WEBVTT - The Story: Russian Bots vs American Gamblers 0:00:13.840 --> 0:00:17.480 Welcome to text stuff. I'm's Volocian here with Cara Price, 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.440 and this is the story. Hello Oz, Hello Cara. One 0:00:21.440 --> 0:00:25.639 of my favorite memories that we have together was a 0:00:25.760 --> 0:00:29.400 trip to the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas in January 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.560 twenty twenty, and we went to the panels. We spoke 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:35.040 on a panel, but where I really saw you could 0:00:35.040 --> 0:00:38.400 come alive was on the casino floor. 0:00:38.240 --> 0:00:39.920 Not at CES. On the casino. 0:00:40.000 --> 0:00:43.200 From the casino floor, I hadn't known until that point 0:00:43.280 --> 0:00:46.360 that you were quite a you know, passionate gambler. 0:00:46.520 --> 0:00:49.440 That's a euphemism for degenerate, but yes I am. I'm 0:00:49.440 --> 0:00:53.240 not a degenerate gambler. I dabble in gambling and blackjack 0:00:53.400 --> 0:00:54.080 is my sport. 0:00:54.280 --> 0:00:55.320 When did you get into it? 0:00:55.400 --> 0:00:58.720 My mom liked to gamble, and so she taught me 0:00:58.760 --> 0:01:01.280 how to play blackjack. And I've always loved blackjack, just 0:01:01.320 --> 0:01:04.120 for the high highs and the low lows of it. 0:01:04.280 --> 0:01:06.920 I only get to supervise your behavior with more I pusson. 0:01:07.240 --> 0:01:09.440 But how much do you play on your phone? 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:12.360 I do play online blackjack, but not for money. 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:16.039 Just for fun, just for fun. Well, today's story is 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:22.319 actually all about how digital blackjack poker other casino games 0:01:22.760 --> 0:01:26.200 have just gone crazy and been booming online for the 0:01:26.319 --> 0:01:30.440 last few years, and our guest today, Bloomberg reporter Kitchillel, 0:01:30.840 --> 0:01:32.520 has been looking into why in the. 0:01:32.560 --> 0:01:36.160 Last five, six, seven years it has taken over the 0:01:36.319 --> 0:01:38.600 entire world, and the reason for that is a combination 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:42.840 of obviously enormous demand, the idea that you can just 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:46.240 gamble by reaching into your pocket and pulling out a 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.920 smartphone is quite appealing, but also a regulatory changes. I 0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:54.960 think online gambling gambling anywhere fifty years ago was seen 0:01:55.000 --> 0:01:57.680 as a kind of fringe, shady, wrong side of the 0:01:57.720 --> 0:02:02.760 tracks activity, and a combination of massive lobbying by big 0:02:02.800 --> 0:02:07.640 gambling companies and just societal changes, really ethical changes have 0:02:07.720 --> 0:02:10.320 meant that what used to be a shady thing to 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.000 do is now entirely normal. 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.200 Yeah, this is very much in line with my experience 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:19.720 of seeing sports betting ads everywhere. Besides it moving online, 0:02:19.800 --> 0:02:21.800 what does it actually have to do with our show. 0:02:22.160 --> 0:02:24.760 Well, Kit actually wrote this piece for Bloomberg that really 0:02:24.840 --> 0:02:28.720 caught my eye with the headline the Russian bot army 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:30.520 that conquered online poker. 0:02:30.720 --> 0:02:35.040 All right, so a Russian bot army is not necessarily 0:02:35.040 --> 0:02:38.440 a phrase we see put together with poker. 0:02:38.919 --> 0:02:41.960 Normally we're thinking more about Russian bot armies trying to 0:02:41.960 --> 0:02:45.639 influence elections or also, the Russian bot army is kind 0:02:45.680 --> 0:02:48.920 of like a little bit of internet boogeyman. 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:51.120 Very much like if I imagine what a Russian bot 0:02:51.200 --> 0:02:53.880 army looks like in real life, it's it's very different 0:02:53.919 --> 0:02:56.320 than what it probably is in reality. 