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6/12/2005: Online Poker ‘bots’
A bot is a computer program - that in this case, will play online poker for the designer.
So far, a software program cannot beat a skilled human being, but then again most online poker players aren’t skilled.
30-year-old Newport Beach engineer Roger Gabriel started playing for money only a month ago. He lurks online at the tables for the chicken-hearted; even there, where the biggest ante is 4 cents, he can’t win consistently.
But Gabriel has a potentially powerful alter ego. In his spare time, he’s perfecting a computer program to go online and play the game for him.
His BlackShark software is still a work in progress, but Gabriel has no doubt that such programs eventually will be championship quality. “In the future,” he said, “robots are going to take over.”
The ‘bots’ don’t get tired or distracted, and can play endlessly.
There are already all kinds of bots playing unaware human players.
The march of the machines will be celebrated in Las Vegas next month with the world’s first money tournament for robots — and the $100,000 prize is drawing a handful of coders out of anonymity.
The emerging technology does more than raise the stakes for real people and online casinos. It also raises fundamental questions about how far computers have come in mimicking and improving on human behavior, and about how far they can go in the future.
Computer programs have conquered checkers, chess and, most recently, backgammon. By rapidly evaluating plays more moves ahead than a person can, computers routinely beat the strongest human players in those games.
Coder Ken Mages has more advanced software.
Other robot designers, such as Ken Mages of Evanston, Ill., are further along. But though their electronic progeny may win at small-stakes tables, they usually fall apart when the human competition is stiffer.
After two weeks of programming, Mages said, “I could sit down at a 50-cent table, put 50 bucks in the account, go to bed and wake up with at least $75.” The most Mages said he won that way was $250; he never lost.
For two weeks this May, Mages sold his software for $60 a copy. After getting deluged with customer pleas for technical help — and a threat by one who gambled away $10,000 to send him the bill — Mages sold out to a business associate, Hong Kong engineer Ben Lo.
Computer experts have designed programs for many games that now consistantly beat humans.
Poker is just the next challenge.
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