Party's new anti-bot pop-up

I was playing in a 30/60 game, and a $400 SNG, and a pop-up appeared over both tables, at different times.  I was informed that I had 120 seconds or something to enter the letters I was being shown, or Party would assume I was a bot, and would boot me.

The letters were all swooshy and swirly, I assume so that it would be difficult if not impossible for a computer to determine what they are.  If you've ever ordered tickets from ticketmaster.ca and you have to type in some letters they show you, well, it's exactly like that.

I took a quick survey of the players at both tables, and asked them if they had to do the same thing.  Nobody did, and nobody had heard of this new anti-bot software.  So, does Party think that I, specifically, am a bot?  Have any of you had to do this yet?  I only mentioned the stakes of the games because I thought that might have something to do with it, but maybe not since the others at my table didn't have to prove they were human.

All in all, I think it's a good idea.  It gets a bit stressful, though, when you're facing a decision for all of your chips in a sit and go and there's some code you have to punch in, complete with dramatic countdown.  I've been watching a lot of the TV show "Lost" lately (best show on television, possibly ever, in my opinion, yes even better than '24') and the whole code/countdown thing really reminds me of that except I'm not saving the world.  I'm just deciding whether to call or fold.  No comparison... it's not even close.

If I was running some sort of a bot program, all I would have to do is monitor the screen so I could punch in the codes when prompted.  So I guess all this does is prevent the bot-runners who have other things to do from using their bots.  Bot-runners who don't have other things to do can sit and babysit their bots, and nothing will change.

Comments

  • Ahhh.... I just read on RGP that Party has had this for a while, but not for everybody. Just for multi-tabling high-ish-stakes playas like myself. I feel so special. Doesn't make much sense though... I mean if they want to prevent bots from playing on Party they should be using this pop-up with EVERY account, IMO.
  • I hear Sloth is going to be introducing anti-bot software for this site.... I mean seriously.... some pepole have almost 2000 posts or higher... gotta be bots!!
  • I am a bit surprised they suspect bots in sit and gos. Maybe I am not up on the latest bot technology, but I always assumed for now they were mainly for limit. I would also think the lower limits is where most of the bots would be found grinding out money from very bad players.

    Actions against bots are good, though Party's logic behind their determination of who is a bot seems a bit shaky (meeting customer needs in a professional manner has never been one of Party's selling points though ).

    I hope they and other sites come up with a better means of catching bots. While bots are not really a direct threat to beating good players, they are certainly an indirect threat if they pull away a chunk of the very bad players money before us humans can.
  • i play alot on ub, and i noticed a very botesque player that would do very well heads up (unreal smasher), but when it got to 6 handed it was terrible. I thought it was a bot for all the reasons i read about on various forums, and then one day someone happened to tell me they knew the guy that made that particular bot. At first id play it heads up and it would usually get me, untill after a few sessions i found that playin radically aggresive (never calling) I slowly got the best of it till i would clean it out every time. It doesnt play me any more. I say bring on the bots, as any good player will learn to exploit there weaknesses.
    However, for an average or not so good player, bots are pretty lame. I still watch this bot destroy unsuspecting fish HU and feel bad for its victims.
  • all_aces, the party bot destroyer must think you are a very ABC type player. Better work on that... :D
  • weird, never had that pop up before
  • I think it is more common with the upgrade. I haven't seen it yet either but I've suddenly seen it discussed on a couple of boards.
  • moose04 wrote:
    all_aces, the party bot destroyer must think you are a very ABC type player.  Better work on that... :D
    Yeah, I was thinking that too!  Oh well, I never claimed to be any good anyways.  ;)

    PS Go Leafs.
  • Well I got the same Pop up on Saturday night... I was sitting down at a 5-10 limit table at Party and it popped up. I was only playing one table, and I don't consider 5-10 to be high stakes.. so who knows.. maybe my play style resembles what their bot sniffers are looking for?
  • Could be... or maybe we'll all get it, once or twice, sometime. I've played since, and no pop-ups. So maybe they just make you do it once in a blue moon as kind of a random 'spot check' kind of thing.
  • Yeah same here. I probably played 12-15 hours since the original pop-up and have not had a second one come up. I also can't figure out what causes the Sidebet bar to randomly show up once in a while, it is usually not there when I fire up Party Poker, but I find at one point or another it will show up on the left side of the screen. I know this is a new feature implemented with the latest patch, but the way it randomly comes up seems buggy. Maybe they are having a similar problem with their Anti-Bot thing.. somewhat random.

    On a side note, I got an e-mail from Empire Poker telling me my Deposit bonus was about to run out, and I had 102 of 125 raked hands already played towards this bonus... the odd thing.. I never put any real money at Empire Poker, signed up like 2 years ago, played the Freebie did not like the UI and bailed. I sent them a reply telling them they made a mistake, and sent this to the wrong person and they tell me they never sent me the e-mail. Odd.
  • About the 'sidebet' button... I agree that it is buggy.  It would appear and disappear on its own, and it was bugging me, so I got rid of it:

    http://www.pokerforum.ca/forum/index.php?topic=6171.msg51035#msg51035
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