Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Bloomberg reporter Kit Chillell has spent a lot of time
Speaker 2: lately following Russian poker players, including one player who goes
Speaker 2: by the name Farewell.
Speaker 1: It can be a very lucrative way of making a
Speaker 1: living if you're good, and Farewell is extremely good.
Speaker 2: Farewell plays poker online and he's known for having a
Speaker 2: very cerebral, disciplined approach to the game.
Speaker 1: For him, poker is a serious business. It's a game
Speaker 1: of probability in mathematics. He studies it. He has studied
Speaker 1: it for years. It's no joke to him.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: About a decade ago, Farewell got into a high profile
Speaker 2: feud with another Russian poker player, someone with a very
Speaker 2: different personality named Carpav.
Speaker 1: He's kind of an internet personality. He dishes out life
Speaker 1: wisdom on all kinds of subjects, from gambling through to
Speaker 1: sort of romantic strategy. And he has some controversial views
Speaker 1: that I won't air here. But yeah, he's sort of nationalistic,
Speaker 1: right wing sort of character, quite uncompromising, but he does
Speaker 1: also play poker.
Speaker 2: As Kit tells it, Farewell was reading posts in a
Speaker 2: Russian language chat room and something snapped.
Speaker 1: So when Farewell saw Karpov on his favorite poker forum
Speaker 1: talking about his experience with prostitutes, say or going out
Speaker 1: and getting blind drunk, I think he took it a
Speaker 1: little personally, that it was an insult to the thing
Speaker 1: that he takes very seriously, and so he called out,
Speaker 1: you know, this is complete nonstanse. I bet he can't
Speaker 1: even play poker, and Karpov, of course replied almost immediately,
Speaker 1: I challenged you to a fight, challenged him to a
Speaker 1: one on one poker contest to prove that he could
Speaker 1: do what he said he did.
Speaker 2: Karpov had thrown down the gauntlet, a matchup between the
Speaker 2: disciplined professional and the braggadocius troll. They arranged a table
Speaker 2: on the website Poker Stars and the battle began. It
Speaker 2: did not go the way Farewell expected.
Speaker 1: They played a few hundred hands, and you know, Karpov
Speaker 1: completely dominated. I think he won twenty thousand dollars by
Speaker 1: the end of their.
Speaker 2: Session, and that was it. Farewell had lost. He'd been
Speaker 2: defeated by a bombastic, undisciplined wild card.
Speaker 1: His pride was hurt, but I think he was also
Speaker 1: aware that there are ways to get an unfair advantage
Speaker 1: in online poker, and that Karpoff might have been using one.
Speaker 2: Of those Farewell suspected Karpov had used a bot. Now,
Speaker 2: this wouldn't have been a big surprise in other games.
Speaker 2: Computers have outplayed humans in Chess and Go for decades,
Speaker 2: but poker is different. It was long considered an unhackable
Speaker 2: game that only started to change about ten years ago
Speaker 2: when more and more poker bots started to appear online
Speaker 2: and kid says they're winning.
Speaker 1: So I came to this with the idea that I
Speaker 1: would find the source of all the poker boss, find
Speaker 1: the genius mind behind these poker playing machines, and find
Speaker 1: out how they were doing it.
Speaker 2: I'm David Gerret, and this is the big take from
Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today on the show, how a group of
Speaker 2: Russian students hacked online poker and what that means for
Speaker 2: the multi billion dollar industry. A confession, and I'm not bluffing.
Speaker 2: I've never played online poker, So I asked Bloomberg's Kitchillel
Speaker 2: what these sites look like.
Speaker 1: It's normally a green felt digital table, and everyone else
Speaker 1: on the table will be represented by It's normally a
Speaker 1: little cartoon image and a user name which won't be
Speaker 1: that real name, so you don't really know who you're playing.
Speaker 2: But otherwise, Kit says, the game is pretty much the
Speaker 2: same as the poker you'd play at a regular table.
Speaker 1: You make bets, you fold, you raise. Everything happens a
Speaker 1: bit more quickly than real life poker because it's a
Speaker 1: click of the button. But yeah, it works to all
Speaker 1: practical purposes. It's just like the real thing.
