A.I Poker, Is It The Future?

Concern is mounting in poker forums and chat rooms about poker "bots", is it just paranoia or the future for internet poker?

With poker topping the $1 Billion mark this year, the emergence of so called "poker bots" has many long standing online players worried. These bots, capable of playing 24hrs a day to a pre-defined strategy are rumoured to already be in place at fixed limit poker on some of the major online rooms, fleecing newbies and poorer players of their bankrolls and amassing huge sums of money for it's owner.

Is it just paranoia? Do thee bots exist? Two questions that have been asked in many forums of late. The simple answer is yes, they do exist, a little searching on the web will turn up a program which can be purchased or used for free as a demo on three of the top internet poker rooms. Fortunately, it's not as simple as downloading the software and leaving it to run. The user must define a strategy for the software first, so the short term work is all done by the user, however, apparently once the setup is complete, assuming the user has a solid strategy which they have known to work at low level fixed limit hold em, everything should be plain sailing from there.

Should regular players be worried? Experienced players, it seems, should have no trouble in beating a poker bot, the software is designed so the user can pick on poor players and exploit their weaknesses and right now it can only play at low level fixed limit hold em. Some argue the poker bot is cheating, other say it's simply playing in a way that they normally would, only for 24hrs a day. Poker rooms will ban users trying to use bots in almost every case.

As technology improves, many will seek to gain advantages in the world of online poker. A chess bot has already "out thought" a human master, whilst an all conquering poker bot isn't yet on the horizon, in the coming years more and more complex softwares are sure to be developed as their owners seek out their fortune.