0:02:56.840 --> 0:03:00.760 Well, Kit was also slightly dubious, but he got to 0:03:00.840 --> 0:03:03.080 meet a real life Russian bot army. 0:03:03.520 --> 0:03:05.960 I'll be honest, I was very suspicious about the idea 0:03:06.040 --> 0:03:08.560 that that all this spot activity in the poker world 0:03:08.560 --> 0:03:12.000 emanated from Russia. I think there was a tendency here 0:03:11.360 --> 0:03:15.560 to see any sort of perception of nefarious online activity 0:03:15.560 --> 0:03:18.160 to go as the Russians. And you know, when I 0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.079 went through the available material when I started this project, 0:03:21.960 --> 0:03:25.040 none of it seemed to be based on any real evidence, 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:27.519 on knowledge that something was happening in Russia. It was 0:03:27.560 --> 0:03:30.239 all smoke and mirrors. So I approached it with a 0:03:30.320 --> 0:03:33.560 very skeptical eye. But then after doing six months to 0:03:33.600 --> 0:03:36.120 a year worth of reporting and finally meeting the people 0:03:36.120 --> 0:03:38.800 behind it, you know, it turns out the rumor was 0:03:38.920 --> 0:03:39.880 essentially correct. 0:03:40.320 --> 0:03:41.520 So it was the Russians. 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:42.640 It was the Russians. 0:03:42.720 --> 0:03:44.480 What are the Russians doing? Well? 0:03:44.640 --> 0:03:48.160 I'll let Kit explain that everyone who plays poker knows 0:03:48.480 --> 0:03:51.720 that there's software that can play poker very well. So 0:03:52.040 --> 0:03:55.320 I was curious about who was using this new technology 0:03:55.320 --> 0:03:58.880 to actually make money from online poker. And there were 0:03:58.920 --> 0:04:02.480 all sorts of rumors of out genius Russian poker bots. 0:04:02.520 --> 0:04:05.440 You could log onto the poker chat rooms and everyone 0:04:05.480 --> 0:04:08.240 was complaining about Russian bots, but there was no information 0:04:08.280 --> 0:04:11.280 about who they were, who was making them. So I 0:04:11.400 --> 0:04:14.120 went looking for the people who made those bots, and 0:04:14.160 --> 0:04:17.400 that led me to this operation based out of Omskin, Siberia. 0:04:18.120 --> 0:04:20.200 Nothing I have ever done in life has led me 0:04:20.279 --> 0:04:23.040 to OMPs in Siberia, and I don't know if anything 0:04:23.120 --> 0:04:23.640 ever will. 0:04:23.839 --> 0:04:26.240 You never watched a Bond movie from Russia with love. 0:04:26.760 --> 0:04:30.400 From Ompsk with love, Now it has a different ring 0:04:30.480 --> 0:04:33.960 to it. This is really interesting and I just want 0:04:33.960 --> 0:04:34.760 to know more about it. 0:04:35.000 --> 0:04:37.159 Yeah. So it turns out that not only is this 0:04:37.240 --> 0:04:40.960 Russian group making lots of money doing this, but also 0:04:41.000 --> 0:04:45.360 that the technology they've built has fundamentally changed the way 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:49.880 poka is played online and in real life. So it's 0:04:49.880 --> 0:04:53.400 one of these interesting kind of human machine interaction stories 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.360 about the ways we may not be even conscious of 0:04:56.400 --> 0:04:59.080 the fact that we're interacting with machines all around us 0:04:59.520 --> 0:05:01.320 and they're fluencing our behavior. 0:05:01.839 --> 0:05:04.200 I think I was fascinated by the idea that these 0:05:04.200 --> 0:05:06.440 are very human games. I mean, poker is the most 0:05:06.520 --> 0:05:12.440 human of games. It involves bluffing, lying, dishonesty, deception, reading 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:17.320 human visual clues. It's the archetypal game that machines shouldn't 0:05:17.320 --> 0:05:20.520 be able to play, and the things that humans used 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.800 to exclusively dominate. Now machines more and more are taking over. 0:05:24.080 --> 0:05:26.120 And that's true in gambling as much as anywhere else. 0:05:26.640 --> 0:05:29.480 And when we talk about gambling and we talk about 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.560 the people using technology to do it, I still think 0:05:32.600 --> 0:05:35.640 most people today who place online bets or who bet 0:05:35.720 --> 0:05:38.560 on sports or play poker, they don't know that this 0:05:38.680 --> 0:05:41.599 world exists. They don't know there's a whole subculture of 0:05:41.600 --> 0:05:43.800 players who are using state of the art technology to 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:46.720 play these games in a very inhuman way. And I 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:48.840 was fascinated by the fact that it's kind of there, 0:05:48.880 --> 0:05:51.080 in secret but affecting games we all know and love. 