HoldemNation.com: What are PokerBots?

Poker Bots

** Beware of ANY site that tells you that you can make a lot of money fast with their poker bot. By definition, poker is a game of incomplete information. This makes it very difficult for bots to play against humans, especially in No Limit. Some researchers at the University of Toronto have developed a world class heads up no limit bot (called Poki) after many years of research. However, even this bot has difficulty playing multiple opponents at a single table!

Most bots that you can purchase require that YOU do the programming of rules for how the bot will behave in certain situations. (Some will only be selling you instructions on HOW to build a bot, and not a bot itself.) If you do any digging around at all, you will see that most posts by people who have purchased these bots will tell you that it took them MONTHS to get a bot to the point where it will play break even poker. Very few people (who aren't trying to sell you one) will claim that their bot plays winning poker on any significant level. In the end, if you are good enough to play winning poker, that's where you should spend your time...NOT trying to develop a bot. That said, here is some background about bots and the the ongoing discussion about whether they are good for online poker or not.

Poker Bots are programs that have been programmed to play poker according to a given set of rules. Poker Bots get mixed reviews. Some advanced players welcome the chance to play them, as their predictability makes them an easy target once spotted. Other players are strongly opposed to them, and believe that bots do the most damage to new players (who may not be playing according to the odds of poker) making it difficult for experienced players to find easy games. (Because new players are beaten over time by the bots as well as the experienced players, they dry up quickly.) In other words, the experienced players don't want to share the fish.

To avoid any controversy, they are simply banned on most poker sites. Rarely, we come across a player who appears to be a poker bot that has not yet been detected by Party Poker and suspended. We will list those players here.

There is no way to be 100% certain that these are bots, but for each player in the list below, we will include why we think they are a bot. If you spot one, it's up to you as to whether or not you sit and try to beat it. If you suspect a player is a bot, it is advisable to send an email to the poker site and put up a post of the player's handle on one of the more popular forums. The advanced players there will probably follow it around, and it can usually be a fun event watching everyone crack jokes about the bot.

saabpo: This player was found at the $20 NL Sit-n-Go tournaments on Party Poker. It can be characterized as a 'pusher bot'. It's only move is to fold or move all-in preflop. Decisions appear to be based on the starting hand and the level of the tourney. It's starting hand requirements gradually reduce as the tourney levels increase. The strongest indicator that this is a poker bot is in the standard amount of time it takes for it to make its preflop decision. It folds in 17 ticks of the yellow action arrow, and pushes in at 23 ticks of the action arrow. Presumably, this could be randomized which would make it harder to identify. This poker bot is rare in that it is difficult to program a sound NL strategy into a poker bot. As uncommon as they are, if you ever see one, it will probably be in a limit game where the math makes decision making much more straight forward.

Researchers at the University of Alberta have been working on developing a poker AI that can play no limit for over 12 years. However, they've only been able to develop one that plays well heads up.

You should be warned that if you attempt to use a Poker Bot at most poker sites and they find out, your account and all money in it are frozen and taken away. It is a serious violation of the terms of use for these sites.