This week I have been hard at it playing poker…..not live poker but I have been doing some serious research regarding one of my opponents in limit hold’em……BOTS!! I have downloaded the latest version of Poker Academy this week and been trying out their highly rated "Sparbot" programme in heads up play.
I must say that it is better than what I thought and this prompted me to do even more research on these things this week starting with the puch publicised Man vs Machine encounter in Canada last year with the new Polaris bot. Top pro’s Phil Laak and Ali Eslami took on Polaris over a series of matches at 10-20 heads up limit play.
Laak and Eslami were each dealt the same hands and the same situations in seperate rooms but one set of hands were on the positive side while the other was negative. This eliminated differences in luck. With 500 hands per match and 2 matches per round, we had a total of 4000 hands of play. The official score was that the pro’s won 2 matches, Polaris won 1 with one being tied. The tied game ended up with Polaris in front but the rules stated that the result could only be scored as a win if the winning margin was more than a certain amount.
The pro’s were only marginally ahead monetarily after 4000 hands which could have easily shifted again quite easily. The problem with limit hold’em is that bots can play the game very well unlike their NLH counterparts. The other problem is that bots literally infest some poker sites almost like locusts and the sites do not police the games anywhere near as well as they say and is why I play on Pokerheaven.
The play of Sparbot while not being top notch is quite good but the best part of Poker Academy is that you can get access to Polaris through their site and I intend to be taking it on in the near future in a series of matches that I will show on here to the readers.
Unfortunately the advance of the bots is a sign of things to come. Despite limit hold’em being my best game, I dont expect to beat this programme by much if at all if it is as good as they say it is.
It just underlines that perhaps the biggest factor in deciding where on the internet you want to play poker is the internal security systems that a site has in place and their overall level of surveillance.
Beware!!!!!
The Dean is sponsored by Poker Heaven and can be seen at www.pokerheaven.com/thedean.html
