1. Andrew DePriest 4/12/2011 CSCE 390 – 001 Professional Issues in Computer Science and Engineering (Article found in the March 14, 2011 edition of ACM TechNews, originally published in New York Times) Article: “Poker Bots Invade Online Gaming” By: Gabriel Dance - March 13, 2011

2. The Problem An increasing number of online poker “players” are bots While not a new problem, recently skill has gone up Openly sold from sites like “Shanky Technologies” Used to make large amounts of money easily  E.g. When PokerStars was tipped off, they found 10 bots, which had won more than $57,000 that they returned to players Using bots against humans violates the ACM Code of Ethics section 1.4 – Be fair and take action not to discriminate

3. Ethical Decision-Making Process Ethical Issue Bots used to “cheat” - able to play all the time, even when player is not active, to make more money Stakeholders Poker companies – want maximized revenue, and to give human players the best experience Bot sellers – want to continue selling software for profit Human players – want a fair game

4. 3 possible solutions Bot sellers stop selling bots (this would never happen, even if it was illegal) Poker companies stop doing poker online Pretty much a bad choice for everyone involved Have a dedicated section of online poker for bots to play against other bots Defeats the “easy win” of bots vs. humans Allows for the bots' games to be based on skill through editing the programming of the a.i.

5. Conclusion I think the 3 rd proposed solution is a pragmatic, reasonable, and fair way to solve the problem. Granted, some people will still try to cheat, if there is a section for bots, it should reduce the amount of them. And various other anti-bot implementations could be used in the human vs. human games.