The world of online poker has evolved. Today, your opponents aren’t just other human players; you also have to face poker bots. To protect your bankroll and even increase your win rate, it is critical to know how to identify these automated players and decide on the best way to handle them. This guide will walk you through the telltale signs of a bot and provide actionable strategies to turn their programming against them.
Telltale Signs: How to Spot a Poker Bot
While experienced players can often detect bots quickly, novices might not even know they’re playing against a machine. Here are some key indicators to watch for:
- Long Hours of Consistent Grinding: If you notice the same screen names playing no matter what time you log on, even after you’ve taken a long break yourself, there’s a good chance they are bots. While some dedicated humans also grind long hours, this pattern is often a sign of non-human players.
- Unusual Timing Behavior: Bots may take a very specific and consistent amount of time to make a decision, which is unlike human players who are generally inconsistent. Paradoxically, they might also take a long time to act or even time out completely. This can happen when bot operators run too many bots on a single virtual machine, causing a shortage of system resources. However, human players who are multi-tabling heavily can also time out, so this alone isn’t definitive proof.
- Strange Lobby Behavior: Bots can exhibit programmed behaviors in the lobby. For example, a bot might be set to play only in six-handed games and will instantly sit out if the number of players drops to four. You may also see bots that seem to table-select based on the presence of other bots or even “soft play” against each other. These behaviors can be driven by seating scripts used by bot rings.
- Unusual Shared Tendencies: When you see a group of players with similar, unusual characteristics, it’s a major red flag for a bot ring.
- Similar Locations: A group of players all registered from the same country or region, such as Eastern Europe or Asia, increases the odds that you’re facing a bot ring. Bot operators can use VPNs to hide their location, but this is against the terms and conditions and adds complexity to their operation.
- Similar Unusual Stats: While good human players might have similar stats for common metrics like VPIP and PFR, a powerful indicator of a bot ring is when multiple players share an unusual stat. For instance, if you find several players who all have a flop raise versus CBet stat of 25%—when the pool average is closer to 10%—and they also share nearly identical values for other stats, it is highly probable you are dealing with an affiliated bot ring.
A Two-Step Plan to Crush Poker Bots
Once you have a strong suspicion that you’re facing a bot or a bot ring, you should follow a clear two-step process: first
explore, and then decide.
Step 1: Explore and Analyze
Before you take any action, take the time to observe the bots and understand their strategy. Your goal is to determine if their strategy seems exploitable, such as if they are over-folding or over-bluffing in certain spots. This analysis will help you decide whether it’s more profitable to report them or play against them.
Key questions to ask include identifying the bot type:
- Profile bots: These bots use your pre-flop stats to generate exploits if your numbers are too high.
- Pool exploit bots: These are programmed with a static strategy designed to take advantage of known weaknesses in the general player pool.
- RTA (real-time assistance) bots: These bots use solver output to execute a GTO-based strategy.
- Bot rings: This refers to groups of bots that work together, sharing data and potentially using card removal information, which is a form of colluding and cheating.
- Housebots: These are bots operated by the poker room itself, either to cheat players or generate traffic. No site admits to running them, but they are a worrying possibility as they could be unbeatable if they have access to hole card information.
Step 2: Decide Your Strategy
After analyzing the bots, you have three main options:
- Report the Bots: You can file a security report if you think the value of getting them removed is greater than the value of playing against them. Keep in mind that there can be a long delay before the site takes action, and sometimes they may not act at all. While waiting, you will likely need to avoid playing against them.
- Avoid the Bots: This is often a temporary solution. If you don’t want to play against a large bot ring, you may have to be very careful with your table selection or even stop playing on that network for a while.
- Play and Exploit the Bots: If you determine that the bots are beatable, you can choose to play against them. While bots are violating the site’s terms, many players view exploiting them as a simple economic decision based on expected value. If you can find a weakness, playing against bots can be highly lucrative.
Advanced Tactics: How to Exploit Poker Bots for Maximum Profit
If you decide to take on the bots, you need a clear plan of attack.
Targeting “Bucketing” Weaknesses
A major flaw in many bots, including profile and RTA bots, is “bucketing”. Their strategies aren’t smooth; their responses are grouped into a limited number of “buckets” for different situations or bet sizes.
The biggest weaknesses are found at the edge of a bucket.
For example, a bot might have the same defensive strategy for any bet size between 0% and 25% of the pot. This means it could respond identically whether you bet 10% or 20%. Likewise, a bet of 101% of the pot might get you the same amount of fold equity as a 175% pot bet if both fall into the same “overbet” bucket. Even sophisticated RTA bots can be exploited if you use a bet sizing that is not in their pre-programmed game tree, forcing them to use a suboptimal defense from the nearest available sizing. A real-world example was a bot ring that had the same continuing range against 3-bets and 4-bets, regardless of their size. This made
min 3-bets and min 4-bets extremely effective, generating a huge amount of fold equity.
Push Exploits Hard and Fast
Unlike human players who might get frustrated and quit, bots will continue to “hemorrhage money” until their operators step in. Bot operators actively monitor for players who are winning large sums from their bots. When they find one, they may upgrade the bot’s code or activate a
“kill switch”. A kill switch tells the bot to stop giving you action, either by folding pre-flop or leaving the table as soon as you sit down.
Because your window of opportunity is limited, you must
maximize your profit in the short term. This may mean playing unhealthy marathon sessions of 12-24 hours or more. It is recommended to
push your exploits as hard as you can to take as much money as possible from the bot ring. Once they use a kill switch to stop you, you can then report them to the poker room to have them removed.
Special Considerations for RTA Bots
RTA bots are generally harder to beat and may have smaller vulnerabilities. You must have the humility to assess if an RTA bot is truly beatable after rake is taken into account. It’s possible to find yourself in a “mutually assured destruction” (MAD) scenario, where both you and the bot end up losing money to the rake. However, it’s worth noting that the solver output these bots rely on is technically an “ultra-weak solution” and can be beaten.
While the presence of bots in online poker continues, these strategies give you the tools to fight back, either by getting them removed or by exploiting their programming for profit.