I’ve spent years developing poker AI, and sometimes it feels like I’ve gone full circle. From the early days, when poker was thought to be too “human” for machines to master, to today, where bots can bluff better than most humans, I’ve seen the evolution firsthand. And yet, there’s still a part of me that chuckles at the irony of it all. It’s poker, the ultimate psychological game, getting done with algorithms and code. So, how did we get here? And what does that say about the game?

Having come initially into poker AI research, I really did think it impossible that one could ever hope to teach a machine to read between the lines-to sense fear or confidence behind a bet.

But with refinement in technology came refinement in how to simulate human-like decision-making, and poker bots suddenly weren’t so much curiosities but capable of outsmarting some of the best players of the game. It was no longer about pure hard force or even calculation of odds but was all about adapting, learning, and yes, bluffing.

There’s something almost comical about it. We, humans, have spent centuries mastering games like poker, believing that the art of reading someone’s “tell” was an uncrackable code. Now, my poker bot doesn’t just analyze your betting patterns; it knows when you’re sweating over that decision to raise or fold. It’s like watching someone run straight into a brick wall they didn’t know was there.

But here’s the amazing part: these bots don’t just keep to their circle and beat on amateurs. They play against pros. The best poker AI is all about not memorizing hands or running them through some kind of formula, but evolving-learning in real-time, countering strategies willy-nilly. The bot is always a few steps ahead, calculating what not only you are likely to do but what you think it’s going to do. It’s the perfect poker cheat without really breaking any rules.

Not to mention poker machine learning. What at one time required laborious programming now gets handled through algorithms of learning from experience. Every played hand fed the machine and taught it how to exploit the weaknesses, find the patterns, and adapt to any playing style. It was obvious that this bot learned more quickly than any human ever would-have made each game a lesson and each opponent a data point.

Of course, not everyone is thrilled about this. There’s a fair share of players who see poker AI software as the death of the game. They claim it removes the human element—the sweat, the nerves, the gut instincts. And while they might be right, I’d argue it’s just the next step in poker’s evolution. Yes, AI has changed the game, but isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Change, adapt, improve?

It’s no longer about who’s on the better hand. Poker AI gave way to an entirely new kind of strategy-a deeper layer of mind games. The bot isn’t just tabulating probabilities; it’s simulating human capriciousness, learning to bluff, and stretching the limits of what we once thought machines could never pull off. It’s like teaching a dog to play chess-and then watching it beat you at your own game. You may, however, be pondering whether there is left any future for the human players-after all, how would you compete with something which never tires, never gets emotional, and does not make guesses? Well, it’s not all bad news. It’s, as a matter of fact, the beauty of poker that it is so unforeseeable; while AI poker bots really know to make use of the pattern, they are still very much vulnerable to creativity.

But one daring, unexpected move-something illogical on every count-can just send the best bot into a tizzy. For now, at least.

But come on, folks-things are bridging up: the gap between man and machine gets thinner by the day. Having developed poker AI strategies myself, it has been incredible to see just how fast such systems can improve. Things that took several years and lots of trial and error now take several weeks, sometimes days. And with further advances in technologies, even more bots will come forth that will not only play poker but master it in ways we can’t fathom.

So where does that leave us? Tearing up the white flag and letting the machines do their thing? Perhaps. Then again, perhaps not. There’s still something a little magical about sitting down at a table, staring an opponent in the face, and making a bet. AI may have the numbers on its side, but at least we still have the edge in unpredictability. At least, that is what I like to remind myself. In fact, poker AI development is here to stay, and the game is constantly changing. The question cannot be if AI is going to conquer poker-it has already in most ways. Instead, it becomes a situation of: How do we now, in turn, as players, adapt to this new reality-are we going to go with the flow with the bots, learn from them, and take some of their strategies in order to implement and improve our game?

Or are we digging in our heels and trying to make poker a resolutely human game?

My answer, pretty straightforward, would be that the future of poker is not in fighting the AI but learning from its powers. Be it with poker AI training tools or bots offering new challenges that make us think deeper, AI is going to push us toward evolution. And that’s a good thing-the game gets more complex, more challenging, and in the long run, more rewarding.

So, the next time you sit down to play, keep in mind: you are not playing against the person across the table but are competing against years of research, dozens of lines of code, and a machine that outsmarted you at your very own game. But do not worry about that. It only makes the win all the more sweet. After all, it’s a game of the mind. And yes, maybe the bots win this battle, but no reason for us humans to give up.

There was a time when poker was about reading people, about eye contact, and-about being honest-trying to make sure that guy across the table had absolutely no idea you were bluffing. Actually, I remember those days. As a matter of fact, they are not exactly behind our backs, but then a new player entered the game-without eyes to meet, nerves to crack, or emotions to manipulate. Of course, I’m referring to poker AI.

To the mathematician and AI developer in me, relationships with poker have been a question of numbers, less with nerves. Of course, it is very exciting to conduct a well-conducted bluff, but curiously, what really caught my attention was to see the many ways AI began reshaping poker. Let me make one thing very clear from the start: Poker AI is not about pattern recognition, nor about weighing probabilities, or whatever other technique; it’s about teaching machines to “feel” the game in ways that sometimes let them outdo our intuition.