Speaker 2: Online poker started in the late nineties and early arts,
Speaker 2: and Kit says its breakout moment was this rags to
Speaker 2: riches event in two thousand and three, an unknown accountant
Speaker 2: from Tennessee qualified for the World Series of Poker. Watching
Speaker 2: the footage from back then, you can hear how exciting
Speaker 2: it must have been to see it live.
Speaker 3: This could be the last car of the two thousand
Speaker 3: and three World Series of Poker.
Speaker 1: No one expected him to do well, found himself on
Speaker 1: the final table with some of the biggest stars in
Speaker 1: the game and won several million dollars.
Speaker 3: What a whole house, Chriss moneymaker, A lemonade saved far
Speaker 3: har and a twenty seven year old has stepped out
Speaker 3: of a virtual poker room and in a very swift
Speaker 3: and unlikely manner is a top the poker world.
Speaker 1: He couldn't think of a more perfect name. That's pretty
Speaker 1: good for a poker player, as far as I know.
Speaker 1: It's his real name. But a guy with a name
Speaker 1: Moneymaker who comes from nowhere and wins this massive tournament.
Speaker 1: It sort of peaked interest in poker as a game,
Speaker 1: and in the years that followed that online poker grew explosively.
Speaker 1: There were millions of players around the world trying to
Speaker 1: have a go at this. You know, many of them
Speaker 1: thought this was a viable way for them to make money.
Speaker 2: Do we have any sense of how much money is
Speaker 2: bet on online poker in a given years, say, or
Speaker 2: just how big money wise this is.
Speaker 1: I think the revenue that poker sites make from online
Speaker 1: poker is in the region of three billion dollars a year.
Speaker 1: That's a tiny portion of the amount of money that
Speaker 1: changes hands. So you're looking at probably one hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars or more changing hands in terms of bets being
Speaker 1: made online, which is a significant sum of money.
Speaker 2: And a significant prize for the first people who could
Speaker 2: build a bot that could beat it. I asked Kit
Speaker 2: why it took so long to develop a poker bart
Speaker 2: that could hold its own.
Speaker 1: It's arguably the most complicated game for machine intelligence to master.
Speaker 1: And the reason poker is so challenging for machines is
Speaker 1: that it's a game of incomplete information. You don't know
Speaker 1: what the other players on the table are holding. You
Speaker 1: have to make an assumption based on their behavior about
Speaker 1: what they might have, so you have to make a
Speaker 1: guess about the best course of action. And also you
Speaker 1: have to lie. If you never bluff in poker, you
Speaker 1: will lose more often than not. You need to be
Speaker 1: able to sometimes fall, give the impression you have a
Speaker 1: great hand, just to win hands you shouldn't win. And
Speaker 1: these things are really difficult for computers. Now. In chess,
Speaker 1: all they have to do is process a very large
Speaker 1: number of scenarios. It's basically a data processing exercise. You
Speaker 1: could argue it's not real intelligence, it's just crunching numbers.
Speaker 1: But poker requires creative thought.
Speaker 2: For decades, the best bots were being developed at computer
Speaker 2: science programs at universities in the US and Canada, but
Speaker 2: even those left a lot to be desired.
Speaker 1: The best academic bots were not very good. In fact,
Speaker 1: they were a bit of a laughing stock. And the
Speaker 1: bots would get very easily confused and melt down, you know.
Speaker 1: Faced with this situation, they couldn't process, they would make
Speaker 1: incomprehensible decisions, and the top human players used to absolutely
Speaker 1: hammer them.
Speaker 2: And it was in that vacuum that a group of
Speaker 2: Russian students saw an opportunity. They were math whizzars and
Speaker 2: poker players who were already using online games as a
Speaker 2: way to make money, and they realized that if they
Speaker 2: could build a bot that could guarantee victory, they could
Speaker 2: make a fortune.
Speaker 1: It was Darwinian. It had to be good, otherwise it
Speaker 1: wouldn't make them any money.
