Texas Hold Em poker is the most popular game played in the casinos and poker rooms across Europe and North America. It has had an explosion of interest within the last decade, fuelled by media coverage, lucrative competitions and the creation of online poker. There are now two widely televised world tours, the World Series of Poker and the World Poker Tour. These tours a chance to try and get an understanding of how the pros really think, with the invention of the lipstick camera, the viewers are able to see exactly what cards everyone is dealt.



The future for Texas Hold Em looks stronger than having pocket aces, with talk of super casinos potentially being built in the UK, more media coverage of big tournaments and online poker set to boom on mobile phones. However is this glorification of gambling irresponsible? Many argue poker is simply another form of gambling and is purely a game of luck. Well the simple answer is no, it has been proven that skill is a major influence within the game. A study conducted on university students with no prior experience of the game, showed that students provided with a basic strategy for playing proved far more successful that students provided simply with the history of Hold Em. Although the luck of the cards does obviously factor into winning or losing, a player can not win overall without some degree of skill.

Playing Texas Hold Em online presents more obstacles and external factors that need to be considered into any players strategy. Firstly, and most significantly, players can not see other players in the flesh, therefore any tell tale signs of bluffing or excitement about strong cards is not possible. This means in order to try and understand other players techniques and game plan, it is essential to study their play very intently. Additionally a lesser known opponent exists in the form of a poker bot, an automated script that poses as a human player, playing a predetermined set of instructions based on basic poker strategies and statistics. Poker bots are notorious for sitting on very small stakes, limit tables for many hours on end. The idea is that they play a statistically safe game, winning a little each hand, but reaping the rewards over time.

The way to avoid poker bots online is simple, play on no limit tables. Poker bots are not guaranteed to make money and the best way to control them is to have set limits, so they do not lose their entire stake in a large pot. Obviously if you only play with mates, in pub tournaments or at casinos, means you do not need to worry about playing bots!

Making a computer that can beat humans at poker is a huge challenge, primarily because, unlike chess, there are definite uncertainties which are unpredictable. Programming a computer to intelligently bluff is the pinnacle of artificial intelligence. In a recent show down, pitting two world class poker pros against the poker bot, Polaris, resulted in a win for the poker pros, but only just. Even the pros admitted it would only be so long until computers technically played a better game and had the edge.