For many years poker bots were dismissed as unable to compete against any sort of reasonable poker opponents; only being of use at the lowest of stakes. But all that has been changing thanks to the University of Alberta and their decade long research into creating a high level poker bot –in the same type of manner as chess computers.

It would appear that poker bot designers are getting closer to that goal, as the University of Alberta’s poker computer has been holding its own against top players like Phil Laak for a few years now. With one caveat: They’re poker bots are limited in expertise to Heads-Up Limit Holdem.

Still, the news must be seen as troubling for online poker players who have been hit with a number of bombshells in recent years from Super-User accounts swindling high-stakes pros out of millions of dollars to some of the biggest names in the industry getting into hot water for multi-accounting and other infractions. Now online poker players will also start worrying if the player across from them at the virtual felt is even a real person.

We’ll see what kind of measures sites like Full Tilt –who recently seized funds of, and banned two players for using poker bots—and PokerStars implement to crack down on poker bot usage.

Tags: poker bots

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 11th, 2010 at 2:41 pm and is filed under Poker News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.