End Of The Line For Bots

End Of The Line For Bots

Tuesday, 13 October 2015

In a bid to eliminate the chances of collusion and unfair play, the Gambling Commission in the UK is taking a stance against poker bots and third-party software.

In a statement sent out late last week, the Gambling Commission explained that it will be conducting a thorough investigation into the prevalence of third-party software and players' abilities to essentially cheat the system.

In recent weeks a number of online poker sites including PokerStars and partypoker have made changes to the ways in which they offer games. Hoping to level the playing field and make things more attractive for casual players, domains have made it harder for players to track hands and stats. Moreover, partypoker has removed manual seat selection for its cash games and will be looking to stop people deliberately seeking out weak competitors.

In line with this thinking, the Gambling Commission wants to survey the major online poker sites in order to get their views on various issues such as bots and tracking software. Once it's garnered enough opinion and analysed the results, the regulator will be looking to update its technical codes of conduct in a bid to eliminate the chances of collusion or cheating.

The Gambling Commission's review has yet to begin but it's likely many of the leading operators will be keen to comply with the new guidelines. Over the past few months the industry has seen a number of high-profile cases of cheating including a collusion scam worth $1.5 million on PokerStars so the chance to have a major regulator step in and help address the problem should be welcomed by all.



Tags: Gambling Commission, PokerStars, partypoker