

Building a Poker Bot: Part 2 - dangoldin
http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-2

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mattmaroon
"Ironically, your profit would shrink to zero if the site stopped collecting
rake! The thing that more than any other makes games tough to beat - the rake
- makes it possible for your bot to turn a healthy profit. And that, as a
long-time online poker player, makes me smile."

That's not true at all. In fact, the logic is terrible. If your bot is
breaking even at a raked table, and you remove the rake, it would become a
winning player. Far more so, in fact, than it makes just taking 35% of the
rake back.

~~~
fallentimes
I definitely agree with you, but I was trying to think about how what he said
could be true. Is it possible rakeless games would alter the strategies of the
opposing players enough to render the bot ineffective?

But I guess even then the bot could be modified accordingly. Interested to
hear the author's response...

~~~
mattmaroon
It would alter strategy a little. You should play more hands. There are a
number of hands that are very close to 0 in EV that become positive EV with no
rake. Not that many though, especially in low limits.

I'm sure the bot would be modified accordingly. My guess is it would add a
couple percent more hands in. I'd further suspect that the increase in
postflop play would then lower the bot's expectation (bot's are incredibly
well suited for pre-flop play, not so much after) so though it would still do
better than at a raked table it wouldn't be the 3x you'd expect.

It would do better though. The skill differential would be nowhere near large
enough to overcome adding a hundred or more dollars per hour to the table.
It'd still probably be at least 2x I'd guess.

The bot would also make more in the long run because the people it makes its
money from would go broke slower.

------
xirium
I thought that the topic was covered comprehensively last week (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=185830> ) but, there's plenty to discuss
about privacy invasion and bot counter-measures.

