Anti-fraud innovation monitors playing patterns to form a 'Player DNA'


2008-03-05

Anti-fraud innovation monitors playing patterns to form a 'Player DNA'

Poker players try to read the faces of their opponents - now software is about to do something similar in a bid to stem fraud against poker websites, reports the publication New Scientist Tech this week.

Web-based casinos and poker rooms can be the target for phishing attacks in which attempts are made to steal players' identities through emails purporting to be from the casino but actually from fraudsters trying to obtain account details.

If successful, the criminals then empty the player's account by losing the victim's money gambling against themselves or accomplices, pretending to be the player. Other crooks use software agents, or bots, which play automatically, often beating all but the best players.

To ensure a human, and the correct human at that, is playing, Roman Yampolskiy of the University at Buffalo in New York and his colleague Dr. Venu Govindaraju have written software that monitors how members of gambling websites play. It catalogues how often and how much a player tends to bet; increases the bet; bets everything or folds. This information is bundled up into a personalised measure - the player's "gambling DNA" - that can then be used to confirm identity.

Any deviation from that behaviour is flagged as suspicious for further investigation. After just an hour of play, Yampolskiy claims, the software can authenticate players with 80 percent accuracy - and that becomes more precise the longer they play.

While such a scheme could protect rank-and-file players, Professor Jonathan Schaeffer of the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group in Edmonton, Canada, who has done some work on poker playing bots himself doubts it would work with the top players. "If you are predictable, you can be exploited," he says. "Strong players try not to be predictable."