Poker Bots

dowie

dowie

dowie

Caporegime
Joined
29 Jan 2008
Posts
59,186
Have started to pick up an interest in poker after reading through a few threads on here, especially the one a while back about someone's trip to vegas (quite fancy going myself so am interested in getting plenty of practice in).

Recently downloaded the texas hold em app for the IPhone just for a bit of fun and am now looking at playing for low stakes online and also a pub next to my office which runs a weekly play for fun type poker night (which apparently is taken seriously by players unlike the online free play games).

One thing which I haven't made my mind up about is the existence of poker bots. On one hand I want to learn the game so don't really have much interest in using one though don't like the thought of people out there 'cheating'. On the other hand simply reading a poker book (I recently bought a copy of David Sklansky) and learning (or keeping for reference) tables of hand rankings is a rudimentary aid of some description so I guess a bot is simply a more sophisticated aid. If they can't see your hand then it isn't necessarily cheating I guess? Not sure what to make of it tbh...
 
There are programs people use to aid them while playing. Things like Poker Tracker will give save various stats on your opponents as you play, giving you an idea of how tight/loose they are or how passive/aggressive they are playing. The majority of poker sites allow you to use this type of software.

If you're referring to actual botting programs (a computer playing by itself) then I believe there are actually a few out there in development but aren't anything to worry about atm imo.
 
No need what so ever to worry about automated players in online cash games imo, especially at the lower end of the blinds, far far far too many random players for a bot to get any real decent player info from to make a difference. At best it would be playing the percentages based on stats like what PT gives you.
 
Morba said:
No need what so ever to worry about automated players in online cash games imo, especially at the lower end of the blinds, far far far too many random players for a bot to get any real decent player info from to make a difference. At best it would be playing the percentages based on stats like what PT gives you.
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The average micro stakes player is so bad I reckon you could make tons of money using a pretty simple bot playing tight and straightforward, you wouldn't even need to know how each player plays. Just assign a starting hand range and a way of playing each street depending on the board texture.

Maybe in a few years it might be something to seriously worry about.
 
You dont need to worry about bots playing micro stakes, theres so many fish that even if there were any, they wouldn't harm your win rate. Any bots playing mid-high stakes are sussed out pretty quickly if their win rates are abnormally higher than the best players who play those stakes.

There were a couple of scandals on Absolute Poker and Ultimate Bet where superuser accounts were created. They were found out and myself and many others were refunded any money lost to the cheats.
 
If you mean things like Texas Calculatem which show you good hands to play - these are a waste of time and won't help you learn the game.

As for automated bots, these are very rare and the sites have all sorts of things to stop them working. For more look on 2+2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com
 
The problem with Bots is they don't actually know how to play very well. As soon as you start to play a reasonably good game you will out-play them.
 
Poker Tracker is what everyone seems to use. It mines data on your opponents and offers you a breakdown on all their tendancies. At first I was like I refuse to depend on some piece of software as a crutch, but soon you'll discover that it's really awesome and almost every semi-serious player uses it (for good reason). It's so great to be playing 4 tables at once and be able to instantly know who the nit is that you can steal blinds from all day, and who the station is that u can take to valuetown with top pair.

As far as bots go I challenge someone to invent a bot that is going to do anything other than loose money at my table! The only thing I believe you can bot effectively is heads up limit holdem (and the only place I've heard this actually being used is in some experiment), because there are way less variables. In 6 max no limit you dont stand a chance.
 
da_mic_1530 said:
any suggestions for a very low states online game of hold-em?

Looking for a reputable site though:)
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Any of the big ones will be fine.
pokerstars / UB / i wont mention the other one as I have an irrational hatred for it, but it might be something to do with partying!
 
If Ultimate Bet are cheating, I am sure that they have better things to do than to to cheat than the microstakes players out of their $7.43 bankrolls :).

Saying that, Pokerstars is better. More traffic = more terrible players to take money from. Plus, their customer support is the best.
 
my final year project was a poker bot (there is actually quite a lot of academic interest in poker bots and game theory in general), there's a server around somewhere that has quite a few test bots playing which humans can join as well if you want to see how they play.

Mostly they're not very good.
 
I wouldn't worry about bots for the most part. If you want a level playing field then you only need to use holdem manager or pokertracker or one of the other HUD+hand database software packages to have all of the same information that is available to everyone else.

The only bot that would really be worrying is one that could perform icm calculations in real-time since it would just destroy the sit & go tourneys.
 
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