Joey Ingram released a new episode of his Poker Life on Monday. The episode, titled The War on AI Bots: Exclusive Interview with Poker's Elite Bot Hunters, features an extended conversation between Ingram and A5 Labs founders John Andress and Thanh Tran.
A5 Labs provides software security solutions to a number of online gaming operators, including ClubWPT Gold and WPT Global. As core members of the A5 Labs team, both Andress and Tran bring first-hand experience and knowledge to the discussion. While the episode was filmed during the WPT World Championship in December of 2024, Ingram has released it today as part of a planned run of content coming in the near future.
Ingram digs in on online security
Ingram starts the conversation by explaining his personal desire to understand the landscape of online poker security in the wake of a number of recent controversies.
"One topic I know has been very interesting to me this year is the state of poker security," Ingram began. "With all the big news that's come out — that crazy article that was in Bloomberg — with all the discussion around solvers at the World Series of Poker, people on the rail, people are using the laptop, there's the guy with the Neuralink, there's AI agents. There's all this different stuff out there, so I've been wanting to get some real people on who know about the poker security side of things, who know about battling AI and battling bots."
Andress and Tran perfectly fit the profile of interviewee Ingram wanted and he described the two of them as, "professional bot hunters." After a brief background overview of his two guests, Ingram jumps into the hot-button issues.
"In terms of stopping cheating in online poker — collusion, bots, RTA — how have the challenges changed in 2024?" Ingram inquired. "What is it like to try to defend the game against those kind of things?"
"Where do you want to start?" Andress replied. "There's a lot of nuance to the different problems."
And then, they dig into the nuance. Over the next hour or so, Andress and Tran field questions from Ingram on a variety of key issues plaguing the online poker environment. Along the way, they clarify how A5 Labs and its software can help online operators combat these growing concerns.
It's an in-depth conversation with a runtime to match, but it's also one that all online players — whether you're a regular or recreational — should listen to.
Lead photo courtesy of World Poker Tour.