Speaker 2: They called their bot the Brain, and Kit says it
Speaker 2: wasn't just good, it was dominant. In twenty twelve and
Speaker 2: twenty thirteen, when the group entered their bot in the
Speaker 2: World Online Computer Poker Contest, the Brain beat out bots
Speaker 2: developed by teams at Carnegie Mellon and the University of Alberta,
Speaker 2: which proved the Brain was one of the world's best.
Speaker 2: And as the Brain grew and developed, so did the
Speaker 2: ambitions of its makers.
Speaker 1: What started out as a quite a small bot farm,
Speaker 1: which is them and a few of their friends operating
Speaker 1: computer software running it day and night and trying to
Speaker 1: make as much money as they could, essentially selling access
Speaker 1: to their poker brain and doing that they could play
Speaker 1: thousands of games a day as opposed to a few hundred.
Speaker 2: Those students decided to franchise the brain. They were willing
Speaker 2: to partner with anyone who wanted to operate their own
Speaker 2: bod farm, and in exchange for access to the bot,
Speaker 2: partners agreed to share a portion of their winnings within
Speaker 2: poker circles. The whole enterprise came to be known as
Speaker 2: the Bot Farm Corporation or bf Corp for short. The
Speaker 2: only limit to their growth was how long they could
Speaker 2: stay under the radar, which wasn't very long.
Speaker 1: Users who were logging onto a poker website and just
Speaker 1: losing over and over in robotic fashion were complaining and saying,
Speaker 1: I'm sick of this website. There's so many bots on
Speaker 1: here's hopeless, and so I think the websites realized it
Speaker 1: was ultimately it was going to hurt their business model,
Speaker 1: and so they started deploying technology to get rid of
Speaker 1: the bots and keep them off the site.
Speaker 2: But remember how Kit called the bot Darwinian. When sites
Speaker 2: put up defenses the brains. Designers would develop a workaround,
Speaker 2: and eventually they got rid of the franchise model. They
Speaker 2: just started selling it to whoever wanted to buy it,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, anyone could buy a bot.
Speaker 2: There was no stopping it, which created a big problem
Speaker 2: for the industry.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, some Morgen Stanley analysts said it
Speaker 1: was an existential problem for poker. Why would anyone play
Speaker 1: a game against an unbeatable machine.
Speaker 2: With websites a wash in bots and it becoming increasingly
Speaker 2: difficult to distinguish between humans and computers. The game was
Speaker 2: corrupted and players were leaving in droves after the break
Speaker 2: Why the people behind BF Corp Are now fighting to
Speaker 2: save online poker After a group of Russian students created
Speaker 2: the world's premiere poker bot and started selling it to
Speaker 2: anyone who would buy it. Online poker platforms were flooded
Speaker 2: with these unbeatable machines. You'd think that would be horrible
Speaker 2: for their business models, but according to Bloomberg's Kitchillel, some
Speaker 2: of these sites didn't think this was the end of
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 1: What I discovered was that some poker, particularly poker clubs,
Speaker 1: which are kind of private unions of players who set
Speaker 1: up their own private games and run them as they like.
Speaker 1: Some of these organizations were actively inviting bots to play
Speaker 1: on the site.
Speaker 2: You heard him right. Online poker sites started to recruit
Speaker 2: bots to play poker. The reason it helped if those
Speaker 2: digital poker tables were full.
Speaker 1: If customers log on they see empty tables, they won't play.
Speaker 1: People want to log on, find an active game, jump
Speaker 1: on the table, and join in. But the reality of
Speaker 1: the way people play poker is that there are going
Speaker 1: to be hours in the day when there's just not
Speaker 1: enough people for that to happen. So poke bots actually
Speaker 1: can be really useful for keeping those tables busy.
