Tuesday 11 May 2010

Online Poker Bots: Raising The Stakes For Players Like You

If you like texas holdem poker, this is an article you must read. Online poker sites have found a way to cheat you out of as much money as they can, preying on unsuspecting people who are simply playing a game they love. When you play poker in a casino you know that the odds are in the dealer's favor. When you play poker online you automatically assume the same thing. But you never know. You don't even know if the players you are up against are even human. The player sitting beside you at your virtual poker table could be an online poker bot.

A poker bot is an online poker playing program (robot) that has an advantage over human players. There is speculation that some of these bots are so advanced that they can play online poker at a master level posing a significant advantage over real players like you. There are also researchers that say the bots can actually read the other card hands so they know the exact advantage and when to cash in. With the online poker industry raking in millions of dollars a year it is at risk from people looking to cheat others out of as much money as possible.

Still there are some programmers that say an online poker bot that is greatly sophisticated is still years in the making. They say it would be entirely too hard for a bot to actually read the poker hands of the human players in real time and be able to keep up with them. There are some commercial products available to human players that claim to hand them an advantage but there is no proof to these claims. Whether or not online poker bots raise a significant threat is still yet to be seen.

When you decide to play an online game you automatically take the risk of not knowing who or what you are coming up against. In all actuality when you play online with anything you are playing with fire. There's no way of knowing whether you are playing a human or a bot and that is the reason for concern. It's completely unfair to the consumer to play against a robot that has a huge advantage. Some say that the online poker bots can easily beat out the best human poker players. As unfair as it is there's really no way to stop it from happening right now. You just have to hope that the people you are playing with are actually people and know when to stop. You could lose a whole lot of money playing against a master poker bot if you don't see the signs early.

So how do you know if you are up against an online poker bot? There are a few things you can look for. First off, if there is one single player winning every hand you should question it. If you are an above-average player and you can't seem to win on this site then perhaps you have come across a bot. Or if it seems like when you do have a great hand and should be raking in the money and everyone conveniently folds take it as another sign. If you suspect you are up against an online poker bot you should leave the site before you lose any more money. At this time that is the only way to safe-guard against the bots.

So what does this mean for the online poker business? According to research it means nothing at all. Even though people are becoming more educated about bots they are still willing to put themselves up against them. The online poker industry is set to reach the $1 billion mark this year so that should tell you it is still booming. Just be careful when you play online poker and watch for the signs. No one wants to play for fun and end up losing all their money to an online poker bot.

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