At the very outset of my research on poker AI, even the very concept of a bot bluffing sounded too outlandish to hold any credibility. How could a machine that is all about cold calculation learn to bluff? Consequently, it would seem that bluffing is not some mystical human skill but rather a calculated risk, an area in which AI is good. It would not be long before AI also mastered this particular aspect of the game. Now we have bots playing, outsmarting many pros-for example, the famous case where Pluribus outsmarted five professional top players and won. The bottom line was that it did not win out by out-calculating them; instead, it won out by out-bluffing them. Machines learning to lie-something almost fascinating and terrifying at the same time.

It seems that the technology has developed incredibly quick, being a developer of poker bots and AI strategies for several years. Let’s just say early poker bots were laughably terrible: they would make the same predictable moves over and over, falling into patterns even an amateur could exploit. Then something flipped, and machine learning got sophisticated in poker. The algorithms will consider the game-thousands of them-and learn from their mistakes a lot quicker than any human ever could.

The challenge in the development of poker AIs was no longer in how to have it win but finding one which could think like a human-even better, think differently enough to beat humans.

I remember at first, any of my poker bots played a pro, I just didn’t really expect that much-nice, maybe a couple of fluke wins or something.

It stood up to this professional, pulled bluffs at just the right moments. That wasn’t just cards; that was reading the player’s behavior and adjusting on the fly. It was one of those weirdly impressive moments, kinda like the first time you ever hear a child lie in your life-it’s kinda powerful, and sometimes unsettling. But perhaps most exciting of all, poker AI actually challenges our notion of the game. We’d like to think that poker is intuition and psychology. At its very core, though, it’s a game of incomplete information. Whatever-poker AI algorithms take that fact and run with it, bases conclusions on statistical probability, not gut feelings. You know what? It works.

I can almost hear all the cynics screaming in my head, “But isn’t poker a human game?” Well, yes and no. Poker AI strategies are not demolishing the game; they make it evolve. If anything, AI only forces human players to be better. Knowing that somewhere out there is a bot that will read your every move and calculate your next one, it then forces you to play smarter, more creatively. After all, who doesn’t love a challenge-getting one over on a machine, in this case? But the thing is that with the rising fame of the poker bots, so rise the ethical questions: should the AI be allowed in the online poker rooms? Is it fair to be pitched against a human? Personally, I see both points. First of all, it’s interesting to oppose human skill against artificial intelligence.

That is, it is kind of unfair for the other side when a bot doesn’t get tired, on tilt, or in any way emotive during a decision. It’s not some bot apocalypse now, taking over the world of poker. Actually, even poker rooms build their AI detectors to level the field in one way or another. In this cat-and-mouse game, quite literally, with every closure opened, another opens. But right this very moment, and to the very best poker AI, to them who would want to see how this technology has moved, it will be fair to go back to Pluribus and DeepStack. Actually, neither of them just looks at a hand and figures out what could be the best possible move; rather, using deep neural networks, each determines precisely what to do in any given situation. As fantastic as that might sound, ripped from the pages of some sort of science fiction novel, it is a reality.

This is where poker players utilize AI poker applications for strategy in poker and how to find bots that could give them the best plays. Where man and machine in poker blend, the lines blur. In my humble opinion, ‘t is quite lovely. Of course, there is still room for human ingenuity: while AI might prove unbeatable in some cases, there is always that element of unpredictability in poker-something no algorithm can ever fully account for. Humans are illogical and emotional animals, and in poker, that is sometimes our biggest strong point. I’ve seen players make moves that defy all logic, only to walk away with a massive pot. AI doesn’t have that kind of unpredictability.

At least, not yet. As a developer, I’m excited about the future of poker AI software. We’re just scratching the surface of what these machines can do. The potential for poker AI development is enormous, and who knows? Maybe the best poker players of tomorrow won’t be human at all. Or maybe they’ll be players like me, using AI as a tool to sharpen our own skills, constantly learning and evolving alongside the machines we’ve built.

Is poker dead, then? Hardly, it’s just evolving. And that is what, in my humble opinion, with the rise of AI, makes it more interesting than ever: sure, there is something to be said for the old-school, face-to-face mind games, but there is a new kind of a thrill in knowing that somewhere out there a bot is sitting at a virtual table, calculating your every move. AI Poker is one of those love-it-or-hate-it card games that is here to stay. And only one question lingers again-are you ready for the future?

Ever thought you’d be outplayed by a machine? It wasn’t long ago when poker was just about instinct, reading faces, and pushing your luck when the cards weren’t on your side. These days, though, you’re just as likely to face off against a piece of code that doesn’t sweat, doesn’t second-guess, and certainly doesn’t bluff nervously. Welcome to poker AI World, where the bots are rewriting the rulebook-and players like me, pros in poker enthusiasm and in AI development-scramble to catch up.

Well, I finally started working on poker AI and somewhat felt like I was playing with fire.