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:53.480 I'm really excited to hear the rest of your interview 0:05:53.520 --> 0:05:56.960 because I want to know more about how machines are 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:59.839 actually influencing the way human players. 0:06:00.640 --> 0:06:03.640 I'll let explain that here he is the standard for 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:07.560 machine intelligence really is is always creative thinking, which is 0:06:07.760 --> 0:06:10.240 which is a very human thing to do. And one 0:06:10.279 --> 0:06:13.000 of the simplest and most binary ways to test the 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.680 machine's ability to think like a person is to play 0:06:15.720 --> 0:06:20.039 a game that involves deduction and logic. The gamification of 0:06:20.120 --> 0:06:23.400 this technology allows researchers to test how good it is, 0:06:23.880 --> 0:06:26.400 and poker is very actually a very good proxy for 0:06:26.480 --> 0:06:29.200 real life. You know, it's a game of imperfect information. 0:06:29.600 --> 0:06:33.080 The players don't really know what the other players might hold. 0:06:33.080 --> 0:06:35.599 They have to guess, they have to do the best 0:06:35.640 --> 0:06:37.599 they can with the limited information they have. That's what 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:39.920 real life is like. And in the world of computing, 0:06:40.240 --> 0:06:43.160 you deal with ones and zeros and certainties. What computers 0:06:43.160 --> 0:06:45.960 have had traditionally been quite bad at is dealing with 0:06:46.000 --> 0:06:48.960 these very uncertain situations where you're guessing and you're reading. 0:06:49.480 --> 0:06:51.800 So Poker is a very good proxy for how human 0:06:52.000 --> 0:06:55.600 like a machine can be. And I think it's interesting 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:59.040 that it took until about twenty fifteen, which is extremely 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.520 late in the world of artificial intelligence for the best 0:07:02.520 --> 0:07:05.039 poker bots to be able to beat really good poker pros, 0:07:05.640 --> 0:07:09.760 and ever since, really the best poker blots are essentially unbeatable. 0:07:10.000 --> 0:07:12.680 In practical terms. It's really a question of how slowly 0:07:13.080 --> 0:07:14.360 or quickly you will lose to them. 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:16.520 And this brings us back to the story which has 0:07:16.560 --> 0:07:19.800 the headline the Russian bot Army that conquered online Poker. 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.560 The piece opens with two online poker players engaged in 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:28.480 a standoff. Tell us about the standoff and the match 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:29.239 that followed. 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:31.960 The situation was one that very typically happens in an 0:07:31.960 --> 0:07:35.720 online poker where the people who are online poker professionals, 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:39.640 they tend to compete exclusively online. That means they can 0:07:39.720 --> 0:07:41.880 be challenged and challenge anyone in the world. So the 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.520 top poker professionals online will routinely open up and say 0:07:45.560 --> 0:07:47.120 come and play me and see how good you are. 0:07:47.960 --> 0:07:51.080 This guy Farewell was one of the world's best heads 0:07:51.160 --> 0:07:54.120 up poker players. He had an elite level skill set, 0:07:54.200 --> 0:07:56.240 and he got into a kind of an argument online 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.920 with another Russian and challenged him to a game of 