An IIT Kharagpur alumna and his colleague have designed a new software that can help stem fraud against poker websites, by doing what poker players wish they could - monitor an opponents tendencies while gambling.
London, Mar 6 : An IIT Kharagpur alumna and his colleague have designed a new software that can help stem fraud against poker websites, by doing what poker players wish they could - monitor an opponent's tendencies while gambling.
Web-based casinos have become the target of phishing, where players' identities are stolen through emails contending to be from the casino but originally belonging to cheaters trying to get hold of account details.
In case these fraudsters succeed, they sweep off the account by losing the victim's money gambling against themselves or accomplices. There are other crooks that use software agents, or bots, which automatically play to beat all the players usually other than the best players.
For averting such fraud, and ensure that a human and that too a correct human is playing, Venu Govindaraju of the University at Buffalo in New York and his colleague Roman Yampolskiy have written software that monitors how one plays.
This software would take an account of how much a player tends to bet, increases the bet, bets everything, or folds - giving up altogether.
Later this information is collected into a personalised measure - touted as the player's "gambling DNA" - that may be utilised to confirm their identity. Deviation of any kind, if any, would immediately be flagged up as suspicious.
Yampolskiy said that the software can authenticate players with 80 pct accuracy just after I hour of playing and that gets better the longer they play.
Though, such a technique may protect rank-and-file players, its might not work with the best players, doubts Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group in Edmonton, Canada.
"If you are predictable, you can be exploited. Strong players try not to be predictable," he said.
ANI