So, here I was, a guy who loves the unpredictability of a human opponent, trying to school machines on how to bluff and better calculate odds than we ever could. The irony, right? Distilled into algorithms so precise that they might well outthink most of us before we’d even glanced at our cards, is just that which makes poker exciting: the mind games, the tension. Let me tell you, the development of poker AI tools is not about creating a perfect player. No, it’s more building up a system that learns from mistakes, changing strategies en route, and exploiting your weaknesses faster than you can yell, “All in! “ We first created basic poker bots-they were so clunky. They followed very strict rules and were so easy to predict. But now? That is, machine learning in poker allows the bots to evolve rather than play games.

They dance and shift with you, calling each other out-as if they were the ones watching you through your whole poker career. I mean, literally, years of studying the ways of these algorithms. Fascinating, really-you really would think poker AI strategies would be cold, almost clinical. The more I worked on them, the more I thought: it’s like perfect poker players, sans the nerves. For humans, emotions seep in – after a few losses you start to question your gut. A bot?

It sticks to the math, and when it bluffs, it is not because it “feels lucky”, it is because the numbers said that it should.

I will never forget the first time I watched one of my bots completely dominate a table of amateurs. It was mesmerizing and a little terrifying. There was no hesitation, no fraction-of-a-second doubt to wrangle with, as we humans do. It knew what to do. That is not to say the bot was unbeatable-there’s always some method to trip a bot up-but it would play consistently better than players relying on gut instinct too much. Here’s where it gets interesting: poker AI algorithms have become so sophisticated that they now regularly challenge, and sometimes defeat, the best human players. You’ve probably heard of Pluribus or DeepStack, right? They’ve taken on poker’s elite and won. It’s like watching Kasparov vs. Deep Blue all over again, but with chips instead of chess pieces.

And while it might seem like the bots have completely taken over, I’d argue that they’re also teaching us something valuable.

You need to understand how AI Poker works, the one that can turn you into a better player. These poker AI strategies are not all about number crunching but have unveiled weaknesses in the way humans approach the game. Ever wonder why bots bluff at certain times? How can they manage always to make that perfect call? That’s all rooted in data, years of poker bot research that showed us the perfect balance between aggression and caution. That angers some players because they’re like, “How am I supposed to compete against a machine? “ Well, here’s the rub: bots-genius and all that-are not infallible. Okay, they out-calculate you, but still they are bound by their programming. They don’t adjust to the caprices of psychology quite as well as we do, and that’s where your edge is.

They are predictable in their unpredictability, if that makes any sense.

We, the players, can see more patterns in their “thought” process, things they cannot hide since they are still, after all, just following rules. Of course, there is an ethical side to it, too, which we do not completely dismiss. Should we be worried that poker bots dominate online games? Shortly, yes and no. The bots are here, but they are definitely not going anywhere. Then again, all this doesn’t precisely mean it’s the end for human players. Different platforms crack down on the action of poker bots by deploying counter-detection systems to even out the field. In many ways, this is actually an arms race: machines fighting other machines to weed out cheaters. Now, let me take a moment and talk to you about poker hacks. Guys, some players are always looking for some shortcut, some poker cheat sheet, some poker now hack. Just something’s gonna tip the scale in their favor. But let’s face the facts: those who rely on poker hacks will be two steps behind. The bots adjust in real time. You think you found the loophole, but the minute that you start exploiting it, they are already learning off of that mistake. For as long as I have been part of the poker AI research world, I still believe in the human side of the game. There’s just something deeply satisfying when making a gut-based call that the numbers don’t back up, and then you win. Will AI keep improving? Yes. Will it eclipse human intuition?

In some ways, it already has. But a part of me hopes, no matter how good the machines get that there’s always room for that wild-card human element. What will the future be for poker bots and artificial intelligence poker software? It would be tough to really expect anything but a constant lineup of new and improved tools that press the edge of the envelope. But as long as there’s a human at the table, intuition-human gut-comes into play. Poker is not about the numbers, after all; it’s about people. To date, no bot’s figured out how to read them yet, so far as I know. Until that happens, I’ll keep playing. Will you?

It has always been the game of reading people. This gleam in an adversary’s eye, the way he fiddles with his chips, is human instinct against human bluff. But it’s changing very fast now. It could be as well in front of you, opposite an AI poker bot. And the bots don’t get nervous. They don’t get tired. And for sure, they don’t care that you might think you have them beat.

Deep research into poker AI was about trying to break the code not just behind the next unstoppable poker bot, but also poker in general. What if we could strip out all of that complexity and nuance and come up with the pure, cold strategy? That’s where poker machine learning is coming into the picture. It’s where the heart and soul of poker AI algorithms analyze millions of hands, visualize scenarios, and optimize with methods quite unthinkable by the human brain.

Let’s be honest: there is so much fear around poker bots. They cheat and spoil the game. Now, surely, the concept of some poker AI tool beating you looks unfair. At least it looks so if you do it in your free time. But here’s where it catches: these AI systems have more to do than win — they’re about learning. Those ways through which we can rethink games, the ways they challenge us to think better, smarter, or more strategically, are simply inspiring.