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:02.800 poker and very surprisingly lost that contest and lost a 0:08:02.800 --> 0:08:06.640 lot of money and the way he got beaten. He 0:08:06.720 --> 0:08:09.360 was immediately suspicious. And I know poker players when they 0:08:09.400 --> 0:08:11.760 lose game of poker will always tend to say I've 0:08:11.760 --> 0:08:14.920 been conned, I've been cheated. In this case, someone with 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:17.600 his abilities losing a match like that, it kind of 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:20.280 was suspicious, but it was also the way he lost. 0:08:20.840 --> 0:08:23.840 His opponent was making decisions that human beings don't normally make. 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:27.200 He complained and said they was cheating involved, and the 0:08:27.240 --> 0:08:29.600 other guy on the other side denied it. But my 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:33.400 research led me to evidence that his opponent had access 0:08:33.440 --> 0:08:36.600 to this state of the art poker pot system that 0:08:36.720 --> 0:08:41.040 was built in Siberia, And I think what I discovered 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:44.400 was that this kind of matchup happens a lot in poker. 0:08:44.800 --> 0:08:47.040 You're playing someone online and you don't know who they are, 0:08:47.120 --> 0:08:49.000 or where they come from, or what they're using, and 0:08:49.000 --> 0:08:51.320 it's genuinely very hard to tell if someone is using 0:08:51.360 --> 0:08:54.200 a solver, if someone has a computer that's not necessarily 0:08:54.240 --> 0:08:57.600 the one they're using running in the background, it's very 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:00.640 difficult to tell. And I think what most people who 0:09:00.640 --> 0:09:03.439 play the game online don't realize is just how widespread 0:09:03.520 --> 0:09:06.960 this is. It's almost impossible to stop what did. 0:09:06.840 --> 0:09:09.040 This moment crystallize for you and why did you start 0:09:09.080 --> 0:09:09.680 the story here. 0:09:10.040 --> 0:09:12.800 This was early days in the poker bot era, and 0:09:13.040 --> 0:09:15.960 I think back then very few people knew poker bots existed. 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.360 I liked the idea that one of the world's best 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:22.480 proponents of this particular game of poker could be defeated 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:24.880 by a complete nobody in the poker space. This guy 0:09:24.920 --> 0:09:27.880 had no reputation. If anything, his reputation online was all 0:09:27.880 --> 0:09:29.920 sorts of things that had nothing to do with poker. 0:09:30.200 --> 0:09:33.960 He had a kind of clownish, cartoonish online persona. You know, 0:09:34.000 --> 0:09:37.000 it's the idea of Novak Djokovic losing to someone from 0:09:37.000 --> 0:09:39.400 your local tennis club at tennis. It's just so improbable, 0:09:39.640 --> 0:09:41.320 and you have to look at why that would happen. 0:09:41.520 --> 0:09:43.520 And the answer led me to pokabots. 0:09:43.360 --> 0:09:47.880 And in particular the bot farm Corporation. Yeah, paint of 0:09:47.920 --> 0:09:50.920 a picture of their lives in Siberia, these young men 0:09:51.280 --> 0:09:53.200 and how they got started. 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.240 Yeah, this was fascinating to learn about. I mean, I 0:09:55.280 --> 0:09:57.319 had a sort of specific image in my mind of 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:00.720 what bot farmers would look like. She I think the 0:10:00.760 --> 0:10:02.760 reality of it was slightly different to what I expected. 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:07.080 I'd imagined one sort of big poker kingpin with a 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:09.240 garage full of computers and a bunch of employees, but 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:11.560 in reality it was a bunch of sort of nerdy 0:10:11.600 --> 0:10:14.960 students that two technical colleges in this remote region of 0:10:15.000 --> 0:10:19.360 Siberia where they have very good computing courses. So these 0:10:19.440 --> 0:10:23.679 kids were spending all day doing very advanced courses in 0:10:23.760 --> 0:10:26.680 software and programming and machine logic and mathematics and physics. 