A5 Labs Aims to Fight Poker Cheaters Across Platforms
Online poker has been around for over 20 years and poker providers have always had to deal with various forms of fraud. Apart from the super-user scandals once surrounding Ultimate and Absolute Bet where the fraud came from within the company, fraud attempts almost always come from the users. A5 Labs, a California-based company now suggests how poker operators can combat this fraud using NFTs.
The hottest topics regarding online poker cheats right now are the use of bots, real-time analytics using computationally intensive software, ghosting, and collusion. A software pioneer from Silicon Valley now wants to counter these cheating attempts with modern technology. A5 Labs is the name of the software company and it develops AI-driven software that verifies the integrity of games. The company is calling on online poker providers to strengthen existing safeguards. More security, transparency and modern technologies are needed to ensure the safety and integrity of online poker in the future.
The Most Common Cheating Methods in Online Poker at the Moment
Use of poker bots: A poker bot is a piece of software that is able to imitate a player at an online poker table. Using mined data and based on game theory and machine learning, such a bot automatically makes decisions and acts without human supervision. Over the course of the last few years, bot networks have been discovered several times at various poker providers. For almost a decade, bots have had sufficient computing power to beat average human players.
Real-Time Analysis (RTA): When a player uses RTA, he receives real-time advice from software during the game. This software usually relies on a database of solutions generated by a so-called GTO solver. GTO means Game Theory Optimal. Given the cards, the board and the previous actions, the software finds the best move and offers support against all opponents.
Ghosting: Ghosting is when a player does not make his own decisions but is advised by another player during the game. This occasionally happens when a mediocre player reaches the finals of a major online tournament and consults a coach at the final table. Ghosting is generally not allowed and is usually recognizable by a sudden drastic change in the way someone plays.
Collusion: When two players engage in collusion, they coordinate their actions with each other and use the additional information to their advantage. A simple example of collusion is exchanging information of the players' hole cards. If you know the cards of another player at the table, you can calculate your chances more accurately and have better estimates of the actions of other players.
How can A5 Labs Help Fight Online Poker Fraud?
A5 Labs is a company that uses artificial intelligence to help companies solve security problems. Online poker sites have huge databases with enormous amounts of information about both individual players and entire groups of players. It is possible to use this data to identify so-called "bad actors" (i.e. potential cheaters). The company has recently published a paper revealing how to find intelligent ways to sift through poker provider data for signs of cheating.
One very new concept in the paper is the idea of what A5 Labs calls a "holistic platform solution." In this, a player's identity is linked to an NFT (Non-Fungible Token). Using this NFT, which can act as an avatar, for example, it would be possible for a player to play on different platforms and remain anonymous, but it would still be possible for operators to exchange security-related information with each other about the player. The use of NFTs to identify players could - according to A5 Labs - also entail that lengthy verification processes become a thing of the past. Once verified via an NFT with one provider, players could immediately play with the same NFT on all other poker sites without the need to send their proof of identification a second time.
Risk profiles of players can be linked to NFTs, similar to a check for credit. In this way, players could build their reputation on each site simultaneously. A5 Labs focused on the opportunities NFTs offer for online poker security in a comprehensive paper for the Future of Online Poker. The first provider to use NFTs is currently WPT Global, a licensed partner of the World Poker Tour. WPT Global allows players to purchase NFT avatars that are uniquely assigned to the player through their Poker Heroes Club. Currently, players only get a few minor benefits from having an NFT avatar, but A5 Labs shows how this technology could shape the online poker landscape in the future if all providers pull together.
You can read the entire paper here: » A5 Labs white paper: Advanced Technologies for Secure, Fair and Fun Online Poker (Englisch)