But one of the coolest innovations down this line has been Counterfactual Regret Minimization, or CFR. I know, the name reads like it’s out of some kind of sci-fi novel. But when broken down, it is actually pretty simple. CFR lets AI learn from past mistakes or “regrets.” It simulates hands, makes decisions, then adjusts its strategy in relation to what it could’ve done better. With more games played, it regrets less. It is, in some sense, more human than we realize; they, too, learn from failure.

But then there’s Monte Carlo Counterfactual Regret Minimization, which really allows the bot to key in on what’s salient in the game. It’s like a laser beam focus on all the important decisions and basically ignore all the noise in between, almost how a pro player would really strategize. Really fascinating and at the same time kind of scary to find out how good they actually become.

I remember the first time I got hit by one of these bots.

I mean, there was this smug confidence inside; I had been playing for years, I knew the game. Five hands in, and this was going to get ugly; he’d call my bluffs and actually predict my every move. Never had I felt so exposed on a poker table. I always feel that I’m playing chess with some grandmaster who knows your strategy even before you have thought of it.

But what is truly brilliant in the development of poker AI is not exactly in building a victorious bot but in building up further the notion of what was possible in a game so dependent on chance. It shows us strategies really unknown to even the best human players. A big part, in many ways, it is almost as if we’ve been playing checkers while they’ve been playing chess the whole time. Let me just get that out of the way: do these poker AI bots destroy the game? Some may say yes to affirmative responses. I say yes, it does; it takes out that human element, making the poker way too robotic and predictive. To me, I see things different. These systems evolve us. They really make us think outside tradition, and to me, that is no small spice.

There is something thrilling about it: that the person before you could well be a finely machined AI, and you still have yet to outsmart it.

This fact becomes even more reinforced when it comes to online poker. We all have heard the rumors, “Is he a bot? Is he using poker cheat sheets?” To say for sure is hardly possible. The line between human and machine is getting much closer. Does this make the game worse? Not by any means. It makes every hand more intense, more challenging. More than anything, it makes one sharper, more aware, and quick to adapt with every hand. We are turning soon onto a new page in poker history: this is AI in poker, and it’s not just about the changes in which ways we play but will literally change our mindset towards the strategy behind it. Intuitive playing and reading of one’s opponents may just be slowly finishing, but from that, what we gain is intuition for subtlety within.

The role of artificial intelligence in poker is still very much up for discussion.

Some tournaments ban them outright, apparently out of fear that the bots will somehow outstrip everything else. But I think that we should take this technological change in stride. After all, world champions didn’t reach the pinnacle by dodging challenges; they got there by facing them straight on. If poker AI dares us to think harder, play smarter, and develop our strategies farther, then isn’t it a better game?

Obviously, not all AI is out there to destroy humans. Some are built to investigate or test strategies and improve game theory. This is what brings us to one of the best things with poker AI strategy: they really aren’t playing just to win, but they are playing to understand. It is this chase toward mastery that keeps me leaning in, following the development of these bots. After all, poker is not about cards or chips; it’s about outsmarting either a human or a machine. And if I am to be frank, the longer work that is invested in the AI poker bots, the more I strongly feel we have barely touched the tip of the iceberg regarding the degree of possibilities that may have opened up. Yes, the bots are getting stronger, but so are we. But poker, much like life itself, is just one change after another. Many resist the rise of AI, but I say bring it on. With poker bot research into this new world, each hand was a new puzzle, and each game was a new challenge. And if that does not make poker more exciting, I don’t know what will.

You see, I have spent years buried in poker AI research, fiddling around with algorithms and developing strategies that, on paper, should crush opponents. You really would think the more detail you provide an AI, the better it gets. Firsthand, I learned that doing so sometimes makes a poker bot worse at the game. That does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it? But let me explain.

The magic word in AI poker development is abstraction. In other words, it’s just a nice way of saying we dumb down the game for the AI so that it does not get overwhelmed with the possibilities. Imagine trying to think over all combinations of cards or all possible strategies for betting within this game. That could take years! So we summarize similar situations into bundles and hope our bot plays them in the same way. For years, I thought-as many people still do-that finer and finer grainedness in these abstractions was the path to stronger poker AI. The more information, the better the decisions; well, that’s what we thought.

At times, it was actually interesting, because very frequently, in refining this abstraction, I found my bots falling into traps. J: Imagine giving your bot a new set of shiny rules and then watching it get played by simpler strategies. It’s almost like, in trying to dissect every little micro detail, it loses sight of the big broad perspective. I have seen this happen with my own poker AI tools, and I started thinking: Maybe we’re just overengineering our poker bots?

I conducted some experiments with a much simpler game called Leduc Hold’em. It’s like poker, but the fat sucked out—ideal for testing AI strategies without getting bogged down in a swamp of complexity. It was a kind of test, to see the way my AI would handle various levels of abstraction. Well, it went just like I had guessed: when the bot had less information, he used to make simple decisions. But with more details, the strategy just didn’t improve. Sometimes the bot was simply. confused. He began to overreact to minor changes in the game, making himself weak. The best poker-playing AI I could make was not really the one that had the most refined strategy. Sometimes it would just be fixated on, you know, the most insignificant piece on the board in some kind of grandmaster weirdness and totally miss obvious checkmate.

