last but not least, according to the author, his program has been so successful he’s going to pull his website down on March 14 (so much for ongoing customer support, I guess). What’s the over under on how long before he brings it back due to overwhelming demand?
Photo borrowed from Flickr user Carrie Taylor
UPDATE ALERT: I’VE WRITTEN ADDITIONAL POSTS ABOUT THE POKER BOT PRO SCAM
PokerBot Pro – The Saga Continues PokerBot Pro – The Scam Continues