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Posts Tagged ‘zynga poker bots’

..not everyone in poker is human.

There are a lot of rumors and misconceptions about bots in Poker, ranging from how they work, to what exactly they are, and whether or not players should fear them.  Bots in competative games aren’t a new trend, they’ve been around for years dating back to artificial opponents in chess.  At its core, a poker bot is a simple program that tracks and translates the cards dealt into mathematical equations and acts (ie. raises, folds etc.) according the odds of each possible outcome.  But they’re far from a ‘set it and forget it’ program to rake in facebook poker chips.

Most experts in poker seem to agree that poker bots are only ever successful in Limit Texas holdem due to its primarily mathematical structure, and that they seem to lag behind human players in No Limit Texas Holdem due to the large “all in” variable that bots have trouble dealing with. But this doesn’t mean that they’re not out there being used in both real money and facebook texas holdem rooms to win poker chips.

No hard statistics exist about just how much bot play might be out there in poker rooms across the internet, obviously because such a thing is nearly impossible to gauge. Most real money rooms ban players accounts and freeze their funds if they’re caught using bots, because players feel that it might give others an unfair advantage to have a computer calculating odds for them. Poker pro Barry Goldstein has a different view on bots in texas holdem however:

“I believe poker sites should allow bots, but only on clearly defined tables. Players should know who the bots are, and have the choice if they would like to play them or not.”

But most regular folks feel that bots offer too much opportunity for collusion, where a bot operator might be running 4 or 5 bots at the same time, sharing hand knowledge between the bots to fleece unsuspecting players who wander into the room. Anyone who has ever played facebook texas holdem poker has probably come across a bot at least once or twice, especially in the mid level rooms. All the tell tale signs are there: mechanical better, never talks to other players, never buys any gifts or drinks, no friends on their friend list etc. The next time you’re grinding in the rooms trying to win some facebook poker chips keep in mind that the disciplined player across the table from you may not be a human at all.

Lately it seems that everyone and their mother is after a working facebook poker bot to help them win more facebook poker chips. But can a bot really play facebook texas holdem poker well enough to win you chips reliably on a regular basis? Are facebook poker bots really just a set it and forget it program that you can leave running overnight so you can wake up in the morning to 100 million facebook poker chips? Despite endless searching on poker forums, there doesn’t seem to be a straightforward answer.

Poker bots tend to fall into 1 of 3 main categories:

1) Independently programmed bots: These bots do exactly what the name implies, they read the cards you’re dealt and then automatically respond by clicking check, raise, fold etc. Their decisions are based upon a very detailed and complicated set of algorithms that must be programmed into them so that they have a clear set of instructions on what to do in each situation. These are usually very advanced and a person needs to have a good understanding of programming to be able to tweak and modify these types of bots to customize their levels of play.

2) Third party decision brain bots: These types of bots are created by third parties and usually consist of a pre-written odds calculators that instantly calculates the number of outs and percentages of winning for each hand. Some examples of these are Poker Inspector and Poker Android. Some of these programs feed you the odds of each hand and let you decide how many facebook poker chips to wager, while others make the decision for you.

3) Stand alone applications: These types of bots are hard to find, and are usually the most advanced because of the amount of variable they take into consideration, such as number of players, previous hand betting etc.

So do any of these facebook poker bots actually work well enough to consistently win facebook poker chips, or would you better off buying your cat a laptop to grind away at the poker tables all day? Judging by the information available online, unless you have a good understanding of programming or at least a very good understanding of computers in general, it’s going to be very difficult for anyone to use one of these programs because of the level of customization needed to obtain success. You will never find an out of the box poker bot that is ready to go with one click, there are always variables that need to be set to acclimate the program to the unique game that you are playing.

In other words, unless you know what you’re doing, you’d probably be better off buying your cat a laptop.