But the thing is, playing poker is about human intuition and psychology, and at higher levels, it’s a bit of a game that involves having lots of bluffs or unpredictability. That’s weird, because my poker AI algorithms can do probabilities in their sleep, but they sometimes miss this subtle art of misdirection that defines poker. The more we refine abstractions, the more detail we actually get, thus giving the bot a kind of “tunnel vision” into focusing on minutiae rather than the overall game.

I call this the “Monotonicity Myth.” In AI poker, there is a conventional wisdom that the more complex the abstraction, the stronger the strategy is.

Makes sense on the surface—more information, more power. But my research shows this isn’t a guarantee. In fact, some of the best poker bots I’ve worked with use simpler abstractions. They play a kind of ‘big picture’ poker, focusing on broad strokes rather than tiny details. When the AI sticks to a general understanding, it leaves less room for exploitation by cunning players.

Of course, one asks himself, ‘Why would I not program the AI to cheat? Use poker hacks or even the so-called “praponow hack”?’ Well, believe me, that crossed my mind. I mean, who hasn’t? But that is not the development of AI poker. The beauty and challenge is in developing a bot to play according to rules and to outsmart opponents just by strategy and calculated risk. Getting a poker bot from the Internet with all the cheats in it will likely win you a few hands but never teach you the elegance of the game-the beauty of a well-timed bluff. I remember thinking that the answer was to just abstract it down more. I added in the detail, put more and more actions into the bot’s decision process, and. it got worse. The bot began overplaying some hands, falling into traps that even average players could set. Then finally it was clear to me: take refinement too far and you can make a bot lose whatever good sense it did initially possess, much as a person at the poker table who thinks about every move way too much. Where does that leave us? In the work of building AI poker, it may be we should adjust our focus. What we may be needing is to install some sort of poker ‘intuition’ in our bots, not an infinite refinement of abstractions. After all, poker is at least as much a psychological struggle as a mathematical one. Today, my poker bots embrace simplicity where it truly matters. I use enough detail to make solid decisions without drowning in noise. And you know what? That seems to work like a charm. Most probably not perfect but at least can hold their own at the table. They remind me that sometimes in poker—just like in life—less really is more.

The world of poker has always fascinated me. There’s something deeply satisfying in the combination of luck, strategy, and psychology that makes each hand unique. But what if I told you that the days of staring into someone’s eyes to gauge their next move might be numbered? In my line of work, I’ve seen how artificial intelligence (AI) is gradually creeping into every corner of our lives, and poker is no exception.

You see, poker AI isn’t just about calculating odds or running simulations—it’s about teaching machines to play a game designed around human emotions, deception, and unpredictability. My journey into poker AI research began with a simple question: Can a machine really learn how to bluff? Spoiler alert—it can, but not in the way you’d expect.

Poker has always been more than just numbers to me. I started diving into it during my studies in probability theory, first at Moscow State University, then at Cambridge. Poker was the perfect testing ground for many of the mathematical models I was developing. Later, as I delved deeper into artificial intelligence during my postdoc at MIT, poker became something more than a game; it became a tool to push the boundaries of AI.

Let me be clear: AI poker bots aren’t some magical formula that guarantees victory at every table. Yes, they’re impressive. Yes, they can analyze mountains of data in seconds, calculating every possible outcome. But poker isn’t chess. It’s not a game with perfect information, and that’s where things get interesting. The human factor—bluffing, irrational decisions, and even fatigue—throws a wrench in the gears of any AI. No matter how well we program a poker bot, it still struggles with unpredictability, and that’s a big part of what makes poker AI so fascinating.

In my experience, there’s a certain irony in watching a poker AI play. It’s cold, calculating, and efficient, yet completely oblivious to the subtleties of human behavior. It doesn’t get nervous. It doesn’t second-guess. It simply reacts based on the data it’s been fed. This can lead to some wild results. Imagine sitting at a table with a machine that never tilts, never folds under pressure, but sometimes—just sometimes—makes a hilariously bad read because it missed that one subtle cue only a human would notice.

Despite its flaws, poker AI has come a long way. The algorithms I’ve helped develop over the years have transformed how both amateurs and professionals approach the game. These machines don’t just play to break even; they aim to exploit every mistake their opponents make. But here’s the twist—poker AI isn’t perfect. It can’t always “read” a human as well as another person might, and in short games, it doesn’t always have time to fully adapt. It’s like playing chess with a blindfold on, knowing you’re good but missing half the board.

The real magic happens when AI combines machine learning with an understanding of human psychology. One of my favorite experiments was a deep dive into what we call “short-term exploitation.” Essentially, it’s about teaching the AI to quickly learn an opponent’s strategy in a limited number of hands and adjust its gameplay to counter them. This is where the machine really gets clever—or, depending on how you look at it, a bit too clever for comfort.