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.320 And this happened at around the time that online poker 0:10:30.360 --> 0:10:32.560 was really getting going, it was really becoming bigger businesses. 0:10:32.600 --> 0:10:34.160 It was two thousand and one, two thousand and two, 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:37.000 for the first time, really you could have a game 0:10:37.040 --> 0:10:39.640 of poker against someone anywhere in the world online, any 0:10:39.640 --> 0:10:42.200 time of day and night, for real money. And these 0:10:42.280 --> 0:10:45.319 kids started playing. They realized they were good, and they 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:47.840 got better, and they realized also that they could make 0:10:47.880 --> 0:10:51.400 a lot of money, mainly playing American people who thought 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:54.000 they were fantastic at poker and logged on after a 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:56.080 hard day at work and didn't realize they were playing. 0:10:56.120 --> 0:10:59.719 A math PhD who had studied game theory was using 0:10:59.720 --> 0:11:02.560 an on training tool to play nearly perfect poker. So 0:11:03.000 --> 0:11:04.960 initially they made a lot of money, just a bunch 0:11:05.000 --> 0:11:07.240 of students getting together on the top floor of a campus. 0:11:07.360 --> 0:11:08.800 They're just playing. They were playing as players. 0:11:08.840 --> 0:11:11.920 They as human the human but they but they had 0:11:12.000 --> 0:11:15.040 learnt the science of poker, and there is a mathematical 0:11:15.120 --> 0:11:17.440 science behind poker. If you're willing to put in the 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:19.400 house and you have that kind of brain, it's a 0:11:19.400 --> 0:11:23.839 distinct advantage, especially playing everyday folks who don't know those things. 0:11:24.280 --> 0:11:26.520 So they were making good money just playing human to human. 0:11:26.640 --> 0:11:31.480 But these Russian colleges, they are excellent farms for very 0:11:31.520 --> 0:11:34.920 tech minded people, and so it wasn't long before they 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:38.480 started applying that that technology to the game of poker. 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:41.600 And it didn't take long to realize that you can 0:11:41.640 --> 0:11:44.800 have a piece of software running. It can play twenty 0:11:44.800 --> 0:11:46.840 four hours a day. It doesn't need a break, it 0:11:46.840 --> 0:11:48.720 doesn't need food, you don't need to pay it, and 0:11:48.760 --> 0:11:50.839 it will play much better poker than the average human. 0:11:51.400 --> 0:11:53.760 And you can scale it almost infinitely. As long as 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.560 you have the ability to create accounts. You can have 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.040 as many bots playing as you want. And so they 0:11:59.080 --> 0:12:04.520 thought transitioned greatly from humans playing less capable humans online 0:12:05.000 --> 0:12:08.480 to having lots of computers run this software automatically and 0:12:08.600 --> 0:12:11.040 only being sort of broadly supervised by a few tech 0:12:11.080 --> 0:12:13.520 operators who kept on yet things to make sure nothing 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:15.920 was going wrong. And they made millions and millions and 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:17.440 millions of dollars in those early years. 0:12:17.720 --> 0:12:19.840 And at what point did they start to attract the 0:12:19.960 --> 0:12:24.240 notice of investors and also local police. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.280 Well, I think they attracted the attention of local police 0:12:27.320 --> 0:12:32.160 because the dorm was busy all hours of day and night. 0:12:32.240 --> 0:12:34.640 They were playing mostly people on the side of the world. 