Open Holdem, Free Online Poker Bot Source Code!

If you have been sitting on the sidelines, afraid of what virus or trojan might be hiding in a commercial pokerbot, now is the time to get in the game. Open Holdem is a new OPEN SOURCE (nearly) commercial quality botting platform.

That's, right. It's open source. You can see the source code and you are free to modify it anyway you like (within GPL restrictions, I believe).

OpenHoldem builds on the foundation of WinHoldem established by Ray Bornet. In fact, it uses Winholdem screenscraper profiles and formulae. It appears as if it were a reverse engineering job on WH, but I guess only the WH developers know if they've actually decompiled WinHoldem or if the mystery coder simply copied the function. I doubt it is a decompile, or we'd be hearing about legal problems already.

Without a doubt, though, it is a solid piece of code. This isn't a hack job. Outsourced or home brewed...I don't know, but it sure looks like the work of a professional coder to me. The OpenHoldem developers (no idea who that is, but I've heard whispers of "SingleMalt" from the WH forums) give the following reasons for releasing this project:

• Questionable long term viability of the WinHoldem platform (and I totally agree). WH requires connectivity to a "license server" to function. If that server is unavailable or discontinued, the software is non-functional.

This is the main reason I jumped from the WinHoldem platform. I didn't like the idea of being dependent on Ray's updates or liscencing. I always had the nagging suspicion that WH would up and disappear someday, and then you'd be totally screwed.

• WinHoldem forces software upgrades on you whether you want them or not. With OpenHoldem, you choose when you want to upgrade, if at all.

This was never that big of an issue for me, but I can certainly understand the concern. WinHoldem never seemed to have the greatest beta testing and some of the updates forced you to change your formula or profile before you could run the program again. I understand Ray's need for version control since he's supporting all these users, but still...that's no consolation when you are about to leave the house for a weekend and your bots don't work.

• Peer review. Does WinHoldem really do what it says it does, and does it do it correctly? Without peer review of the source code, we will never know.

• Are you a tinkerer? Do you want a solid code base from which to develop your own particular botting platform? OpenHoldem provides this.

• WinHoldem is a closed platform, and the community has been unwilling to contribute to the success of that platform; this is a cultural issue encouraged to a large degree by it's author(Ray Bornet).

I'm not going to ring the death bell for WinHoldem just yet, but this can't be good for them. As of this writing, a WH subscription is still needed in order to properly screenscrape the casino and output a valid profile. The OpenHoldem Pokerbot Platform developers are planning to release their own version of Winscrape (Winholdem's tool for creating a profile that let's the robot "see" cards, chips, and everything else on the table).

When that day comes, WH may be in trouble. Honestly, I'd hate to see Ray Bornet suffer from this. All in all, he's done a lot of good for poker bot operators, as well as having taught me the ropes. I owe him a lot.

So, anyway, grab this source code if you have any aspirations of running a poker bot system. This is valuable source code without a doubt. I know of poker bot players that have spent thousands of dollars for their own custom bots that were no where near this quality. Grab it before Google pulls it.

Here's a link to the OpenHoldem OpenSource Poker Bot home. You'll find the source code, versus bin, and even a free Cake poker 10-man table Winscrape profile. For any other poker site, you'll have to find a profile or build your own with Winscrape, but you'll need a WinHoldem subscription for that.

We'll be watching this closely to see how the WinHoldem vs OpenHoldem war turns out.