I thought I’d return to play an old poker adversary who’s always ready for a game here. I am playing against BluffBot 3.1 with a deep stack. We obviously started equal.

World Champion Poker Bot

BluffBot is a World Champion “poker bot” created by Teppo Salonen for the purpose of competing in the first three annual AAAI Computer Poker Competitions.

In a 2006 competition (held at the 21st National Conference on Artificial Intelligence) the first version of BluffBot finished in the 2nd place in limit Hold ’em competition beating such opponents as GS2 by Carnegie Mellon University and Monash BPP by Monash University, losing only to University of Alberta’s Hyperborean.

In 2007, BluffBot 2.0 went undefeated and took a convincing 1st place victory in the no-limit Hold ’em competition beating all other opponents, including Hyperborean07 by University of Alberta, GS3 by Carnegie Mellon University, as well as bots from Gomel State University, Milano Polytechnic, University of Manitoba and University of Minnesota to name a few.

As you can see above I am leading at the moment and I’ll play a bit more tomorrow. I’ll leave the browser open so it should be okay to start again where I left off. Can I beat BluffBot? We’ll see. But I doubt it.

BluffBot can give even experienced poker players a run for their money – at least until they start figuring out certain counter strategies because the bot is still vulnerable to some degree.

The real question is, however, when will BluffBot (or any other no-limit AI for that matter) start consistently beating the top professionals? Personally, I agree with BluffBot’s author and have no doubt in my mind that it’s just a matter of time until bots will be able to beat all human poker players. It’s already starting to happen in limit hold ’em in the form of University of Alberta’s SparBot/Hyperborean/Polaris bots. And it might not be too long until no-limit bots also evolve to the expert level by any human standards. If you play at heads up tables regularly at certain sites the chances are you have played against a bot already. And lost your money! Please let me know.

Newsletter subscribers have now received a preview of a post going out next week concerning the poker bot arrangement I use. But please note that it is against the Ts and Cs of any poker site to use a bot and it is now even against Full Tilt Poker’s rules to use any form of odds calculator or data mining software. Poker Edge and Poker Inspector are specifically banned. Use them at your own risk. I still have one winning profile up for grabs so the first newsletter reader who contacts me after your set up is working gets it.

For new readers here, welcome, and if you haven’t subscribed yet you’ll get the low down on what was available and my view on poker bots next week.

Good luck to you all, as always. Have a bottastic week.