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:39.239 Lots of students would arrive wearing their hoodies and marching upstairs, 0:12:39.280 --> 0:12:42.120 and you know, eleven o'clock at night, and there was 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:44.920 activity all through the night. So the neighbors complained and 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:47.600 the local police came round, and I guess they assumed 0:12:47.600 --> 0:12:50.440 it with sun criminal operation, and so they invited the 0:12:50.440 --> 0:12:52.520 cops in and just showed them the computers with the 0:12:52.559 --> 0:12:55.000 poker on the screen, saying, we're just playing poker. 0:12:54.760 --> 0:12:56.880 Which is ripping off Americans, how about it. 0:12:57.080 --> 0:12:59.320 I mean, I'm sure the Russian police were quite work 0:13:00.040 --> 0:13:02.040 well unhappy about what was going on, but it was 0:13:02.040 --> 0:13:04.800 so easy to scale it. And I think the key 0:13:04.800 --> 0:13:08.000 thing to remember is that their starting point was a 0:13:08.080 --> 0:13:10.720 very high level of knowledge and a very scientific approach 0:13:10.760 --> 0:13:13.280 to poker. And you know, over the course of six, seven, 0:13:13.360 --> 0:13:16.120 eight years, they just got stronger and stronger and stronger. 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.720 You know, every single month this system operated, it got 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:24.960 better at playing poker. By twenty ten, twenty eleven, the 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:29.600 system was able to play an individual human opponent, analyze 0:13:29.760 --> 0:13:32.839 that human's track record in poker, every game they've ever 0:13:32.840 --> 0:13:36.520 played online because you can buy game records. So if 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:38.080 you're a habitual poker player and you. 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.040 Pay perfect knowledge of your opponent. 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.120 Perfect knowledge of your opponent's games, all the mistakes they've 0:13:42.120 --> 0:13:43.959 made over the last couple of years, all the weaknesses 0:13:44.040 --> 0:13:47.160 in their game, and the system could spot those weaknesses 0:13:47.160 --> 0:13:50.120 and taylor of its own approach to the specific weaknesses 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:53.000 of its opponent. And that's really that's where the real 0:13:53.040 --> 0:13:56.520 mind is in poker. I mean, all human poker players 0:13:56.559 --> 0:13:58.760 have winknesses in the game. It's natural that will happen. 0:13:58.880 --> 0:14:02.480 If you're able to algorithmically analyze them and exploit them, 0:14:03.000 --> 0:14:05.160 then you know you will win vastly more money than 0:14:05.160 --> 0:14:05.880 you lose. And they did. 0:14:06.840 --> 0:14:09.360 This was back in twenty eleven. Was kind of a 0:14:09.360 --> 0:14:11.480 heyday of this. But your story obviously came out in 0:14:11.480 --> 0:14:14.480 twenty twenty four, So I want to kind of get 0:14:14.480 --> 0:14:16.320 through all the steps that take us from twenty eleven 0:14:16.320 --> 0:14:18.360 to twenty twenty four. What was the kind of urgency 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:20.920 that you and your editors wanted to run it now 0:14:21.200 --> 0:14:22.000 rather than back then. 0:14:22.400 --> 0:14:25.320 The main reason to do the story when we did 0:14:25.320 --> 0:14:27.640 it was that no one had done this before. I 0:14:27.720 --> 0:14:30.560 had never been had someone show me where the poker 0:14:30.600 --> 0:14:33.560 blots come from. I've had read lots of stories about 0:14:33.640 --> 0:14:37.400 academics in Pittsburgh and Alberta, Canada, sitting in their offices 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:42.160 and you know, crafting these ingenious, artificially intelligent poker programs. 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:43.840 But they didn't do it to make money. They did 0:14:43.880 --> 0:14:45.920 it to sort of test the boundaries of what machines 0:14:45.960 --> 0:14:49.160 could do. Anyone who's played online poker knows there are 0:14:49.200 --> 0:14:51.720 bots out there, So I just I was curious to 0:14:51.760 --> 0:14:54.760 know what kind of person does it purely for the money? 0:14:54.840 --> 0:14:56.240 How good do you have to be? How do you 0:14:56.280 --> 0:14:58.480 get into that job? And so there was a big 0:14:58.520 --> 0:15:00.920 hole in our knowledge of this, and so I went 0:15:00.960 --> 0:15:04.920 looking trying to fill it. And botting Artificial intelligence has 0:15:04.960 --> 0:15:07.680 been a reality of poker for a long time, and 0:15:07.720 --> 0:15:09.920 I don't think that that has ever changed, and it 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:11.120 probably will never change. 