In poker AI development, we often face a dilemma. On one hand, we want our bots to play safe, sticking to tried-and-tested strategies like Nash equilibrium, where the AI minimizes its losses in the long run. On the other hand, we want them to take risks, to step outside the safe zone and exploit human weaknesses as soon as they spot them. Balancing these two approaches has been one of the most challenging parts of developing the best poker AI software.

Take the simplified game of Kuhn poker, for example. It’s an ideal playground for testing poker AI algorithms because of its small size and known strategies. Even in this controlled environment, teaching a machine to exploit a human player in fewer than 100 hands can be incredibly difficult. Sure, the AI can calculate probabilities and predict optimal moves, but when it comes to adapting on the fly, it’s not as fast as we’d like. However, once it gets going, you better believe it’s coming for your stack.

But that’s not to say poker AI doesn’t have its moments of brilliance. One of the things I love about poker bots is their ability to think in ways that humans never could. They see the game from angles that would never occur to a human player. For instance, some of the AI strategies we’ve developed involve deliberately playing “bad” hands in order to confuse opponents and keep them guessing. It’s like playing mind games with someone who doesn’t have a mind. The irony isn’t lost on me.

Of course, all of this raises the question: Are poker bots ruining the game? Some purists argue that using AI is nothing more than cheating, while others see it as the inevitable future of poker. Personally, I see poker AI as a tool, not a crutch. It’s not about removing the human element from the game, but about enhancing it. I’ve played against some of the best poker AI in the world, and trust me—there’s still plenty of room for human creativity and intuition at the table.

In the end, poker is a game of incomplete information. No matter how advanced the poker AI becomes, it will always lack one crucial element—emotion. AI might learn how to bluff, how to calculate odds, and how to exploit weaknesses, but it will never understand why a player goes all-in on a weak hand out of sheer desperation or why someone folds the winning hand because of a gut feeling. Those are the moments that define poker.

As we continue to push the boundaries of what poker AI can do, I find myself more and more fascinated by the possibilities. Maybe one day, we’ll create a poker bot that truly understands the game on a human level. Or maybe, just maybe, poker will remain the last bastion where the human mind still holds an edge. Either way, I’m excited to find out.

You know, poker used to be about reading your opponent—watching for that nervous twitch or the tell-tale pause before a bet. But lately, the game has taken a high-tech turn. We’re now in an era where artificial intelligence is creeping its way into the felt, and it’s not just about cold numbers or robotic play. As this AI learns to bluff, just imagine in such fine detail that even grizzled players raise an eyebrow. Now, let’s peek into the research behind poker AIs and sliding bets to reveal exactly how algorithms are rewriting the rules of a game once based on intuition.

I’ve spent years building poker bots and fine-tuning poker AI algorithms. My commercial poker AI, on which I have invested countless hours into developing, is as popular with amateurs as with pros. But here is the thing— one works more and more with AI, then one realizes it is not about making a machine that plays by the book; rather, it is actually about making an AI that can improvise, much like a jazz musician that riffs off the rhythm of the room. Well, now, about this idea of a “sliding window” – it’s very technical wording, isn’t it? This is what one would read in a book on computer science, for example. What it really wants to say is that a poker bot doesn’t stick to only one specific range for the size of a bet. Actually, its bet sizing will change on-the-fly depending on what is going on in the game. Its “window” of possible actions slides so it fits into the situation.

It’s like a chef trying to taste the dish all the time, put salt, put pepper while he’s cooking. The result? Playing with the bot is far more subtle than it ever has been.

I can easily picture purists cringing at the thought of a machine “bluffing” better than a human. “Where’s the soul of the game?”. Well, here’s the twist: this tech doesn’t just mimic human play; it evolves beyond it. Through my years of poker bot research, I’ve seen AI develop strategies that aren’t merely calculated—they’re adaptive, unpredictable, and sometimes, downright sneaky. It’s like playing against an opponent who has not just mastered the game but is constantly reinventing it.

My approach—in fact, the one described in this paper which I was given—is based on methods that use sliding windows to generate what’s called “action abstractions.” Yeah, it’s a big term, but really, it boils down to this: given any particular moment, the AI can determine what set of betting actions will be most effective. It’s not locked into pre-determined sizes. Of course, it can go from big to small or anything in between, according to the heat of the game. The point about it is that it never second-guesses, unlike a human.

You’d think that would lead to super dry, automatic styles of play. You’d be wrong. Some of the sliding windows used effectively almost give the AI a sort of swagger. Take something like No-Limit Texas Hold’em. Folding, calling or betting a fixed amount ceases to be any sort of trivial decision. The AI can do its iterated process of fine-tuning its bet sizes. It is the recipe for a strategy that will be about as predictable as a bluff of an old hand—a little like that master chef adding just the right amount of spice: not too little, not too much, perfect.

I won’t lie, it’s a little unnerving to watch an AI make such humanlike decisions in a game that until very recently has been the exclusive domain of people. There’s something weirdly invigorating about it, too. Consider it a new frontier—a Wild West, where poker players and machines duke it out, each trying to outwit the other. The best part? This AI isn’t even static.

