What is a Poker Bot?

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The Invasion of the Poker Bots

What It Is

“Poker Bot” is short for Poker Robot. As of Friday, September 14, 2007, Google had indexed nearly 2.5 million mentions of this cute online playing tool.

I use “cute” in a derisive sense here. Big deal, intelligent bots are nothing new. Google uses them to visit and index web sites. RPG players have long employed bots to play their high-level characters on autopilot when they needed to eat, go on a date or just get on with real life.

From the Eighties onward, the sheer power of a computer to calculate variations upon variations many moves ahead has spelled the downfall of human opponents, at least all those below world champion class, in backgammon, checkers, chess and now poker. Just last July, 2004 World Poker Invitational Phil Laak and Ali Eslami went head-to-head against the University of Alberta’s Polaris, programmed by an even dozen teachers. The final score after thousands of hands: Humans 5 series, Polaris 3.

How it works:

The user installs the poker bot on his computer, logs on to his favorite online casino, joins a table and then activates the program. Many types can be turned on and off at will. This can be useful to, for instance, relieve the tedium of folding hand after hand pre-flop until one finally draws worthwhile pocket cards.

In many cases poker bots are a free download from third parties who get a kick out of being able to beat the “system”, in this case the online “house”. Others are commercial. Mostly, they work straight out of the box. And then there’s one that requires some very extensive C programming by the interested end-user.

By one estimate, as many as one in 12 online players is a bot. This statistic has been bandied about so much it has assumed the status of an urban legend. Perhaps the original, factual source quoted something lower or higher. I would not mind being proven wrong just so we can discuss the pro’s and con’s of poker bots in the Acehero.com Forum.

Benefits and Trade-Off’s

Alright, let’s face it: many of us would grab a playing aid or poker bot if we thought it would increase our chances of winning and if we could get away with it. Everybody loves a winner. But when playing online using solely native skill and guts, it rankles somehow that somebody at the table may be employing a a poker bot to get an edge over YOU.

But it is downright cheating when a program (that shall remain unnamed here) permits other players who have the program to collude on a game of Texas Hold ‘Em. This may be the reason why Party Poker is very strict about forbidding bots. The way they enforce this is to include spyware in the playing software they provide. Makes you wonder what other mischief the spyware is up to while sitting quietly on your hard disk.

Is It a Threat to You?

Frankly, I doubt it.

1st: Technology cannot create a computer that can reason and think as well as the very best poker players. While AI is getting better year by year, most playing programs are at their best in rules-based action. Unlike chess, poker frequently requires judgment calls. And the only way to do this is to cull the mind of a World Champion.

2nd: I do not see a lot of average players complaining, so obviously above-average players are still making a good living from poker rooms.

Avoidance:

• Play in a reputable poker room. We can help you with that, use our search functions to stay with sites that fence out bots.

• Talk to the player once a while to make sure the other side is man and not machine.

• Improve your skill! The poker bot might seem a formidable opponent but, given the size of PC downloads, widely available poker bots just do not pack the processing power of the Polaris big iron. Poker is not just a game of probability calculations, it also involves psychology and amorphous decisions.

We will probably conduct an experiment ourselves to determine whether a poker bot can possibly profit an amateur or semi-pro in the long run.

At Acehero.com, quite possibly the only gambling forum in the world that truly rewards our members for their valued opinions, our discussion threads cover discoveries about winning play and the better poker rooms online that offer players a fair shake.