0:15:11.640 --> 0:15:13.720 I thought, you know, poker is obviously a game of 0:15:14.040 --> 0:15:17.840 incentives and motives and reading your opponent and direction and misdirection. 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:20.440 So I'm very attracted to this quote and your piece, 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:25.000 which was neither professionals nor poker providers want to acknowledge 0:15:25.040 --> 0:15:29.120 the presence of intelligent machines for fear of deterring the 0:15:29.200 --> 0:15:33.880 new players whose money keeps the game afloat. Explain that, well, yeah, 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:35.320 this was the big challenge of the story. 0:15:35.400 --> 0:15:38.520 I mean, no one involved in the poker industry wants 0:15:38.520 --> 0:15:39.600 to talk about poker bots. 0:15:40.200 --> 0:15:40.360 Now. 0:15:40.440 --> 0:15:44.440 Arguably, the new reality of poker is dominated by technology. 0:15:44.480 --> 0:15:47.280 It has changed the way even human professionels play the game. 0:15:47.880 --> 0:15:49.680 I think you'd be a fool to think that most 0:15:49.720 --> 0:15:53.400 online markets aren't absolutely crawling with bots. Yet if you 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:55.440 talk to the big providers, they just don't want to 0:15:55.480 --> 0:15:58.440 talk about it. They don't want to acknowledge the presence 0:15:58.480 --> 0:16:01.080 of bots on their system. They don't want to talk 0:16:01.080 --> 0:16:04.080 about where bots come from. And it's a simple reason 0:16:04.080 --> 0:16:06.320 for that is that they rely on new money. They 0:16:06.320 --> 0:16:08.880 rely on people like me and you deciding we want 0:16:08.880 --> 0:16:10.960 to have a go online poker and logging on investing 0:16:10.960 --> 0:16:14.680 our hard earned dollars in a game of poker. If 0:16:14.720 --> 0:16:17.760 they sort of acknowledge the existence of these unbeatabule machines 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:22.200 in their ecosystem, it doesn't help them commercially. So there's 0:16:22.240 --> 0:16:25.720 just no information out there. Conversely that people who make 0:16:25.760 --> 0:16:27.520 money from poker bots don't really want to talk about 0:16:27.560 --> 0:16:30.040 it either because they kind of their business model relies 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:33.680 on secrecy. If people know who they are every platform 0:16:33.720 --> 0:16:37.160 they play on, they'll be excluded, they'll be banned, their 0:16:37.200 --> 0:16:40.280 winnings will be seized. So with secrecy on both sides, 0:16:40.320 --> 0:16:42.400 So what that letter is a big void of information 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:46.000 and lots of sort of crazy online speculation and conspiracy 0:16:46.000 --> 0:16:48.440 theories that weren't based in reality at all. 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.600 What would it be like as a normal if you're 0:16:50.600 --> 0:16:53.680 listening to this podcast and you're playing online poker. Would 0:16:53.680 --> 0:16:55.480 you be able to tell if you're playing against a bot? 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:57.840 Are there only tells that bots have? I don't think 0:16:57.840 --> 0:16:58.480 you can tell. 0:16:58.560 --> 0:16:58.640 No. 0:16:59.080 --> 0:17:02.000 I think the experience of losing to a very good 0:17:02.080 --> 0:17:06.640 game theory optimal poker bot, it's a series of situations 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:09.520 that just go against you inexplicably. It feels like you're 0:17:09.520 --> 0:17:11.600 getting rotten luck over and over and over and over 0:17:11.640 --> 0:17:14.000 and over and over again. When you have an advantage 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:16.400 in a game like poker, it doesn't manifest as one big, 0:17:16.480 --> 0:17:19.439 dramatic win. It's not the big, showy hand that gets you. 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:21.879 It's the one hundred hands, it's the two hundred hands. 