Are Online Poker Bots Profitable?

Online poker has been the biggest change in the history of the game, and has seen it played by more people, more often than ever before. Thanks to poker websites and mobile apps, people can play poker anywhere, from sitting at home to spending a day at the beach, a poker game is just a few taps on your phone away.

While many players enjoy poker for fun, some want to take it further and see online poker as a way to make money. In this digital environment, the idea of a bot that could play for you while you do other things seems like the perfect approach. If a bot can win regularly, it could bring in profits for you without you needing to do much more than set it running. But can a poker bot really make money?

Are Poker Bots Profitable?

So, for anyone looking to make money through online poker, this is the big question. Can a poker bot be profitable? The answer is that yes, they can, but you need the right poker bot. The thing is, poker bots have been on a journey over the years. Early ones appeared almost as soon as online poker became a thing, but they really were not good and even a beginner player would have little difficulty in beating them.

However, they continued to develop, and recent bots have proven capable of beating professional players. Not just one either, a table made up of 5 professional poker players, and the bot beat them all. This has been made possible by the advances in artificial intelligence, and with AI algorithms able to run on normal laptops, that technology is now available to us all.

These bots can reliably beat human opponents, but that doesn’t always mean they win money. In fact, there are a couple of risks for poker bots to deal with. The first is staying ahead. Winning more than losing is itself difficult, less than 20% of all poker players manage it. Being able to win consistently is key, and it is important to find a bot that can do that.

The other challenge is detection. Being identified as a bot can get accounts closed with most of the poker room operators, and with it any funds you had won. So, winning means more than beating other players, it is doing that without being noticed, so you can actually gain access to those winning funds. Only bots that can manage both can be thought of as profitable.

What is an online poker bot?

But let’s go back a few steps, to understand poker bots and what they can do, it is important to know what they are. A poker bot is technology that can play online poker on your behalf. You log into your poker account, join a table and the bot will then play that table for you until you stop it.

The idea is that in micro stakes poker and other cash games, it plays along and wins, making profit for you while you do something else.

Types of poker bots

There have been many types of poker bots over the years. As new technology emerges, they make full use of it. Poker bots began as hardware-based devices even before online poker was a thing. Researchers have found poker to be an excellent game to use in the development of artificial intelligence, due to its incomplete nature. You never know what cards other players have.

So, over the years poker bots have gone from these quite primitive hardware-based systems to modern poker bots, which use software based AI algorithms and can beat most players. The very best has beaten a table of professional players, coming ahead of all five.

The most common type of poker bot today is these software-based AI solutions, but not all are built to play the game on their own. Virtual assistants provide in-game advice and track player data to help you, rather than play the game themselves. Other bots are designed to be training aids, playing against you one-on-one, allowing you to practice specific scenarios.

Understanding thh complexity of online poker bots

Modern poker bots use software-based AI algorithms to provide the intelligence behind their decision making. But that is only half the story, they also need to ‘learn’ the game of poker, without that, they are just a piece of software that can calculate probabilities.

So, the software is turned into an actual poker bot through playing the game against itself. The bot will play as many hands of poker as possible, often millions, and as it does it learns the rules and finds the best strategies to win. This training is the key to creating a viable poker bot.

How do these poker bots function?

By playing the game over and over like that, the system builds up a database of hands, and this is the key to a successful poker bot. What poker bots do is analyse the game they are playing and compare it with the millions of games in their database. They look for similar situations to the hand being played, and see how each one turned out.

Using this, they calculate the strategy most likely to win, and choose play options that follow that strategy. It is simple in concept, but the calculations and processes involved are extremely complex.

How to spot a poker bot?

While poker bots can, and have repeatedly beaten human players, even professional poker tournament players, that only works in cash game poker rooms if you don’t know you are playing against a bot. If you do, simply leave the room and try another table, it is just not worth the hassle.

Always look out for bots when you play online poker. There are a couple of tells, the first is repeating the same pre-flop strategy every time, with the same bet amounts and approach, never varying. In fact, that one tell, using the same bet value over and over through a game is one of the better indicators.

The other thing to look for is time to take a turn. When you are playing a real person, sometimes they will know exactly what they are doing and take just seconds to make their play, other times they will need to think and take longer. But if an opponent takes the same time each turn, every turn, it is likely that is a bot.

How is the profitability of online poker bots?

This depends on the kind of games bots are playing. The best option for bots is micro stakes games, where players are relatively inexperienced usually, and bots can win small but regular amounts over time. The amount they can generate depend on the stakes in the game, how long they are left running and with more advanced bots, how many tables they play simultaneously.

Factors Influencing Poker Bot Profitability

To sum up, how profitable a bot will be is dependent on:

Quality of the bots programming

How good a player the bot is, and how often it wins, is down to the quality of the training and the database it has access to.

Type of poker game and its rules

Some games are more suited to bot play than others. Small stakes cash games work best, while games with specific house rules can be challenging for a bot as it may not be fully trained on such changes.

Opponent skill levels

How good the opponents are is an obvious issue. As with human players, a bot is going to win less often playing against pro tournament players than they would a beginner. Cash games, especially low stakes options, are often the places new players begin their journey in poker, making it a great option for bots.

Monitoring and updates of the bot’s algorithm

Poker is a living game, making sure a bot is working at optimal efficiency is crucial. This means monitoring performance and updating algorithms, going through additional training when necessary. Failing to do this could impact overall performance and with it, profitability.

FAQ

Can using a poker bot guarantee profits?

Nothing can be guaranteed in poker. However, a good bot with a proven track record, set up to work on a good table with the right kind of opponent should deliver profits over time.

How much does it cost to acquire and maintain a high-quality poker bot?

Not as much as you think. Most bots today can be run on home computers or laptops as long as they have plenty of RAM memory. It is possible to run a bot via rented cloud computing hardware too, costing just a few dollars a month. The license fee for the bot is the biggest cost, usually a few hundred dollars.

Are there any success stories of profitable poker bots?

Yes, however because bot use is against the terms on most commercial poker sites, you won’t really see them publicized. Bot creators will usually be only too happy to show results if you are interested in their product.