Poker-AI.org

Hi everyone;

I am a real poker player. I do not have a bot. I hope I am allowed to post here anyways.

I have a few questions that I'd like to ask your community because I am curious about your work (not because I want to make a bot, but because I want to understand my competition at the online tables everyday)

How much work do you guys put it in creating your bot (say h/week untill you can finally put your bot to the test)? Then how much work does your bot recquire for tweaking it once it out there on the poker tables?

Obv you guys are pretty smart. Why are you guys making those bots? Why not play yourselves? Is the risk worth it?

Do you want to make a living out of it? How does it make you feel that "real" poker players, as well as the pokersites, label you as cheaters?

Do you think online poker will soon die out because of the increasing numbers of bots that are out there? What is your stance on this: make as much $ as possible while you still can?

That's it for now I will have more follow up questions I'm sure, but that's a good start.

Thank you very much for taking the time to read my post and for your answers

My interest in poker/AI is for the betterment of humanity.

I developed my first bot with a friend and together we probably put in about 2000 hours. It was profitable at the time but doubt it would be now. Personally I've put in about 2500 hours programming and maybe something similar just thinking.

I'd certainly like to make money out of it, and if I didn't think I could make money I wouldn't do it, but the challenge interests me too. I don't really care too much that poker players think I'm a cheat: I never meet these people. I think colluding or seeing villlains cards is cheating but playing well isn't. Online poker will eventually be killed by bots but that is a way off yet. It is definitely a concern to me that I will develop the ultimate bot shortly after online poker dies.

Players don't think you are a cheat. You ARE a cheat. Bots are against the TOS of poker rooms.

The biggest threat on online poker comes from people like you wants to develop the ultimate bot... Why do you hate this game this badly ? If what interest you is the challenge and you are willing to put in tons of hours then why don't you play by yourself like any normal person ? Beating the game by yourself is very challenging too. If you used those 2000 hours playing poker and working on the game you'd probably be much richer by now.


I understand that. But what good is it for humanity that poker gets solved ? Why don't you focus on something that would improve humanity for real instead of trying to ruin a fun game ?

NL 6max or full ring will not be solved for a long time. So good players beat bots, so be happy you have more opponents that you can beat thanks to us.

Hey man, I love you regardless. Peace.

I wouldn't say poker bots ruin a fun game anymore than chess bots ruin a fun game. But that's just like, my opinion man. I think you might be getting the things I say confused. Nowhere did I say solving poker would be good for humanity. As has been shown elsewhere, the techniques, algorithms and AI used to produce poker bots have been used in other fields as well (including the healthcare industry). I wouldn't be surprised if someone like the NSA or CIA was watching these forums for a better method of producing war scenarios. The only option is not to compete.

So its ok for YOU to take the weaker players money but you have a problem with the bot taking yours?

So lets take HUD data as example. Do you think that gives you an edge over the other players that do not use it? Your using software to gain an edge. How is that any different? I have no doubt if you had access to software that told you the best play you would use it to increase your EV and beat better players.



Online poker is doomed anyway. New technologies will make it obsolete just like everything else. So eventually they will die and it will all be live games. So then you will deal with other technologies like Google Glass analyzing all the hands and spitting out a solution. It is an endless battle that cannot be prevented so deal with it.

As I mentioned to someone else even a 6BB game of HUNL was too big to solve completely with a workstation with 144gb of RAM. I don't think poker is threatened.

For a player to beat another, the edge needs to be really really big to compensate for the really really big rake. I doubt there are many bots around losing at 20bb/100 +


In the sentence you quote from me it's not about what is ok and what is not ok. It's about the rules. Bots are a violation of the rules of poker rooms. Taking the money of a weaker player is not against the rules. Then you mention HUDs that gives an edge. Again HUDs are allowed by the poker rooms so I'm not cheating.


No I wouldn't rely on a software to tell me what play is best because
A) I'd be a cheater which would imply I'd take a big risk of losing my bankroll and playing privileges. I aslo have too much pride to rely on cheating to win (probably very difficult to understand for people on this forum)
B) I already know what play is best from years of experience playing this game. The day a software knows better than me is the day I need to retire.

I am so tired about hearing about the rules of casinos. So I was a card counter for 15 years and of course it was against their "rules" to count. Ok for the losers to play but not the winners. This is the same old story. Sorry but we wont allow you to play because you might have an unfair advantage. So yeah..I could care less if botting is against their rules. Counting was considered cheating too. So label me in as a cheater as I am fine with it. They offer a game and choose who can play and who cannot just like brick and mortar casinos. Its all BS.