It’s not about blindly playing the same hand every time; it’s about learning, adapting to situations, and sliding those bet sizes up or down like an experienced player trying to feel out the table.

Where does that leave us? Are poker bots to become the future rulers of every table? Well, it certainly seems that way. There is still some room left for human creativity. AI may be good at statistical analysis, but it does not possess a gut feeling. It doesn’t know what it’s like to stare down a foe across a smoky room, heart racing, chips on the line. And that is where the beauty of poker remains: at the head of all this renewal, something distinctly human still takes the game to the next level. And as poker players, it is our duty to adapt, to learn from the bots, and to surprise them every now and then.

But yes, you still can beat a poker bot, but it takes thinking outside the algorithmic box. Over time, I realized those poker AI tools weren’t opponents but rather teachers. They began to open my eyes to see not only the cover layers of the game but the heavy interplay of probabilities and psychology within it. Playing against an AI is like looking into a mirror, showing you not just your moves but your tendencies, your habits, your weaknesses. This allows one the chance to evolve as a player-to hone one’s strategy. Who wouldn’t want that?

But this is quite too emotive. To be perfectly frank, poker AI software has now degenerated into a commodity; people actually use, download, and use it to get an unfair advantage in online games. Ethically, this is best described as a gray area—the line between hacks that improve one’s poker-playing prowess and cheating is, of course, very thin. The only difference for me is how you’re using the technology. You want to study with it, learn, understand the game on a deeper level—fair game; good on you. If you want to use it to cheat in a tournament, I’m sorry. Finally, poker was a game of the mind—an arena of battles in strategies, chances, and psychology. And today, with AI, we are looking for new tracks. Not to replace us, but rather to test us, to push the boundary of what we believe is possible. Next time, when you’re at a table, playing the game of chance with both human and bot opponents, remember: it’s not the hand you get dealt, but how you play them. Sometimes that well-timed slide in the bet window could make all the difference. Interesting times to live in, friends. Maybe AI has some aces up its virtual sleeve in this poker game for two. Well, that just makes the victory sweeter if you play it out.

I have lived through the whole of my working life with artificial intelligence, being a developer of poker bots. It is more than an interest; it is more like a full-time job. However, all those years of number crunching and scripting algorithms, and teaching machines how to think, or at least how to play, I have co-created some of the most up-to-date poker AI software. And believe me, these bots do not fool around.

The best thing about AI poker is that it changes its dynamics completely. Strangely enough, the first one to really lead me off in a direction totally different from anything was poker AI, and, of course, yes, I had some background on probability theory and statistics but the challenge was way bigger than merely understanding odds themselves; something like teaching a machine how to learn bluffing, recognizing patterns, and reacting upon unpredictability—things thought to be exclusively human.

But, as it would later turn out, machines are actually very good at poker. From the days when the programs could hardly keep track of a hand, poker bots are taking the game to out-think even the most experienced professionals. This was precisely seen in AI systems such as DeepStack and Pluribus. They’re not your regular bots but rather developed with in-depth poker AI strategies backed by mountains of data to play in a form only a few humans can touch.

Which naturally raises the other question: Can a poker bot really bluff? The short answer is: most certainly. But not in the way we do. When we bluff, there’s often a gut feeling that’s involved. Perhaps you figure you can outthink the guy sitting across the table, or perhaps you just want to see him fold under the pressure. Bots don’t have guts; they’re data-run. They observe, study a situation, crunch the numbers, and then arrive at the most statistically correct decisions. Cold and clinical, yet somehow every bit as effective.

We were working on tweaking one of the many commercial poker bots we had into a bluffing mechanism, just enough to keep a human player guessing like crazy, but not so much that it should obviously make no sense. That’s quite a narrow path, but the AI walks it better than most of the people I know. More often than not, considering a bot acts by calculation and a person by intuition, the bots are very much more dangerous than the people are.

Poker: How Machine Learning May Be Just Starting to Change the Game

As for the real revolution in the development of poker AI, it’s all about machine learning. That’s really what sets apart the best of poker AIs from the rest of the pack: the idea behind machine learning is to let these bots learn from experience, be flexible, and hone their strategies over time. Each hand played, every decision made turns to some big data set, helping the bot to be smarter, sharper, and frankly more ruthless.

Take, for instance, DeepStack, which took up tens of thousands of games, learning from just about every single one of them, until unbeatable. What’s the wonderful thing about this? It doesn’t need any kind of human policing. It’s kind of like watching some sort of child prodigy growing up at warp speed. Instead of playing Mozart on the piano, he was cleaning out the tables at the World Series of Poker.

But it’s not just the DeepStack-type top-tier systems. Not even with the best poker bot software that could be downloaded today. We are literally talking light-years from what we had just a few years ago. I remember the first poker bot that I worked on, a rather clunky, slow, and easily outmaneuvered one. And now I look at what’s available to the normal player, and it’s like watching a Ferrari pull up next to a go-kart. It’s that dramatic of a leap in technology.

