The PokerBots Story -- The Beginning

In sci-fi movies, humans use hand held lasers to kill and destroy aliens , and endless wars rage between humans and robots.

These days humans are more likely to use a hand-held laser to scan UPC codes at the grocery store battle software poker playing robots, or "poker bots" in online poker games.

The bots are real alright.

And just like the robots in the movies, they're constantly getting smarter and learning from their mistakes. Unlike humans, they NEVER make the same mistake twice. At least not after their programmer sees them getting their ass whipped by some human who learned to exploit some programming mistake.

As of 1/08, there are dozens of people selling poker bots on the web. Including WinHoldEm, the best know, almost a "shareware" bot.

Of course none come with guarantees or include the "decision tables" needed to actually make them work, and make good decisions.

You and I will probably never even hear about the teams, even ARMIES of programmers working on the bots that are actually in play on most online poker websites.

For awhile at least.

One pro player "busted" some bots on the Full Tilt Poker website. Busted, as in, identified them as robots, using statistics, and reported it on the web.

Full Tilt exonerated them. Whaaattt??

Robot versus human, and robots versus other robots, in the all-too-real world of online poker and real money promises to be the most exciting software story since Deep Blue beat Boris Spassky at chess in 1994.

This is that story.