It amazes me that not many players or botters scout out the enemy front line as it is a very vital tool to have in your tool box, no matter the game you play or the limit you play it at.  So what is scouting the enemy? The answer is simple, examining your opponents and making notes.

Now as a poker player when we manually play games ourselves we do this naturally, we watch our opponents and how they play, the hands they play and any betting patterns we may pick up, but how does this relate to botting?

I highly suggest all Omaha botters scout the enemy, this can entail a number of tasks, the first is selecting the option to show current games being played and opening final tables from large field events, or sit and go's or cash games and tagging them.

For example, in Omaha Hi 9 Man Sit and Go's, when ever I am available I sit and I mark every player the SnG profile comes in contact with, I do this by marking the player with the colour purple, and enter text “Hi SnG x I”, if I see this player in another game I mark it as “Hi SnG x II” or “Hi SnG x III” so on and so forth.

Using a system like this allows you to pick out the very common players, and then allows you to study the plays it makes, its betting patterns and its response time, you can then also look up the players name and how many tables its playing and this information will tell you whether a game your going to play either A has to many bots in it or B has some very crafty players who most certainly have notes on you or C a bunch of players that are surely going to fork out all their money into your pockets.

The same goes for tournaments, I commonly mark Final tables or even the final two tables, if a player is already marked I would do it like this:

Hi SnG x IIII
Hi MTT x II
Hi MTT FT x I
Hi MTT F2T x 2

Obviously you can come up with your own system of tagging players, but do you now see why its so important to scout the enemy, no, its not to derail bots, yes you may discover some but that information is good for you when playing SnG games or cash games.

I realise a lot of members set it up to auto register and play out while they sleep or are at work, but there is nothing stopping you from scanning the log files and searching to see how many names played the same games you did; in turn you can then look up the player on fulltilt and tag him with your system or marking players.

Finally, if you yourself don't want to be tagged and attacked, I highly suggest switching up your play, play a good amount of games that your profiles play and try and get into games with the players that play your profiles and make moves your profile wouldn't normally do, this will throw off other players tagging systems or note taking systems; and trust me, doing both of the above will help your roll out in the long run.

Remember, scout out your enemy, and switch up your playing styles.

Until next time,

Royal