0:17:22.240 --> 0:17:24.399 And if he speak to people who work with poker bots, 0:17:24.720 --> 0:17:26.680 they're not worried about a single hand of poker. It's 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.720 not where interests them. They're interested in the plus minus 0:17:29.800 --> 0:17:32.160 dollar value after a thousand hands. That's where the real 0:17:32.240 --> 0:17:34.239 value is to them. So actually, I don't think it's 0:17:34.320 --> 0:17:37.479 very fun playing poker bots. One of the characteristics of 0:17:37.600 --> 0:17:40.159 good game theory oatical poker is that there's loads of 0:17:40.200 --> 0:17:43.439 action pre flop. That means that when you're playing poker, 0:17:43.440 --> 0:17:46.000 before the community cards have even been put down the table, 0:17:46.320 --> 0:17:48.800 before you see what the possible hands might be, you 0:17:49.280 --> 0:17:52.639 get dealt your two whole cards. Poker bots game theory 0:17:52.680 --> 0:17:55.800 tells you you must bet aggressively before the community cards 0:17:55.840 --> 0:17:58.240 are down, which works. You know you're more likely to 0:17:58.280 --> 0:18:01.240 win or lose hands if you do that effective, but 0:18:01.359 --> 0:18:04.080 it's boring. It means you don't get those dramatic moments 0:18:04.080 --> 0:18:07.200 of one card, two card, three card, what have I got? 0:18:07.400 --> 0:18:10.400 You don't get those big showdowns. So I think it's 0:18:10.400 --> 0:18:13.919 boring and frustrating, quite frankly, to lose slowly to a 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:14.960 poker bot online. 0:18:15.160 --> 0:18:17.680 So the providers didn't want to talk, the poker bot 0:18:18.359 --> 0:18:22.760 makers didn't want to talk, and yet you got the story. 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.240 Yeah, it was a tough one. It tried all sorts 0:18:25.240 --> 0:18:27.360 of things to get to the bottom of it, and eventually, 0:18:27.400 --> 0:18:30.040 I think it was just persistence paid off. I had 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:32.920 bothered enough people that would eventually reached the guys who 0:18:32.920 --> 0:18:34.679 built this software that I was doing it, and they 0:18:34.680 --> 0:18:36.800 got in touch with me, and that was pure luck. 0:18:37.080 --> 0:18:38.760 And it just so happened that they had reached a 0:18:38.800 --> 0:18:40.680 stage in their careers where they were ready to talk. 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:45.160 You know, their business model had changed somewhat, and they 0:18:45.200 --> 0:18:47.520 seemed quite keen to tell me what they were looking 0:18:47.560 --> 0:18:49.359 at doing next and tell me their big plans for 0:18:50.000 --> 0:18:52.919 the next poker revolution that they wanted to oversee. I 0:18:52.920 --> 0:18:54.880 think if I'd approached them ten years ago, I don't 0:18:54.880 --> 0:18:55.960 think they would have talked. 0:19:03.359 --> 0:19:06.680 After the break kip me to the humans behind the 0:19:06.760 --> 0:19:24.120 Russian bots. Stay with us, So how did they approach 0:19:24.200 --> 0:19:27.560 you and did you have any red flags when you 0:19:27.600 --> 0:19:32.920 got inbound from purported Russian poker bot Manager Farm Manager. 0:19:33.520 --> 0:19:36.119 I had a few red flags. I mean, there was 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:38.719 some quite scary stuff online about who they were and 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.760 what they were about, and of course the mental associations 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:44.840 that go with a black market Russian poker operation. You 0:19:44.840 --> 0:19:47.879 can imagine there might be some scary people involved in that. 0:19:48.640 --> 0:19:52.560 I'd spend possibly a year, I think, trying to talk 0:19:52.600 --> 0:19:56.000 to these guys, trying to find them, researching every aspect 0:19:56.000 --> 0:19:58.520 of their businesses. I knew that there were six or 0:19:58.560 --> 0:20:01.320 seven Russian company needs that they were linked to, but 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:04.520 there was no online information about them. So I basically 0:20:04.800 --> 0:20:07.439 just called everyone that I could find that had the 0:20:07.440 --> 0:20:10.359 loosest connection to those companies and ask them about what 0:20:10.400 --> 0:20:12.080