Sounds a bit scary this, doesn’t it?
We know there are millions of bot accounts on Twitter, posting nasty comments to try and push the agenda of a country or movement or whatever it may be, but what about in bingo?
The idea of bots on online bingo sites has been around for over 10 years now, with some players not trusting the online game at all, convinced the whole thing is a scam.
In a real bingo hall you can actually see the winner as they win so you know it is not a scam (unless Gladys is a blooming brilliant actress and also a master of disguise!), but online you have no idea who is behind the names that pop up.
xoKiwiGirlox could be a 60 year old dude for all you know, and BrummieJeff66 could in fact be your next door neighbour, Maureen, impersonating a bloke.
At this point, some of you might be wondering what on earth we are going on about, so lets just give you a really quick idea of what a bot is and why they exist.
What is a Bot?
A bot is a sort of computer code that behaves like a person and simulates human activity. A bot can be created to do tasks very quickly and in great numbers too, so they are very useful.
Bots can also be good or bad, so although we hear more about the bad ones, there are loads of good ones too.
For example, Google uses bots to crawl the web and improve search engine results, and we bet you use Google every day without worrying about it.
However, bots can also be created to cause harm, like those used on Twitter in Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. Thousands of bots created and tweeted from fake accounts to swamp Twitter in pro Trump and anti Hillary rhetoric.
They can also steal content from a website and jumble it about a bit to create a brand new website doing the same thing in seconds, in order to steal business from genuine content creators.
None of these examples are relevant to bingo of course, but hopefully you have a better idea of what a bot is now.
Now, what do bots have to do with online bingo?
Why Would a Bingo Site Use Bots?
So, if a bingo site isn’t planning on running for the presidency of the United States or stealing another business’s web content, what would they use bots for?
Well, if we look at online poker, where bots have been an issue in the past, they were used by players to play 24 hours a day (because bots don’t need to sleep) and use mathematics to decide what decisions to make based on the hand they had.
They weren’t always that amazing at winning the game, but they did tend to come out in profit, and because they could be set to play all the time and in great numbers, they made money for the people who created them.
Bingo is a game of chance, so bots couldn’t be used in quite the same way. They could be used to fill a bingo room and buy loads of tickets to give the creator more chance than everybody else, but it still wouldn’t be worth it because the prize would likely not cover the expenses over time.
However, an unscrupulous bingo site could populate their room with bots so that they end up winning their own games, while the few real players in the room are simply handing over their money with no chance of winning and are none the wiser.
You wouldn’t get the likes of Mecca or Foxy doing that though, so as long as you stick to well known and UKGC regulated sites you are safe from being conned.
One thing a legitimate site could potentially do, is use bots to make rooms look busier than they are.
These bots would not actually be playing the game, so they wouldn’t impact your chances of winning, but they would sit there looking like a real player, and might even be able to comment in the chat box.
The purpose of a bot doing this would be to make the real players feel luckier when they win, and feel like they are having a more socially enjoyable experience than they actually are.
Let’s be very clear here though, this is nothing but speculation on our part, we aren’t saying that this does or doesn’t go on, we are just saying that it probably could if an operator wanted it to.
How to Tell if Your Bingo Site Uses Bots
You know what? It almost certainly does.
You know those automatic chat notifications that say things like “Congratulations to our winner!! BingoSwingoLisaxxx” – that is a bot. One of the good bots we mentioned earlier.
It carries out the task of announcing winners using information it takes from the game itself, which means the human chat facilitators can concentrate on chat games and engagement and the like.
That said, these bots have caused problems in the past by announcing the winner too early! You see, the game runs using an RNG so the winner is actually decided right at the start; all the rest of it, the drawing of the balls and the marking off numbers, is just theatre.
So a chat bot announcing the winner too early can and has made people suspect foul play, but in fact it’s just a glitch with the announcement, not the game itself, which remains fair and random.
If you mean the nasty bots though, well, you can’t really be sure one way or the other, although you don’t need to worry about it so long as you are playing at a well known licensed and regulated site.
The very worst that could happen is that you think you are playing in a room with 200 people when in actuality there are only 35, for instance.
If, however, you are playing at some dodgy backwater site then they could technically be taking you for a ride, so maybe have a think about which bingo site gets your business.
While you can’t be 100% certain if there are bots making up the numbers in your bingo room, you can perhaps make assumptions based on the amount of chat going on in the room.
A room that is supposedly very busy but in which no one is talking might make you think twice about how many of them are real paying customers.