There Are No Poker Bots

I play poker at Full Tilt and Poker Stars and I’m a member of Railbirds, an online poker community. I’ve read books by Brunson, Caro, Gordon, and others. I’m currently reading volume one of Harrington on Hold ‘Em. I’ve played countless hands online at Tilt, Stars and also at Doyle’s Room.

I have yet to see any evidence that there are poker bots playing on behalf of the sites.

Let’s back up a bit in case you have no idea what a poker bot is. Basically, there are a lot of people who suck at poker. Now, I’m not a pro by any means. I’m an average player. I don’t win a lot and I don’t lose a lot. There are a lot of people who suck a lot more than I do, and they are the people that go to Railbirds and "explain" their losses by saying there are programmed software "robots" that play at the online tables. These "bots" are supposedly in the employ of the poker rooms, and they’re there to beat the human players and take all their money.

One thing you will never see from any of these people is a logical, rational explanation based in fact. They never have any evidence that the bots exist, and they pepper their diatribes with "I believe" and "I think". Well, that’s fine. People can believe what they want; that doesn’t necessarily make it so.

A few sites exist that collect hand data from their members and form aggregate information about what happened during any given hand. It’s incomplete, yes, because not everyone submits their hand information to these sites - I don’t. Enough information exists to form a fairly knowledgeable picture, and to date, nobody has ever found any pattern that points to bot activity. There is no evidence.

Some folks like to test to see if they’re playing against a bot by asking in chat if the person is alive. If they don’t get an answer, "OMG UR A BOT!!!!11". Look, not everyone plays with the chat turned on. Personally, I play with observer chat turned off, and frequently will turn the main chat off when I’m in a tournament. I simply don’t want to be distracted, and I don’t want to listen to people bitch when they get busted or take a bad beat. There is no way for an average player to test for the presence of a bot.

There are several reasons why it’s completely illogical and damaging to the poker sites to run bots. First, the sites make more than enough money on the rake. They don’t need to risk the business by running bots. Second, regarding risking the business, if people were to conclusively prove that a site runs bots, that site would shut down inside of a week once word spread about it. It would spread like wildfire through poker blogs, sites, magazines and more. People would abandon the site as fast as possible. Poker may be a form of gambling, but the business of running these sites isn’t a game. Third, there are professional poker players attached to the largest sites. These players are putting their reputation on the line by associating themselves with the sites, and would not do so without assurances that the sites were stable. The sites aren’t going to risk those relationships for the sake of a few extra dollars.

People don’t buy those explanations though. Do you?

Coming soon: why the sites aren’t rigged.

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June 12, 2007 | Filed Under Poker

Comments

2 Responses to “There Are No Poker Bots”

  1. Nono on June 25th, 2007 9:09 pm

    You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about. The bot programmers and bot owners using winholdem have trouble not dying laughing after reading your rant. PokerStars sometimes bust some bots but it’s mostly free rides for the bot on all the other major sites.

  2. Daniel on June 26th, 2007 12:13 am

    You should probably read more than just the title of the article.

    Read it again. Slowly. Now tell me who I said was supposedly running these bots.

    This wasn’t about the scumbag “players” running crap programs to steal money - it was about the losers who try to justify their bad play by saying the *sites themselves* are running the bots, which they’re not.

    Thanks for stopping by though.

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