Hello, and welcome to The Poker Bot Blog

Poker bots, poker bots, poker bots... it's a hot topic at the moment in the world of online poker. Full Tilt just shut down (probably hundreds) of accounts suspected of using the Shanky Bot. People are talking about poker bots being the death of online poker, and sites are investing more and more resources into keeping control of the problem as people are trying to get what they see as free and easy money.

So, where do I fit into this? I'm a professional software developer who got bored of work. I had an interest in poker, so quit work and decided to try and knock up a winning poker bot.

I've always had an interest in artificial intelligence, and thought this poker bot stuff would be pretty easy. I was wrong, so very wrong.

Poker involves 3 things.

1. Maths - Computers are pretty good at this, as a matter of fact, this is their greatest strength. If they know everyone's cards then they can play mathematically perfect poker. Unfortunately, playing your cards in poker doesn't win you money. Luck evens out in the end, if everyone just played their cards the same way no one would win anything in the long run. To win in the long run, you need to be able to win with the worst hand, this involves bluffing, and that involves psychology!


2. Psychology - Computers are very good at things we're not, like maths, and very bad and things we do without thinking, like seeing and hearing. Voice recognition and image recognition are still in their infancy, even after many years of research. Poker involves 'thought recognition', this is a hard concept for people to get their head around, let alone a computer. How do you get a computer to understand what someone is thinking?!


3. Luck - Humans and computers have got a fairly level playing field here, neither can control luck. Computers do however have one slight advantage. While a human player could easily be put on tilt by a piece of bad luck, a computer doesn't have emotions, it can just play the same steady game no matter what happens

I've been working hard in the world of poker botting for over a year now, and have learnt a lot in the process. The purpose of this blog is to explain the world to the public, and publicise my research. I will explain why poker bots are not to be feared, and encourage discussions on the morality of the subject.

Hopefully some of you will find this interesting, stay tuned.