Also..notice that new casinos like Bovada are anonymous making HUD software virtually useless and bum hunting much harder to do. They obviously feel HUD software gives a player an unfair advantage or why would they do it? The only reason its not against their TOS is because they cannot do anything about it. They could prevent the HUD from being hooked probably but not the data from being collected and used anyway. Its a battle they cannot win.



Ok..but your obviously worried about bots enough to post here. Playing good poker is not easy and neither is bot writing. Think how difficult it would be to create a machine that plays like yourself. Everybody here enjoys programming and the challenge of solving complex problems. Its not all about money.

I really don't care if what you're doing is legitimate or not my goal is use it against you any way I can! Christ. As a lawyer, one of my favorite methods of stalking you guys is to get with my contact at your email provider, get the password reset information for your account, then use your account to send a bunch of spam. This gives the email security people a reason to spy on your account and he can just tell me the content of every email you ever send from then on.

I also think it's quite challenging to develop a bot that automates the complicated situations you have in poker.

To answer the question "Why develop a bot and not play yourself?":

- a bot will never tilt and always follow the rules of it's internal logic
- a bot doesn't get tired or losses concentration after playing for hours
- even a semibot that just deals with preflop situations saves your brain a bunch of decisions so you can focus on the more complicated spots way better
...

In my opinion bots are not unfair. Why should I not use my skills to get an additional edge? (besides ToS)
If I don't understand the theory of the game I will hardly be able to code a profitable bot so it wouldn't matter anyways.

I'm sure that there are already some quite advanced bots out there bot those who are really crushing the games would never post it. Nobody would every share such a money printing tool.

Btw. even against a good bot -> a decent player can adjust and exploit their leaks.

One must howl with the wolves otherwise one goes under

I've been spending countless hours (thousands) on botting. Mostly late evenings since I also have a family and a day-time job.

It's a hobby that suits me better than watching TV, playing video games, building model airplanes or whatever people do with their spare time.

Some periods I've not been able to make a profit - then I have shelved the project for months or even years. Other times I have worked hard on some new theory. And other times I've just maintained it while it has been earning good money on a daily basis.
Currently (like for the last ½ year) I'm in that last mode. I.e. spending maybe 1 hour a day to keep it going while cashing out a monthly profit similar to a full day-time job.

My motivation?
I'm a lousy poker player. I don't even enjoy playing the game manually.
However, I like the challenges of creating a working bot.

Any winning players hurts the poker ecosystem be it a bot or a human player. Loosing players are bound to loose their money anyway. Winning players complaining about bots are hypocrites as they are themselves bad for the industry.
At least, that's one point of view....

These guys are smart alright, but rotten. All the reasons they give for doing it - bots are suboptimal, etc- are just excuses. The fact of the matter is once you have machine with a decent algorithm playing for you, you've gained a humongous edge over human competition and reached straight into the average poker player's pocket. Once you cross that line of putting the bot to play for real money, you are a thief. These guys don't think so because they think they are entitled. But another fact is that there are tons of others who are as smart or smarter but don't choose to make living by unfair means. When online poker makes a real comeback to the US and a couple of these guys are actually prosecuted, they'll think twice about it.

I'm interested to know what law you think could be used to prosecute me and why it hasn't already been used. I'm in UK

This was mainly just to give another opinion, not to lecture you guys, because I know that is pointless. But most poker laws that are being introduced in the US have botting as a crime. European authorities don't have resources or balls to go after it, but in the US it'd be a different story, just watch.

I wouldn't be doing this if I thought it was a crime. Are these federal or state laws? Could you point me at the legislation please?

When the 2006 gambling bill hit the US it became a felony in the State of Washington to play online poker (one of two states I think). This was the result of the tribal casinos hiring legions of lobbyists in alligator shoes to push thru their greedy agenda. There plan to push more players into the brick and mortar casinos failed as most of the poker rooms have now closed. Good Job Geronimo..now there is no place to play...

Thousands of players in Washington continued to play for years until black friday anyway. Not one person was ever prosecuted. Nobody lifted a finger because nobody cared. These kind of laws are unenforceable. I would have a higher chance of getting arrested by the mattress police then for botting.

Read NRS 465.075 and NRS 465.088 from Nevada gaming regulations as an example:

http://www.leg.state.nv.us/NRS/NRS-465.html