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Scott Montgomery, after winning Event #36, has a chance to join Frank Kassela as a two-time bracelet winner this year, if he can stay alive through Day 3 of Event #47. Sigurd Eskeland became the third player with Norwegian roots to win WSOP gold…

The issue of poker bots is an ever present one in online poker. It has basically been around from the very beginnings, and the number of companies and various websites offering poker bots for sale for $20 has only increased ever since. For starters, I think we can rule out these $20 offers, without a second thought. Why would anyone sell something that’s potentially worth hundreds of thousands of dollars for a few bucks? I know these sites feature rather convincing sales copy, but that does little to defeat the above logic.

Can poker bots successfully compete against real poker players at all?

Does current technology make that possible? The answer to that would have to be yes and no. Technology is certainly capable of creating a poker bot that can successfully take on the world’s best players: it has been proven and it can be done. The same way I can’t replicate NASA’s space shuttle in my back yard though, I can’t possibly create a poker bot that could achieve anything close to what it’s supposed to. The poker bot which proved its capabilities against some of the top professionals was developed in a university lab, with no efforts and costs spared. It was also programmed with help from some of the world’s top professionals, so yes, if you can pull all those resources together, you will definitely be able to create a viable poker bot. Also, you probably won’t go around selling it for $20 on some website that screams “scam” from a mile away – I can pretty much guarantee that.
“a poker bot needs to be able to think, so a layer of AI was added on top of the odds-calculus capabilities” it sounds so simple, doesn’t it? As a person who’s worked with AI, I can tell you it’s anything but that, and a statement like that is not just an insult to reasonably smart readers but it’s also a gross underestimation of the intricacy of the game of poker.

Does this mean there are no poker bots playing online?

Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Some of the experts seem to think that the very entities which use poker botting the most are the online poker sites themselves. They allegedly do it to secure critical player liquidity (the same reason for which they offer rake rebate deals and poker propping), without which they would never survive, so the logical argument is certainly there. Most of the mainstream poker rooms make a clear case of not wanting to see any such attempts made at their tables though.

Poker rooms have a number of ways to detect poker botting, an offense which is considered of the highest degree and which is usually punished by the ceasing of all funds and by the closure of the suspected players’ accounts. One of the ways poker rooms can detect botting is through a software hook which is installed onto the client’s computer together with the client side of the software. This hook has the ability to detect programs running in the background, and it can identify poker bots too.
The solution can be tricked relatively easily though. Botters almost always use a second computer (possibly a laptop hooked up to a PC) to mimic human interaction perfectly and to keep the computer on which the software runs clean. While this move may be a strike scored by the botters, it doesn’t mean botting is anywhere as close to required minimal efficiency as some would like to believe. The poker industry has the resources to raise hell against bots and botters, and therefore I believe that commercially available poker bots are absolutely useless in today’s advanced online poker environment.

If you want to give botting a go, I’ll have to advise against it. Your bot will probably start by losing money, and it’ll continue with having your account suspended and your bankroll confiscated.

Whenever you are playing Texas Hold Em Poker the hands you play can often depict whether you are one round away from being a massive winner or one round away from losing absolutely everything because in No Limit Texas Hold Em Poker, all your chips are at risk every single time you play a hand. The only exception to this is if your opponent has less chips then you of course.

In ever poker game you play your goal is to win the most chips possible. Your secondary goal is to lose the least amount of chips possible. You need to remember these goals when you are playing. You should always play good starting hands if you can. Since you usually aren’t dealt very good starting hands that often you should probably be folding most of the hands you get before seeing the flop. Generally speaking, the hands you want to stay in for are pockets of high pairs; so aces, kings and queens, or two premium cards like ace-king or king-queen, suited or unsuited. Depending on your position at the table you may be able to play a few different other hands.

The hands you can play and which ones you can’t will be greatly affected by your position in the betting sequence for that round. You will need progressively better hands the closer you get to the big blind. So in last position you will be able to get away with a much worse starting hand then if you were under the gun.

With all other things being equal, if you are in first or second position you only ever want to play exceptionally great hands, like a premium pair. If you are in one of the middle positions you can probably play any good pair and or two high cards headed by an ace or a king. When you are sitting on the button you can play practically any pair and also suited connectors. Remember though, you must be very careful and particular about what hands you play when you are the small or big blind.

So when you are playing any of the Texas Hold Em Poker hands you need to remember your primary goal. You are trying to win the most chips possible. Keep in mind your secondary goal; to lose the least chips possible. If you are playing very weak hands you may not be able to reach these goals. Generally you want to be playing only good starting hands. If you are on the button you can play slightly weaker hands and get away with it. The fact of the matter is, you just have to fold alot of cards waiting for the good hands.

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Poker Tips that Pay: Expert Strategy Guide for Winning No Limit Texas Hold em

The PokerStars Sunday Million and Full Tilt $750,000 Guarantee both returned this week after a one-week hiatus as each site ran satellites to the World Series of Poker Main Event. Both failed to surpass their guaranteed prize pools this week…