A Bot's Life: 2

[Stephen Marks]

I was on holiday a bit, so I am just catching up.

I have to say at the outset, I love the style of Wilson's Texas Turbo Holdem. I love the look and feel, the excellent methods of defining players and their styles to practice against, the ability to do certain kinds of simulations, all set up for human beings who are not necessarily programmers to master.

When writing a bot program, with no regard for look and feel, but with great care for the play, a rulebased engine like TTHE has some shortcomings, as I soon discovered. First, while tabledriven rules are sometimes excellent, (for instance a rule which says always Bet and Raise and reraise when you have the nut flush with an unpaired board), the rules are not enough. More rules are needed for special cases, more code is needed for changing the rules based upon number of opponents and what they've done in previous rounds, and code is needed for those patterns, used by excellent players, to bet no matter what their hand, and to fold when they cannot win based on a pattern (I call these ratcheting up and ratcheting down.)

The first of these which I found was the obvious devaluing of marginal hands, hands which are very powerful in a tough/shorthanded game, but which are deadly in a game with 8 players staying for the flop. Taking numbers of players into account in just a few places in 'play' games makes a simple bot which is tight and aggressive (too agressive) into a monster.

I said I'd talk about screen graphics (commonly called Screenscraping in computese) this week, but I think this is a good topic for next week. But assuming you've written code which can view a position on the screen, and if the color is green, it is the table, but if the color at that one position on the screen is white (or red), you are looking at the dealer button...and assume you can look at all 10 positions until you find the button. You've done not only what the human brain does to 'see' the dealer button, but you've also done what Botty does. Next week, I will talk about reading the screen, which while (as someone pointed out)it is not 'difficult,' it is 'tedious.' Let's say you are playing at the Bellagio, when do you decide what you will do (let's say preflop)? And what actions do you take at that time? This is what I will talk about.


PLAY OF THE WEEK
----------------

Botty is in mid position with JJ. Raise. Reraised by an opponent, capped by Botty. 3 players to the flop. By the river, 23945 is showing, suits unimportant. I am watching, and as the single remaining opponent bets, I am saying to myself while watching (he was the raiser), he has an Ace, save the bet Botty...well Botty calls the river, where the guy shows TT.

For a win for Botty. Maybe everyone on 2+2 would call too, but maybe not. I know lot's of people who would not.....this call was put in some cryingcall code I wrote a while ago....

BAD BEAT OF THE WEEK
--------------------

All week. No opponent didn't hit their flush draw, all week. No opponent didn't miss the Ace on the river when staying for whatever reason with A6o when I raised, especially with Botty having QQ, which killed us this week. Botty got beat by Mr. ICallEveryFlop twice in a row when his runner runner spade flush came in with 94s and then T2s. Maybe he is lucky with that suit. Argh.

BUG OF THE WEEK
---------------

New code about 3 mos ago for some straights, to change the rule for bad and lowend straights. In the code section for Nut straight, code looks like:

if (nutstr8(handval))
strcpy(rule, "A3"); // A3 means always raise and reraise

this code, unfortunately found its way in a cut and paste into nut straights when there is a pair on board. Botty lost 2 extra BB's when Mr.I-Play-96o-from-middle-position hit his fullhouse on the river against us. Less agressive there now.

OBSERVATION OF THE WEEK
-----------------------

Most 2-4 and 3-6 players are horrible online. Botty has been drinking a lot when the A6o and t2s win so much. Botty doesn't play many mornings because the players are better, but often not much better.

QUESTIONS OF THE WEEK
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1. Botty reads cards, buttons, bets, etc by screenscraping (reading bits on the screen) to see whats going on. 4-5 products (some mentioned in this Forum) do screen reading, and people have implied that these might crack the network packets or Windows commands of the Poker clients instead, which would be way easier and more fun. Anyone know anything concrete about this?

2. Poker question: Botty misses bets on the river. Like us all. (ok most of us). There is one nice situation where the pattern should tell enough: On the river, headsup, with the button, and the opponent (who has not bet the turn) checks. What other things would you the human look for to decide to bet the river? (for instance, 2 flush cards on the flop, but no matching flush card on the turn or river; yes, I know, in that case I will only be called? when beaten) Ideas would be helpful...


RESULTS
-------

Playing at 2/4 and 3/6, Botty lost about $100 in about 1500 hands this week. Total of +$700 for 3500 hands. So many bad beats, oh so many. Fighting our way out of slump. I do not have human patience of others when this happens to me. Most of the reason I wrote a bot. Makes me crazy. Hope for better results soon.

Stephen Marks (AKA)

[bicyclekick]

I think it's extremely interesting what you're doing (i'm a csci major, taking machine learning right now actually), but I gotta say that playing online with a bot will ruin online poker and I'm not 'ok' with that.

I know all it will take is time bevfore bots take this over, just like they did counter-strike...but dammit that's a game and htis is for money.

Not cool, man, not cool.

[frizzfreeling]

EXACTLY!!! And on top of that, this guy already has a very well paying job, so in effect, he's just doing it to screw people over. Or maybe he feels the need to pump up his deflated ego? After all, there are a lot of programming projects he could have gotten into without harming others. But then again, since he cant actually see the people he is stealing from, I guess it is ok then. And it is stealing, just like taking a computer to the blackjack table at your local casino.
It really surprises me how many ooohhhs and aaahhhhs this guy got on his last post from the people here. Im sure this post will be the same....

[ZeeJustin]

[ QUOTE ]
And on top of that, this guy already has a very well paying job, so in effect, he's just doing it to screw people over.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you mentally retarded? Why not say the same exact thing about every poker player that's better than you that also has more money than you?

[frizzfreeling]

Come on now. Are you saying there is no difference between this guy and a pro poker player? If I get beat by someone with better poker skills, so be it, thats the name of the game. What he is doing is totally different. If you can't understand the difference I am speaking of, then who is retarded?

[SaintAces]

[umdpoker]

no. using a machine to do it is much different. the problem is that in theroy, you could put 10 of these bots on at all hours making you money. i think its cheating because you aren't sitting there watching and reacting. one of the most important attributes of a good poker player is not tilting. a robot obviously never changes moods and tilts money away. i like the comparison to people using machines to beat blackjack tables. only difference is that online, nobody will take you in the back room and teach you a lesson. i don't have a casino near enough that i could play regularly without the internet, so i dont want internet poker to be ruined by these bots. i suspect party poker sdoesn't want you doing it, and therefore, it is illegal. on a lighter note, congratulations on making this bot work. it is certainly something to be proud of. just please don't ruin poker for me.

[umdpoker]

nuh uhhh you're the stupid head

[frizzfreeling]

So I am retarded because I think what this guy is doing is wrong? Are there no legit poker players posting here anymore, or just a bunch of wannabe theives? I, like anyone here, could do the collusion scam with a partner over the phone, but yet I dont. Does that make me a retard too? Because I dont believe in taking every possible angle regardless of whether or not it is legal, you think that I am the one who should be criticized here?
You have a poster above who could care less about what is essentially cheating at poker, and 2 of the 3 replies are against the person (me) who speaks out against what he is doing. Is that it, really? Or have both of you completely missed the meaning of what I was saying? Do you enjoy playing poker online? Because mr. "marks" and people like him are trying to destroy the game as we know it. No professional poker player in his right mind would try to do that. Can you see the difference now, or do I need to convert it into a pre-school tutorial for the both of you?

[frizzfreeling]

Wilson software, I am sure, does not condone the use of their program for this purpose either.