When people think of poker cheats, I believe the first thing that comes to most people’s minds is a way to count the cards, or have stats calculated for you. This does exist, is cheating and does up your odds. But the most advanced form of poker cheating software is a bot that can play for you instead. It is still being argued whether or not a bot has the advantage over a human player. I believe it does and here is why.
Bots have no emotions. A human player gets nervous, can be intimidated, and can get over confident. Even the professional poker players you see have to work to hide their emotions. If they could do it as well as a computer you wouldn’t see players in sunglasses, sweatshirts with hoods and they’d carry on a conversation with their fellow gamblers. A bot studies your style of play, and can easily manipulate your own emotions against you.
A University of Alberta research group created VexBot in 2003. They tested it against professional expert player Phil Laak. Phil played against VexBot and was successful. Phil beat the bot, though Phil himself does say he had quite a bit of luck on his side that day. The research group went home and tweaked their bot, adding more features and a better program. In 2005 Phil and the bot had a rematch.
Phil Laak, who studied PokerStars Cheats and thought he could win, went up against the savvy bot in a game that ended less then three hours later. Even this professional player, who knew the bot was studying him, eventually gave up a pattern. Once the bot detected it, the bot became quite aggressive in its own style of play. This professional gambler who spent hours studying the bot and knowing that he was playing a bot, still lost. What chance does that give a regular hobbyist player when coming against a bot online? I don’t believe the odds are very good.
Granted, a bot this advanced isn’t available to the online poker player as of yet. However spend just a moment looking online and you will find some bots that promise to be almost as good. Their claims have not been tested yet, and no, you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet. But the fact is, the software is out there, and does exist.
The other thing is, a human player gets better over time. They learn with experience, the more they play, the more hands they see, the more they will learn. Take a lifetime of studying and playing poker, and a bot player can have that kind of knowledge in under a day. They have unlimited time to download hands, to study the odds and then have a one hundred percent accuracy rating at recalling the information.
Be careful when pulling out a credit card to gamble online. If you can look at it as a means of entertainment, and you are okay with loosing the hundred dollars, then by all means have fun. However if this is your source of income, and you are playing for the money to pay your mortgage you may want to think twice about who you are playing. It is very possible another player out there, is simply watching TV, having a shower, or even sleeping, while letting a bot run the program and take your money.