What is a poker bot?
A piece of software that runs in the background of another application with the intention of interacting somehow with that application is commonly referred to as a ‘bot’ or ‘robot. A ‘poker bot’ is a piece of software run on a computer specifically to interface with an online poker game.
Poker bots operate in many different ways, but mainly they scan the screen and extract information about the hands being dealt to the player or players. This information is collated and statistical probabilities calculated. In the end, at any given point, the poker bot asses a game ‘state’. From this state, the bot is able to make limited decisions, mostly based on programming from the user.
The decision process that the poker bot makes can be thought of like a tree. If the poker bot knows that it has been dealt two aces and sees two more on the flop, then it knows that there are no more aces in the deck. It is ‘counting cards’. A series of complex algorithms then establish odds of what might happen in different scenarios.
Based on parameters entered by the user of the poker bot, certain ‘weights’ or ‘scores’ are cumulatively given to each of the available actions that may be taken. Whichever action has the highest weight is selected and played. In the example above, this could be raising aggressively if the user entered the right parameters.
In the absence of some human guidance, poker bots do not always make very good decisions. This is because there are always certain situations where the weights of different options are equal. Statistically, without much information (knowing only 2 cards in the deck, for example, after someone has raised considerably for example), the bot would be unable to formulate anything but a random decision. So human programming is always required, effectively producing a ‘style’ of gameplay.
Some of the poker bots available have features that might let them get better odds against some players. These bots collaborate between two or more players outside of the online poker game. Now instead of knowing information about only one player, the bot knows information about two players allowing it to judge the game more accurately.
This type of action is strictly forbidden on most online poker sites though, as is the use of poker bots, so this is more for an academic study in poker-related statistics. A poker bot can be a valuable learning tool and an interesting piece of software to study though.
