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.

And the Free WinHoldem Winscrape Site Is...

*Drum Roll Please*

NOTHING.

Why? I'm not sure.

127 unique visitors came to this site since the time I posted my offer to do a free WinHoldem screen scrape by either direct reference from the WinHoldem forums, or by searching for a phrase containing the term WinHoldem. Not a single person emailed me to suggest a site for scraping.

Is WinHoldem losing ground to the newer, more user friendly poker bot platforms?

Free Winscrape for your WinHoldem Bot

I've been a bit bored lately.
No cashout problems.
No "random" security checks.
No bot problems.
I've gotten some hits from the WinHoldem forum, so I've decided to start tinkering around with WinHoldem again.


The biggest problem plaguing the new WinHoldem user at this moment seems to be the recent loss of official online poker room screen scraping. Unless something has changed since the last time I had to mess with Winscrape, I figure I can knock out a profile in a day or so. I just need you to Vote for the site you want scraped, and please be specific. I will need to know all the details you want in your profile (# of chairs, window size, 4-color cards, etc etc). I will compile all the suggestions and scrape the most popular one.

To be honest, if the winning online poker site is a juicy little spot my custom bot is beating up, I probably won't scrape that so that a hundred 12% vpip bots flood in. Sorry. I doubt this will be an issue as the more popular sites will be requested more often anyway.

Email me to vote.

Winning site and format will be announced on May 7th with the profile coming the following weekend.

Yes, I'm aware that Ray Bornet, WinHoldem's creator, is giving away $100 worth of subscription credit for working master profiles. My anonymity is worth more than $100, but I will find a way to get this to Winholdem support and hopefully posted to the master profile list. I'm not sure how exact I have to be to get my winscrape profile into the official list, but if Ray isn't too demanding, I'll do what is needed.

Update: Winholdem Release Notes

Winholdem.net released a new version of their popular poker bot software with a few improvements geared more toward ease of use than giving your bot a new edge at the poker table.

• f$formulas.whf is Obsolete. A new formula file naming convention means your bot will always look for the formula file of the same name.
• Confirmation Popups Removed. License and chair confirmation dialogue boxes can be removed via the options menu.
• 4-color cards. WH Tableview will now display 4-color cards for easy recognition.

All in all a nice little improvement. Seems that WH support is moving ahead with client upgrades now that he's no longer supporting the never ending process of staying up to date on the poker room screen scrapes.

Official Release Notes at Winholdem.net

Winholdem Drops Free Site Support

As of the 13th of April, Winholdem is no longer maintaining it's catalog of free poker room screen scrapes. I, for one, am quite pleased.

I'm not afraid of many Winholdem users. The program itself, while powerful, is outside the patience or experience level of most that use it. However, I'm pleased to think that less of these amateurs will be flooding the rooms with their junk bots. Can I take money from them? Sure. Most of them, anyway. Unfortunately, though, these new botters often bring heat down upon us all when they reveal themselves as bots to the regulars.


Just last week, a Winholdem update broke operation at some site(s). It was hilarious to watch, for example, particular players timeout at every action then immediately sit back in the next time a flop hit the board. Whether it is a broken screen scrape, or a hackney table-hopping automation, these are the reasons why the low-skill botter is bad for my business. If enough of these guys wave the "I'm a bot!" flag, eventually the fish get wise, the site receives a ton of complaints, and now you've encouraged the site to add tougher anti-bot measures.

Good Riddance!

Ray states, "there are 3 basic opinions:

1. i don't want to bot and i don't want others to bot
2. i want to bot but i don't want others to bot
3. i want everyone to be able to bot "

I guess I fall into #2 at this point in time. I'd be very happy to be the only bot in existence. However, I can see profit if #3 were true as well. I know, I know...everyone is afraid of bots but believe me when I tell you that there are just as many horrible bots as horrible players. If botting ever becomes accepted there will be at least a honeymoon period where every 16-year old with Comp-Sci stars in his eyes will be shoving losing bots into every poker room they can find.

Winholdem hasn't completely abandoned its users, however. They have access to a program called Winscrape that will allow any user to use their WH-based bot at nearly any poker room. While taking a few hours of work, scraping a new site for WH-compatibility isn't difficult. However, like most things surrounding Winholdem, clear documentation is difficult to find.

Official Announcement at Winholdem.net

A New Era? The PokerBot World Championship

Ray Bornet, the creator of WinHoldem, has always been the most outspoken proponent of poker bots. Since the days when usenet newsgroups were the heart of online poker discussion, he's been challenging anti-bot discrimination. In recent months, Mr. Bornet has begun to shift his attention to a completely new form of poker: "Live-Digital".



Live-Digital is the term given to an event where the participants are physically present in the same location, but playing from their computer. As I understand it, any computer that can connect to Ray's proprietary PPRO server can participate and use any type of poker aid they'd like short of collusion. There have been pokerbot competitions before, most notably the University of Alberta's work, but Mr. Bornet has mixed it up in several distinct ways.

Live humans are allowed, even encouraged to play.
There are entry fees up to $10,000.

Now think of the ramifications. For the first time ever, we could see the poker equivalent of Kasparov Vs. Deep Blue. Exciting. I personally won't be attending. I do hold a Winholdem subscription, but I haven't used it for play in a long time. For $100/year, though, it's a cheap way to see what my pro bot competitors/peers are working with. Winholdem is easily the most powerful, publicly available pokerbot if you can get past the steep learning curve, but I've moved to my own proprietary bot long ago. I do credit Winholdem with pointing me toward the path of knowing what it is I don't know, as well as what it is I need to know, in order to properly operate a poker bot war room. Unfortunately there are a few things that are scary above and beyond the work needed to port my bot to PPRO server format.

• Anonymity: Mr. Bornet is intent on pushing poker botting out of the shadows and is looking to publicize the names of winners. I cannot risk that. My income is at stake. I disagree with Mr. Bornet in the value of being named the winner, I guess. I can't imagine it being anywhere close to the loss of income I'd feel from having all the poker room accounts under my real name suspended and bankrolls seized. Plus, the net is full of tinfoil hat wearing wackos looking to blame anything for their losses other than themselves. I don't want that guy tracking me down, convinced I'm the reason he's bankrupt himself at Party Poker.


• EV-: The event is taking place on a cruise ship for jurisdiction purposes. This adds expense and opportunity cost. There is a very small list of confirmed participants thus far and I doubt the larger purse events will even run. This only adds to the relative cost of travel and the cruise itself compared to buy-in.

It's a great idea, but perhaps a bit ahead of its time. Will it be the next WPT or even WSOP? Probably not anytime soon, but with Bluff magazine expected to cover the event and interest from the academic world rumored, the only thing keeping the PBWC from exploding is a celebrity face.

For more information on the PokerBot World Championship, see the official PBWC Forum.