Here’s the big question—what does this all mean for human players? Well, if you’re hoping to sit down at an online poker table and casually rake in chips from unsuspecting bots, you’re in for a rude awakening. These days, bots can play circles around most human players, especially those who don’t understand the depth of poker AI strategies.

But there is an upshot now. But there’s something so quintessentially human about poker, some essence of soulfulness that machines haven’t quite nailed. An AI might be able to calculate the odds of a poker play, but it doesn’t lean back in its chair, light a cigarette, and peer into your soul before deciding whether to call. And feel the tension of the moment in order to make a spur-of-the-second decision based on a hunch. That’s where we still have the edge.

At least for now.

I must confess, part of me slobbers at the very idea: some kind of future where man and bot could sit across the table from one another. Perhaps it would press us to better players, to stop relying on instinct and think more analytically. Who knows? Maybe in a few years, we even see some sort of a hybrid poker game where human intuition and machine precision work in unison.

Or perhaps it will be more bots crushing the online competition, while the remaining humans hold onto their analog ways, trying to remember what it was like to win a pot with nothing but naked bluff.

At the end of the day, poker AI is here to stay. It isn’t really a matter of whether it will change the game—it already has. The only real question is whether we as human players are willing and prepared to adapt. After all, it takes me a while to get most of the way down to thinking what AI really might do in this game, and that’s after most of that decade I spent developing those bots. Only the best of AI poker will keep improving, as the gap between the human and the machine will keep expanding. But don’t get me wrong—I still believe in the human element.

There’s one thing and one thing alone that simply can’t be replaced: sitting at the table, reading your opponents, and making a decision based on something more than just numbers. It’s a game of wits, of psychology, and yes, of luck. Inasmuch as bots may have the first two on lockdown, they can’t touch the third. And what does that leave us with? Perhaps, just maybe, we can learn a few things from these machines. After all, if they are going to beat us at our own game, then we might as well try and keep up.

As someone who’s spent the last decade developing poker AI, I’ve thought a lot about the game’s future. The poker world is at a turning point. Algorithms and machine learning models are slowly replacing traditional mind games. These models never blink, sweat, or forget. How did this happen, and where will poker go with artificial intelligence as a sparring partner?

Well, when I first approached poker AI, it wasn’t entirely obvious that AI was supposed to match human intuition in the game. Poker is a weird game. Nothing like chess, where everything is viewable—in poker you have cards hidden, bluffs, and instinct—a lot beyond the reach of an algorithm. But as a mathematician, I thought that even the chaotic aspect of poker should be reduced to probabilities.

They were predictable and rigid in the early days of poker bots. Such models went by the book, did not adapt to different strategies, and could be beaten by anyone with basic knowledge of poker. And then something happened: bots learned. Machine learning endowed them with the ability to devise a strategy for playing poker. They began training millions and millions of hands, studying human mistakes, and proceeding to win hands gradually.

The Rise of Uncertainty

That development naturally raised the eyebrows of poker pros. They could do what was thought of as impossible: they would bluff, balance aggression with caution, and read opponents the way people do. At first it felt a little unfair, like giving the calculator during the math exam. But then again, poker is all about finding an edge.

In this, the advantage of Poker AI lied not in faster computations but in being unpredictable. The best poker AI does not always do the statistically obvious move. Sometimes, it bluffs where it statistically should not. It may call when it should fold or raise with a weak hand. This kind of unpredictability, much like in human play, became a weapon. A predictable bot is easy to beat; beating a bot that can adapt and surprise with its bluffs is another challenge altogether.

Designing a bot that can bluff like a human isn’t easy. Machine learning has enabled us to give AI some of the “instincts” that humans rely on. It is not magic; it is just advanced pattern recognition. However, facing such a bot feels like magic or even witchcraft, depending on your chip count.

For many people, poker bots are just cheat sheets. They never get tired, lose concentration, or miss a card. For me, it’s not cheating; it’s just another tool available, just like a sharp mind or a good bluff.
Although these are advanced technological gadgets, the concept does fall into poker’s rich history of outsmarting opponents. Or so it would appear from an existential viewpoint: Is this the end of human players? Will poker turn into some bot-against-bot game instead of player against player? Poker is not about cards and mathematics; it is tension, psychology, and human drama. No AI robot in the world can replace the experience of staring your opponent down, heart pounding, trying to guess whether he’s bluffing.

The Role of AI in Modern Poker

While bots might succeed in online poker, live games that much more depend on emotive gameplay still favor humans. At least for now. There are even a few pros offered by Poker AI. Many people use an AI instrument for analysis and spotting mistakes and thus learn faster. AI is not about bot versus human; it’s bringing the game to another level.

What’s next, I wonder, for poker? Say, will AI be able to outplay the best humans in live tournaments? Are we going to reach a day where only bots play poker? Probably. Until then, I’ll keep playing and developing, searching for that perfect approach: either through human intuition or through some finely tuned algorithm. But in poker, you play the hand you’re dealt; for now, AI is just one card in that deck.