Speaker 2: Sure, the poker bots might win a lot, but they
Speaker 2: guarantee a lot of games are happening, games that are
Speaker 2: played at a really high level. It says these are
Speaker 2: referred to as liquidity bots. BF Corp. Also cashed in
Speaker 2: on that trend. They started a new venture called Dplay
Speaker 2: to sell bots they've developed specifically for poker sites. The
Speaker 2: company's website says its mission is to quote provide a
Speaker 2: comfortable environment for gamers that its robots employ different strategies
Speaker 2: to maintain in game balance. Kit wanted to talk to
Speaker 2: its creators, but in spite of all of the success
Speaker 2: they had, they didn't do in person meetings or interviews
Speaker 2: with journalists. But Kit was persistent and after a few
Speaker 2: months he convinced them.
Speaker 1: It was a strange encounter. We had to meet in
Speaker 1: Armenia because of the war, and I couldn't get to
Speaker 1: Russia and they couldn't really come to Europe, so amenor
Speaker 1: it was.
Speaker 2: Kit met with three of the Russians who created that
Speaker 2: bot called the Brain, but he says they weren't who
Speaker 2: he expected. They were funny and curious. They even planned
Speaker 2: a series of touristy activities so they could all get
Speaker 2: to know each other, and they eventually told him why
Speaker 2: they wanted to talk to a reporter.
Speaker 1: They do want to come out of the shadows, is
Speaker 1: what they told me. They want to have a more
Speaker 1: public face now and they want to try and beat
Speaker 1: a solution rather than the problem.
Speaker 2: Kit had a chance to ask them a question that
Speaker 2: had been nagging at him. They'd started doing this because
Speaker 2: they love poker, but had their bots changed the game
Speaker 2: they love forever?
Speaker 1: One of the members of the group said to me,
Speaker 1: we're in a capitalism game. You know, they didn't make
Speaker 1: the game this way. They didn't create it. They are
Speaker 1: just operating within the boundaries and the limitations of the
Speaker 1: game as it already exists. And I'm sure they would
Speaker 1: argue that if they weren't making bots, someone else would
Speaker 1: be making bots, then the bots would still exist. They
Speaker 1: just happen to be quite good at it.
Speaker 2: In other words, yes, the game is changing, and not
Speaker 2: for the better, at least not if you're human. But
Speaker 2: it's not the bots that are ruining the game, they argued,
Speaker 2: it's capitalism.
Speaker 1: Well, what we've seen in poker is that when machines
Speaker 1: can beat us at our own game, nothing good comes
Speaker 1: as a result. It's been very detrimental to the game
Speaker 1: of poker and I think the people's enjoyment of poker.
Speaker 1: It's also interesting that the response of the poker community
Speaker 1: and has been largely to pretend this threat doesn't exist.
Speaker 1: And so I'll be interested to watch over the next
Speaker 1: few years whether the game finally wakes up to what's
Speaker 1: going on and makes some changes.
Speaker 2: The Brain's creators are already implementing. Some Kid says they've
Speaker 2: come up with a new way to use the technology
Speaker 2: they developed to bring back some of the joy that's
Speaker 2: disappeared from online poker.
Speaker 1: They want to make a sort of friendlier gaming environment
Speaker 1: where the algorithm will match you against someone who plays
Speaker 1: similarly to you. So it's a bit like if you're
Speaker 1: a tennis player and you join your local tennis club,
Speaker 1: you don't go straight to the A league. You know
Speaker 1: you'll play in the D leagues against players with similar
Speaker 1: skill set to you early on. And the whole idea
Speaker 1: is to sort of target and newcomers, target people who
Speaker 1: play for fun, rather than having the whole system set
Speaker 1: up to reward people who do it for a job.
Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gura.
Speaker 2: This episode was produced by David Fox and Jessica Beck.
Speaker 2: It was edited by Stacey Annix Smith and Jeremy Kean.
Speaker 2: It was mixed by Alexander Dubois. It was fact check
Speaker 2: by alex Sagura. Our senior producer is Naomi Shaven. Our
Speaker 2: executive producer is Nicole Beemster Boor. Sage Bauman is Bloomberg's
Speaker 2: head of Podcasts. If you like this episode, make sure
Speaker 2: to subscribe and review The Big Take wherever you listen
Speaker 2: to podcasts. It helps people find the show. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: We'll be back next week.
Speaker 1: Hello,