Poker Bots: Are They the End of Online Poker? (hint: No)
Poker Bots are out there, so now what?
The truth of the matter is that you have probably been playing against a poker bot at least some of the time when you play online poker at most of the cardrooms. As far back as 2004 MSNBC was writing about the proliferation of poker playing robots on internet cardrooms. The burning question then (and now) is how strong are these poker bots? A poker bot capable of playing at the "master level" as the Vex bot talked about in the MSNBC article does (but only in heads up poker) could make it a money losing proposition to play when they are playing. On the other hand, a bot that plays badly would be something you might even want to pursue and put on your online poker "friends list".
So, for the purposes of seeing what's available online in the poker bot realm, and also how dangerous these foes are, I'll list the major poker bot programs that are online now and give at least a rough summary of what playing against them will be like. Finally I'll talk about how the online poker rooms are responding to poker bots (some don't seem to care much, some are very aggressive in keeping them out).
Throughout this article there are links to the sites that provide the poker bots mentioned, but I (and this site) are not affiliated with any of them and do not receive any income from them. The links are there so you can gather more information on them if you are interested.
The Major Poker Bots That are Playing Online Poker Right Now
Online Poker Bot
The current version of Online Poker Bot is v3.5 dated January, 2011. This will be one of the first poker bots you'll encounter if you search for them online. It's designed to work on many different poker rooms, including Party Poker, PokerStars, and a host of other popular rooms.
They claim the software has a stealth mode, but what this does is make the software invisible on your screen (so cardrooms that try to do enforement by collecting screenshots of your desktop will fail, but cardrooms which actually look at what programs you are running via the process list, etc. will not. This is also the only poker bot we've seen that plays on more than one table at a time (up to 4)
Texas-Holdem-Bot
Texas-Holdem-Bot is a "free" poker bot in that they will give you the software for free if you sign up for a new account with one of the cardrooms they support and then play a certain number of raked hands. The software itself runs out of the box on Poker.com and CDPoker and seems to attempt to get you to sign up using their affiliate code as the software automatically directs you to one or the other site. At the moment these locations are the only ones that you'll find people playing with this bot.
There is a limited amount of user configuration you can use to have it play looser or tighter, more passive or aggressive, and how often to check-raise. The example on their home page shows it calling a flop bet with 8d 9d on a 5c Ah 8c flop which may give you some inkling to its strength (or the lack thereof).
Winholdem
Winholdem is "the poker bot they do not want you to have" which can only be true if "they" have your best interests at heart. This one is a real woofer, my friends, and not the good kind of woofer which gives you pure driving base on your high end stereo.
Right at the top of their home page is an extra large font link to the 2007 Pokerbot World Championship. Don't misread this as I initially did to mean that they actually won this championship because they did not, they apparently hosted it and only about 9 people went on the cruise to even play (as themselves or with their poker bots) in this event and the three World Championship tournaments were all won (apparently heads up the whole way) by humans. Apparently if you look at their forum they have a few shirts left over.
On the positive side for this bot they do seem to have a decent architecture which some people are apparently using right now to create bots that can win against weak opponents. They support most of the largest online sites and support for new cardrooms only requires a new "uniscraper profile" which is what tells the bot where to read the cards, press the bet/fold buttons and so on. They also have an interface for C/C++ programmers to modify the playing logic of the bot. Finally they give instructions for playing the bot in what they call "Stealth Mode" which involves a second computer using a remote control program to play poker using the first computer (so the poker bot program isn't in memory on the computer that is actually playing and does not appear anywhere on its screen. Some poker rooms actually take screenshots and whatnot to catch people who are using poker bots). Finally they have a very active forum.
Poker Android
Poker Android is actually an add-on for another program called Online Holdem Inspector. Online Holdem Inspector is a Texas Holdem calculator that provides suggested actions based on its estimation of your current chance to win the pot, etc. By itself it operates like Holdem Hawk or other similar programs. What Poker Android does is actually take Online Holdem Inspector's suggested action each time, so it plays just like you would play if you were a mindless zombie, which hopefully you are not because then you would no doubt be hungering for my brain and you cannot have it.
This is a pretty non-threatening bot which will play fairly tightly and will be very easy for a human opponent to overcome (especially if they are aware that they are playing against this particular poker bot). The main use for this sort of bot would be to work off a bonus requirement or some other simple but time consuming poker task. It cannot change seats or sit out by itself and there is absolutely zero table selection involved by the limited AI.
Online Pokibot
This bot no longer exists, but was reported to be an add-on for the Poki's Poker Academy software which is based on the PokiBot bot developed by the University of Alberta about 18 years ago. Pokie's Poker Academy, by the way, is a very decent poker playing software and it does have an interface where you can build your own custom bots to compete with other built in poker personalities however none of this happens on real online poker rooms, just in the context of the stand alone game. The idea of leveraging this bot to play online poker is interesting, but much of the internals of PokiBot are published in academic papers already so using the Poker Academy software directly seems to be a wasted effort for future bot writers.
Holdem Memory
The Holdem Memory poker bot also promotes the use of a remote control 2-pc setup to avoid detection at the major cardrooms. It operates like a poker calculator that clicks buttons for you and comes with three strategy profiles with the ability to create more to emulate your own strategy. For pre-flop play this can work very nicely but post-flop play often requires situational information that you will not be able to describe using this bot's profile method.
This is also a bot that sits at a single table and cannot sit out, move seats, move tables or select a new table by itself.
Online Poker Room Policies Regarding Poker Bots
Using a poker bot that automatically makes actions for you is against the terms and conditions of all online poker rooms, however the enforcement of that policy varies from room to room. At the time of this writing:
Cardrooms that do not pursue bot users aggressively
America's Cardroom, Carbon Poker, RPM Poker, Lock Poker
