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What Makes Good Online Poker Sites?

There are a lot of websites dedicated to poker. Online poker sites have gained popularity in the recent years and have become the largest moneymaking revenue for casinos. What is it that makes online poker sites so addictive and appealing to users today?

Online poker sites are essentially poker rooms that not only provides information on how to play the game but it also allows the user to enter their website and place bets. In a sense, online poker sites are “electronic gambling houses.” With thousands of Internet traffic online, it is by far the most effective medium to reach players worldwide.

What is the attraction of these online poker sites? First of all, it offers accessibility. Before the online poker sites, a man living in L.A. will have to travel all the way to the Las Vegas just to participate in a poker tournament. Now, all he has to do is go online and play poker in any city he likes without leaving the comfort of his house.

Second, online poker sites make it easy for beginners to learn about the game without feeling like an idiot. There are software tools like a Flash tutorial or free downloadable games from where he could study and practice playing poker. When he is confident enough to play with other players, all he has to do is sign-up and start entering tournaments.

Third, online poker sites are easy to navigate. This is important especially for those who are first time Internet users or the ones who hate technology. This quality of online poker sites can attract more novice players and even professional ones.

Fourth, online poker sites give a lot of incentive to their players. Among these are the sign-up bonus, the promotion program, the loyalty and rewards scheme and many others. These incentives vary from each online poker sites. That is why it is important to know what are the important qualities that make popular online poker sites.

· Online poker sites must have a catchy and easy to remember web address. Poker.com or Party Poker is direct to the point and unforgettable. Names like Royal Flush Poker Rally.com is too long and will be forgotten in seconds.

· Online poker sites must have a good source of information for all levels of poker players. The site must assume that people who pass by their site can be come potential users if they use the right keywords and provide good articles and resource materials about poker.

· Online poker sites must be easy to navigate. This means the links must be correct and the icons or buttons used are attractive and functional.

Joining only requires a few steps. The faster and easier it is to join, the higher the possibility of getting new users.

· Online poker sites must have a great game variety. There should be games for beginners and high stake rollers. Or at least there should be enough variations of poker to keep your target poker age group interested.

· The graphic must be attractive and clear. High-resolution graphics are great but if it requires quite some time to load, members will most likely abandon the tournament.

· Online poker sites must be very secure. This means that the assets of both the house and its players are protected from hackers, viruses and fraud. These sites must ask for insurance to avoid any untoward incident concerning lawsuits.

· Online support must be readily available to the users.

Online poker sites have a definite advantage of the real-life casinos in the form of multi-table games. In the traditional casino, the player can only join one table at a time or a single table play. It is impossible to physically monitor and focus on two or more games since the player will have to move from one table to the other.

With the multi-table games provided by online poker sites, a player can now join three to ten games and watch the all in windows all in one computer screen. This is also a great way to increase the player’s winnings. The more games he can get into, the greater the possibility for him to double or triple his winnings in the shortest period of time.

When you get bored form having to travel and spend that much money on expense instead of just playing poker, then maybe it’s time to give these online poker sites a chance. Who knows? It might just be your lucky day.

Online Poker Bots – Threat or Not?

Introduction
Online games from chess and backgammon to 1st person shooters are rife with people who use computer assisted play or computer robots – even when there is no money at stake. With the appropriate program any player is able to play at a world championship level ruining the game for honest players. What makes online poker different, given that there are huge amounts of money at stake?
In this article I will explain how I developed a poker bot and what I learnt from this experience. My conclusion is that although it is possible to construct a poker playing bot the threat from poker bots to the online poker player is extremely small to non-existent.
“Games” Theory
For interest and college courses I had previously written computer playing programs or bots for games including chess, Connect 4, Othello, backgammon, bridge and various others. For games such as Connect 4, Othello, chess and backgammon where all players have the same available information about the game state, the theory on how to construct expert bots is well known. Deep search techniques, looking many moves ahead, are used for games such as Othello and chess. Recently (10 years ago) it was discovered neural networks could be taught to play backgammon better than almost any human player. Games such as poker and bridge contain hidden information where the players can see their own hand but not that of the other players. The published theory behind writing expert computer bots for these incomplete information games is decades behind the complete information games and there are doubts techniques will be developed so that computers can play at expert or world championship level. At present the best techniques for these incomplete information games seem to involve some form of simulation and opponent modelling.
Anatomy of An Online Poker Bot
There are 3 basics parts to a poker bot.
1) Data Gathering – observing the game state and history
2) Data Processing – using the information from the data gathered to determine whether to fold, call or raise.
3) Output – Pressing the appropriate button on the poker room client.
My Poker Bot
My program was written in early 2004 with Microsoft .Net C++ and was developed to play at one online room only. For the technically minded the program relied heavily on MFC and the Win32 API.
1) Data Gathering
My bot gathered information about game state and history from online poker tables by taking repeated screenshots and analysing the image. To begin with I just observed games, taking screenshots automatically so I could gather data on the position of the cards, chips and button. By determining the color of a certain few pixels I was able to gather all this information about the state of the game.
Eventually I was able to gather data from multiple poker tables (4 at a time) by repeatedly bringing each window to the foreground and taking a screenshot. From this screenshot I was able to determine my cards, board cards, button position, who was left in the hand, pot size and player bet sizes.
2) Data processing
This is the component that eventually bought my poker bot project to an end, unable to develop a strong enough strategy to win consistently. I tried various rules based, neural net and simulation techniques. At best my bot was able to make a very small profit at $1/2 and $2/$4 limit hold’em, but nowhere near the thousands of dollars a week I envisioned earning when I started the project. In the end it just wasn’t worth my time to continue to put resources into developing my poker bot further.
3) Output
This was the easiest component to write. This involved programmatically moving the mouse pointer to the appropriate screen co-ordinates and then sending a mouse down/mouse up command signalling a left-click. I did give consideration to adding the ability for the bot to use chat but never progressed that far.
Conclusion
Although you might run into a poker playing bot whilst playing online the odds are it plays very poorly. At any level of play you are much more likely to run into an expert human player than an expert computer player.