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Online Poker Industry's Big Challenge - Bots

For years online casinos have fought to establish their reputation for fairness against a healthy skepticism largely arising from the fact that players must play a against a computer program. Sure the casino says its outcomes are random, but that not the same assurance as have a real live dealer place cards on the table in front of you.

Gambling's attraction for many is derived from an anticipation of winning and this attraction is severely dulled by any suspicion that you are being cheated. It is for this reason that casino software platforms like Microgaming and Playtech seek third party audits of historical return to player ratios to prove that their casinos return similar amounts to players as terrestrial casinos. But doubts will always linger when a machine hits 21 just as you double up on a big bet.

One of the reasons online poker has experienced such explosive growth over the last 10 years, aside from increased WPT television coverage, is the fact that it is a player versus player platform. Customers are matching their wits against other humans with the computer just enabling the game - a fact that is perhaps the foundation of many players confidence in online poker rooms.

But this foundation is now being challenged by a growing suspicion that poker bots are becoming sophisticated enough to beat even experienced players.

Poker bots have been around for a while. They are computer programs designed to play online in place of a real player. Poker rooms of course do their best to block any bots from enterring their rooms, but these blocks aren't always effective.

Fortunately though, poker is actually a very difficult game to teach a bot to play optimally, and until recently, bots have been relative easy beats. There are considerations that need to be made beyond mere randomness of the cards in the deck - chief among them being opposing player habits and strategies. But some experts suspect these challenges are soon (or may have already) being solved and bots sophisticated enough to beat seasoned pros are on their way, or already here.

The problem is, we will probably not know of the existence of super poker bots until long after their programmers have fleeced players in poker rooms and made enough money not to care about making any more before they let the cat out of the bag.

Milton Shaw has written hundreds of online gambling related articles for popular casino and sportsbook portals like Casinos Page and 4 Online Gambling.

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