JazzyBets

Over on the minimalist gambling news blog, Smash-Vegas, there is an excellent series of beginner articles on the “Anatomy of a Pokerbot” , using the open source pokerbot software, OpenHoldem. The series of posts on Smash-Vegas covers a wide range of PokerCoder challenges when developing a Pokerbot from scratch, such as the importance of stealth, improving the AI development with Pokertracker software, and using screen scrapers effectively.

The collection of posts of Smash-Vegas also covers introduction to Pokerbot strategy, and a brief, informative riff on First steps in Coding a Pokerbot. An interesting resource revealed in the pokerbot post is the OpenHoldem End-User documentation and formulas.

Taking a last look at the Man vs. Machine Pokerbot championship last month, the University of Alberta research team leading had an amusing quote that “real world problems are more like poker than chess” after the match on MSNBC.

“It’s hard to describe how good that felt,” research team leader Michael Bowling said in a report from the University of Alberta. “As a group, we may not all be great poker players, but all of us really, really want to win.”

Bowling pointed out that this was just a first step. “This was really the simplest form of poker,” he said. “There’s a lot more we can look at, such as playing without betting limits, or playing with more than two opponents. One of the reasons I got excited about this line of research is that it’s not just a one-off. It’s a really challenging path of research.”

Historically, computers have been better at games where all the information is essentially out there on the board - for instance, chess and checkers. Poker is trickier, because players have to make judgments based on different amounts of information about the state of play.

“In general, problems in the real world are going to be more like poker than chess,” Bowling said.”

Wrapping up JazzyBets coverage of the 2nd Annual PokerBot Championships, over the weekend, the Man vs. Machine Poker match was held with University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group’s Polaris-2 Pokerbot pitted against professional poker players Nick “stoxtrader” Grudzien, Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko, and IJay “doughnutz” Palansky. The Polaris Pokerbot won two matches against the professional poker player teams, with one match-up concluding in a draw.

Here are the official Pokerbot competition results:

So, here at JazzyBets, we try to provide a wide range of opinions about Pokerbots and Pokerbot calculators in general, and recently Jazzy came across this interesting is pokerbot a scam riff over at the old school gamer blog, Original Nintendo. Now granted, the guy who wrote that riff, likely has a formal name, but for our purposes, in playfully addressing the curiousities of whether internet poker players should use Pokerbots, let’s call him, Super Mario Fishstix.

So Super Mario Fishstix starts off with:

“First of all what exactly is Poker Bot? It is a computer program that runs on popular Poker Room clients to read your hands statistically and it recommends the players action. I would not call it a scam exactly because it does provide good statistical information but I would not advise using it.”

Let’s see, Super Mario Fishstix, almost hit the definition of an ICM Bot right. A computer program that runs concurrently with online poker room clients and reads your hand and other player’s chips statistically and executes the most statistically efficient player’s action to WIN MORE HANDS. Please eat a mushroom and get big, Super Mario Fishstix. He goes on to say that these computer programs do provide good statistical information, which is slang for, Pokerbot calculations are smarter than me.

Super Mario Fishstix continued to enlighten with:

“The best question is. How can a Poker Bot pick up obvious reads and tells if it’s information is based on numbers? It can’t think for itself or make gut decisions which are crucial. There is no automatic poker winning machine I am sorry to say. ”

While Independent Chip Modeling can’t pick up some time-based reads and tells, the ICM Bot can play optimal ranges, so that it is statistically possible to win more all-in’s, more showdowns and more tournaments, hands down. Gut decisions and obvious reads lead to one thing, Super Mario Fishstix. Sitting out early.

A Poker Bot, like ICM Bot, for instance, that uses an algorithm synthesizing four major poker specific probability theories, is simply more accurate, more intelligent and more efficient at winning SnG tournaments, more often, over a defined period of time. Combined with multi-tabling capability and online poker room frequent player rakeback deals, this can all add up to a super double jump to your pocketbook and then some, Mario!

Save fun for your Sunday poker night with buddies Luigi and Goomba in your Zelda garage. ICM Bot never gets tired, never feels emotions like “Why didn’t I go All-in on That”, never gets sidetracked by distractions or anything less than completely, and statistically PERFECT poker playing. Super Mario Fishstix, maybe there are no automatic poker winning machines, but that’s only because you didn’t try using the ICM Bot, every couple hours with your online poker SnG playing. Yep, that’s right. You can turn ICM Bot on or off, on demand, even in the middle of a tournament. Oh snap! Instantaneous Poker Smarts!

Ok, we’ll offer Super Mario Fishstix a golden star for the line “If Poker Bot was used a Statistical Learning Program through Poker Rooms the idea would be more realistic to use.”

And now for the grand finale. Why Super Mario Fishstix is every ICM bot calculator player’s dream.

“To become the greatest at poker a player must practice the game with friends, family, or online...”

On that note, we cleverly round out our ICM Bot versus Super Mario Fishstix showdown. We hope you had a little fun with our all-in pocket rockets at you, and we’re really glad you think Poker bots, probably are not a scam. See you at the tables, FISHSTIX!

Anarchy Poker is featuring a fascinating riff on Pokerbot strategy development. Here are the two main objectives of their Pokerbot in the making.

The bot must be hard to detect for the poker rooms
We decided that impossible to detect was to much to ask for and it wasn’t really necessary. It would only take time from the more pressing developement.

The bot must be hard to detect for poker players
This is similar to the above but as we knew since before that players can see stuff the operator can’t and operaters see stuff players don’t we wanted to be clear about it.

Critical Security forum has a great thread on breaking PKR and Betfair poker clients. Here is an amusing comment in the thread on magic numbers in cryptographic algorithms.

The easy way is to search for the magic numbers… all common crypotographic algorithms use magic numbers (built in cleverly chosen constants) for seeding or influencing rounds. Searching for these leads you directly to the encryption/decryption routines without having to follow the buffers ; )

A simple magic numbers search will tell you which of the apps files implements crypto, what types of crypto are available to the app, and most importantly… will show you where the routines are. Breakpoint the magic numbers and you’re going to find the routine. For example, lets say you want to find a hash routine like MD5 or SHA when the app uses a static implementation… just search the binaries and find the ones containing the published ’round constants’, set a break on read and you’re going to wake up right in the middle of the crypto.