PostHeaderIcon Are you playing against a bot in poker?

..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.

12 Responses to “Are you playing against a bot in poker?”

  • jake says:

    is there any way to mess with these bots in poker when we see them? like something to make them log off or reset or whatever??

  • Teeder says:

    Are there really bits like this for poker? Where can I get them there’s a ton of sites advertising for them but I have a feeling most of them are viruses, does anyone know of any legit ones?

  • terrence says:

    how does a bot read cards in poker though, i dont understand that part?? can someone explain how they turn images into 0s and 1s?

  • chino says:

    I have trained a pokter BOT before and let me tell you its no easy task, but it is possible to do in limit texas holdem poker

  • tanveer says:

    my friend plays real money games and said you can easily train the bots they use on party poker for facebook poker

  • Ante says:

    terrence – most bots tend to take a picture of the screen and look for certain pixels at certain positions in that picture. A red pixel at a certain point might not appear in any other card than the ace of diamonds for example.

    While the technical side of grabbing cards isn’t incredibly difficult, getting a bot to play a decent game is a more difficult challenge. Remember, unless your bot is capable of winning in the long run then all its going to do is automatically lose your money. There’s few stories of bot players making millions and plenty of players’ bots getting detected and forfeiting their funds as a result. It may be that the only people making money are those who sell bot software. I’d be interested to hear from anyone running a profitable bot.

  • della says:

    i lost 100 million + facebook poker chips by using a facebook poker bot, be careful about the programs you rely on when playing facebook poker

  • jenny says:

    I KNEW IT!!! those BASTARD bots stole my facebook poker chips damnit!

  • FraKtuL says:

    I’ve been in a room with 3 players whom I suspected were bots. They would keep raising each other before the flop as long as I would call. If I folded, then they would check- then one of them would make a large raise after the flop and the others would fold. This happened for 10 hands in a row before I got out of there. They didn’t chat, send gifts, or respond to anything I typed. Just thought I would put this out there in case others have noticed the same thing happening to them.

  • Texas Holdem Poker.

    Being Banned, robbed of your hundreds of millions of chips, often with no explanation. No workable recourse.

    Think about it… our prisons are full of wrongly convicted, framed individuals, banned from society by their bad luck.

    Surely one can find another poker app, as I have, easily. The 200,000,000 chips one has ‘lost’ really don’t exist and, if you purchased them rather than having won them, consider the price as a parking ticket for not finding out about this type of ‘punishment’ BEFORE indulging in this type of past time UNTIL AFTER you have been ‘injured’ … OH, The Horror! And instead of whining and doing the poor, poor, pitiful me routine use your computer abilities to warn others of the way you were ‘mistreated’ -

    Do you know why you hadn’t heard about this prior to experiencing it?

    Simple: ALL of the whiners you know weren’t interested in helping you avoid the same thing, just like you, they did NOTHING constructive. They, like you, get their daily ‘Juice’, ‘Fix’ ‘Dose’ from seeking sympathy from their probably bored-out-of-their-minds family, friends, bartender, barber, etc. so, please, get off the cross, we need the wood!

  • Lol seriously says:

    Lol this website is so fishy.

    Who is paying you to make these poorly written articles that attempt to brainwash us with failing attempt at misdirection?

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