RelQ Poker Software

Many popular poker-related movies like Rounders popularize and glamorize the thrill of pitching your wits and guts against other players at your table. However, this is often quite far from the experience of the contemporary poker player. Of course, live poker games and tournaments are still very popular. Even so, many poker enthusiasts are taking advantage of the convenience of downloading poker software and playing against other “invisible” players online, who may be on the other side of the world.

For some players, this constitutes one of the advantages of poker software. If other players cannot see or hear you, you do not have to worry about hiding your poker tells. You can concentrate on “pure” statistical calculations, instead of worrying about being intimidated or fooled.

Speaking of fooling, however, the nature of online poker software allows for other types of deception. Many experienced online players worry that popular software and sites are being infiltrated by “bots,” or sophisticated robots/programs that masquerade as human players, and are designed to play better than a huge proportion of regular human players.

Unfortunately, a lot of poker software such as Wilson Software does not have sophisticated self-monitoring mechanisms built to detect bots. Monitoring is usually carried out by site staff. True, human monitoring can be better and more subtle than surveillance that is merely built into programs. However, the problem is that not all players are sure that site employees are honest. After all, perhaps the bots were placed there by the site owners themselves, in order to cheat visitors of their money.

In order to reassure players, poker software should include mechanisms that try to distinguish between human players and bots, and then block players who are unable to prove their humanity. Simple methods could include “captcha” methods. You have probably seen captcha methods before. These usually involve an image of numbers or letters that you have to copy down and enter. The symbols in the image are usually skewed or warped in some way, so that a bot (but not a human being) would have trouble reading them.

Unfortunately, distinguishing between bots and players, sight unseen, is rather difficult. For all you know, a player that appears to be a bot is simply a very logical, consistent human whose playing style only appears “robotic.”

Of course, the “blame” for players’ doubts about online poker software should not fall solely on the designers. This would be extremely unfair. After all, the designers of poker software and the owners of poker sites where such software is used are often two different entities. As such, it is quite possible for software engineers to put together a program they believe is honest, secure, and accurate, only to have unscrupulous site owners “tweak” the software in order to make room for cheating.

Poker (no matter the form in which it is played) is a thrilling game, and its inherent risks are part of that thrill. However, players should still be sure of certain things, and that includes the promise that their opponents are human beings. Software designers should take this risk into account, and do what they can to remove the danger.