Online Poker Partner Rob Yong Polls Public On New Security MeasureUK Casino Owner Tinkers With Idea Of Facial Recognition Software For partypoker |
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With the recent passage of the Michigan online gambling bill, online poker is legal and regulated in six states.
Currently, American sites locate IP addresses and geolocate cell phones linked to a player’s account to validate that its player pool is filled with players who are within the borders of those legal states and eligible to play. Owner of U.K. casino Dusk Till Dawn and partypoker partner Rob Yong wants to take security measures at his site a step further on his own site.
I am going to ask @partypoker to implement Facial Recognition on Sign in [+ randomly when ITM/Final Tables + Higher Stakes Cash Games to 1) stop cheaters/bots opening/buying new accounts 2) stop multi – accounting 3] Stop ghosting – Do you support this ?
— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) January 30, 2020
Yong, a regular in some of the biggest cash games on the planet, is tinkering with the idea of adding facial recognition software to partypoker’s security measures in an effort to the use of bots, multi-accounting, and ghosting on the site. All three practices have plagued the online poker community in some way since its explosion in 2003.
He tweeted a poll Wednesday afternoon asking his 24,600 followers, most of which are likely poker players if they would support the measure. An overwhelming majority liked the idea. Of the 5,460 votes in the poll, a whopping 84.6 percent support the measure.
Yong specified that the facial recognition software would be used when a player is signing into their account, as well as at random points in the money of a tournament, at the final table and whenever playing high-stakes cash games.
High-stakes pro and online legend Faraz Jaka loved the idea but voiced concern in the thread about the possibility of scaring new players away from the site.
“Don’t you think new customers are the MOST savvy for Facial Recognition security?” responded Yong. “I think we think some new players are dumb, they probably are way more tech literate than us!”
World Poker Tour champion Dylan Linde expressed concerns about the technology not working correctly and booting people from a tournament. Yong put those concerns to rest.
“Yes, I use same tech in another business and it’s more reliable than signing in manually,” said Yong.
When one commenter asked what would happen if a player didn’t have a webcam, Yong gave him the unfortunate news that they would have to go out and purchase that technology.
Erm not going to be able sign in
— Rob Yong (@rob_yong_) January 30, 2020
During the online poker boom, there were several cheating scandals that involved ghosting and multi-accounting in high-stakes tournaments. Ghosting is a practice where a player goes deep in a tournament and then his account is taken over by a presumedly better player when there is more money on the line.
Multi-accounting is exactly what it sounds like. It is where one player has more than one account to his name and gains an edge from the fact that his opponents are under the assumption they are playing against someone else.
Bots, on the other hand, have become a problem in the more modern era of online poker. As bots become more advanced and tougher to beat, those bots will quickly win money from its human opponents and dry up the ecosystem of an online site.
With the current landscape, Yong noted that bots are easily spotted, but tough to eradicate from sites.
“Poker Bots are like winning sports bettors,” said Yong. “Accounts get closed, pretty easy to catch, but open another account.”
In 2015, a group of top poker pros, including Doug Polk, battled “Claudico,” a poker bot developed by faculty and staff at Carnegie Mellon University, for 60,000 hands of heads-up no-limit hold’em. The pros defeated the bot, but two years later, Carnegie Mellon developed another one, “Libratus.” This time, over a 120,000-hand sample, artificial intelligence reigned supreme against Jason Les, Dong Kim, Jimmy Chou, and Daniel McAulay.
According to local news outlets, Australia’s Department of Home affairs kicked around this same idea late last year. It wanted to make facial recognition software mandatory for anybody signing into an online gambling site, but it was met with pushback from privacy advocates.
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