US friendly card room releases ground breaking software upgrade
Americas Cardroom has upped the ante in the ongoing battle against cheating with its latest update that targets two of the biggest issues in online poker today – bots and the use of Real Time Assistance.
According to the online poker room and their security team, Americas Cardroom will jump ahead of the industry with a poker platform that makes it impossible for any computer program, or bot, to automatically read your screen. Without that ability, a bot or any other decision-making software program, cannot see the players cards so is effectively useless.
What are poker bots anyways?
Poker bots are software programs designed to execute a pre-planned poker strategy based on mathematics and player history. Where a heads-up display program like PokerTracker will show the betting history of a poker player, it is up to the individual player to decide whether to raise, call or fold based on that information. A bot automates all those decisions leaving the player to just sit back and watch it win…or lose.
While years ago these poker bots were rudimentary and often could be a source of profit for a decent player, recent advancements in bot technology have made it profitable once again for these bots to be run – much to the detriment of the regular recreational player.
Banned by virtually all sites, players who use bots – or any other program that offer real time assistance to a player making a decision – face having their accounts banned and bankrolls confiscated. Even with this risk, every few years allegations of collusion and different bot rings appear on poker forums. Generally, these come to light after the analysis of thousands (and millions) of hands by other poker players.
Turning to player experience to battle the machines
After taking criticism on a number of online forums about bot rings on their site, Americas Cardroom turned to Randy “Nanonoko” Lew and appointed him their Security Consultant and Gameplay Expert. Lew has the credentials and history to challenge this problem having often been accused of being a bot himself. Nanonoko regularly multi-tabled up to 24 tables on PokerStars earning over $2.5 million through volume at the low stakes. He famously made the Guinness Book of World Records for most online poker hands in an 8-hour period playing a total of 14,548 hands.
Lew brought his wealth of poker experience to the security team and in addition to being a resource the team can go to when investigating collusion, he explains in the video below how “dynamic pixilation” of the poker tables, differing each time a player sits down, will counter the bots’ ability to read the cards.
Americas Cardroom signs old school online pro
Security and software updates were not the only news coming out of Americas Cardroom last week as they also announced the signing of their newest team pro, Jon Van Fleet. The New York City native, who plays online under the screenname apestyles, joins recent signing 2003 World Series of Poker Main Event champion Chris Moneymaker on an expanding pro roster. It comes at a time when many other sites are cutting back on their endorsements and sponsored pros.
Van Fleet has been a fixture in the poker scene for 15 years. Known as a fierce tournament grinder, he rose to a career high third place on the Pocketfives global rankings list in 2007. Unlike many from those early days, Van Fleet continues to grind online and took down his biggest tournament win in 2017 banking just over a $1 million in the $5300 buy-in partypoker MILLIONS online tourney.
Although part of the original batch of online poker pros, apestyles has evolved with the times improving both his game and adapting to changing technologies. In teaming up with Americas Cardroom, Van Fleet will bring along his sizeable Twitch community who tune in most weekends to watch him stream the Sunday majors.
With Bitcoin as a deposit option, a growing player base and tournament schedule, Americas Cardroom appears to be making all the right moves in 2021.
