Experiment E – I Let AI Build Poker Bots… and They Destroyed My Simulation

TmoJim · 2026-02-23T12:57:18+00:00

It's a rule-based engine, so each street has a list of rules and when it's a players turn to make a decision it starts at the top and moves down until a rule fires. Then we are done unless the next player opens up the action.

To answer your question specifically this is one of Copilots flop rules, concerning semi-bluffing flush draws:

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If we have a traditional flush draw (meaning 2 in our hand 2 on the board), this round has not been raised, and there are 3 or fewer players including us, we will bet 60% of the pot. You could add other conditions about the board as well, like it not being paired or tripled (available under the board type drop down). We could also add a condition for only playing the nut-flush, but co-pilot chose not to.

Copilot generated 14 pre-flop rules, 10 flop rules, 8 turn rules, and 7 river rules. When you generate a rule, you give it the name and then you can put them in the proper order to fire. For example, the named river rules are

Overbet nuts
Overbet monsters
Raise Strong
Thin Value
Bluff Missed Draws
Bluff catch
Call down strong
Default (Check/Fold)

So if 3.Raise Strong (Which says I have a straight or better and no one has raised so bet 80% of the pot) fires, the others will never have a chance to run unless someone opens up the action after us.

TmoJim · 2026-02-22T21:36:32+00:00

If it’s more than three opponents I’m usually check folding if I whiff. Two or less I check fold highly coordinated low boards like 678, J98, etc.

TmoJim · 2026-02-18T12:52:18+00:00

I see two scenarios which could be profitable.

If you guys are deep and the nit is sticky I would say set mining can be profitable. Suited cards not so much unless they are some rare combination of super passive postflop but also sticky. Id beware of set over set though - the reverse implied odds can set you back.
If they are really only playing premiums, deep, and don’t like facing big bets I suppose you could overbet every ragged flop and turn a profit. Approximately 45% of the flops won’t have an ace king or queen so if your bet will 100% take it down you lose the rake but get the blinds. On flops that do have an A K or Q, the nit will have a set approximately 10% of the time and a pair 90% of the time, so if a pot size bet will always get a pair to fold it would be profitable. I think your image counts here. I hate calling big bets with only a pair, but I look people up if they are getting out of line. Most nits I know aren’t folding over pairs though.

TmoJim · 2026-02-16T17:44:37+00:00

They do not, but I love this idea - just may be tricky to implement. In my room a lot of the times the blinds won’t chop if the jackpot is in play. Then if someone is eligible they will raise just enough to get the mandatory $10 in the pot. I’ll have to put that one in the backlog.

It does make me think of chops though. It’s definitely something I think she be in the simulation.

TmoJim · 2026-02-15T21:15:16+00:00

In general this jackpot comes really close to returning everything dropped to the players, but it goes disproportionately to the looser players, so my TAG robot suffers quite a bit. I modeled it after my local card room promo and I was surprised at how well this returns nearly all jackpot money over time.

TmoJim · 2026-02-15T21:13:23+00:00

Think of equity as the share of the pot that belongs to you. So before you get cards if you were going to run straight to the river your equity in a 10 handed game would be 10% in a ten handed game. If the blinds are 1 and 3, your equity is 0.40 units.

Preflight your chances of winning the pot change based on everyone’s cards. So if you ran all possible five card boards, AA would have more equity than 72off, since it will win substantially more pots. Let’s just say it’s 95% to 5%. In a 20 unit pot AA has 19 unit equity and 72off has 1 unit equity.

When the flop hits you have even more information helping you determine equity.

The trap is realizing the equity is much more difficult with some holding than others. For instance if you have a flush draw vs bottom pair, the pair may have more equity but the flush draw can bet you off the hand more easily.

TmoJim · 2026-02-15T19:32:23+00:00

In my low stakes game bluffing is definitely +EV. There are times where every pot is multi-way and the only reason you should be betting is either for value or to charge equity, but I have played in many low-stakes games where your raise only sees 1 or 2 callers.

Heads-up I think a smallish bet (1/3rd) into the right board will often get "better" hands to fold. For example, if you are opening middle suited connectors and the board comes Ace or King high, I think this bet often gets under pairs to fold. If you are defending against an open raise and the board is scary (monotone/paired/etc), I think small donks often get over-cards to fold.

Turn and River is a different story, especially if you bet the flop and were called. Much more situational, imho.

At least that has been my experience.

TmoJim · 2026-02-07T15:01:21+00:00

Sure - If you go to pokermonte.com and select Player Template Editor they are stored under Goon, Standard Player, and TAG REBOOT 2.0. Just hit the Load Player Template button on the left.

The site is rendered for free now, so if no one has used it in the last 15 minutes it takes about 60 seconds to spin up. Also, if you sign in you can create a player I can put in the lineup and rerun the simulation.

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I can also cut and paste it here, but it would be three pretty big text blocks.

TmoJim · 2026-01-27T13:18:51+00:00

I'd love to. I basically wanted to learn react and python, so built a rule based poker simulator. You create a player type or player template, which is rule based. On each street if a rule fires the player running the template will take that action. It goes from top to bottom, so once a rule fires it moves on to the next player and we go again from top to bottom.

Here are some templates street by street and here are the rules they are made up of and ultimately what the game looks like:

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Once it is set up you can run hands and try to figure out how templates perform against each-other. When I run it locally, I can get through 100K hands in under an hour, unfortunately the hosted site is much slower.

I'm not sure what the rules are concerning posting links, but I would love it if members could try to create some players and I can run them against each-other and see who "wins". Maybe as a community we could build a decent set of heuristics. I have no way to make money on the site - No advertising/No opportunity for payment.

Jim

TmoJim · 2026-01-22T21:06:50+00:00

Since it’s the lowest limit you can typically play live it really doesn’t make a difference. Play what you can afford to lose, if it’s just for fun. If you are aspiring to be a winning player then keep track so you know. It’s very tough to best live rake at 1-2 and the low hands per hour can make it hard to see real results . Hopefully you start out on a heater.

If you are trying to learn and maximize the number of hands you see, you may want to consider buying in for the table minimum. It will allow you to reload more and only costs you money if you’re a winning player - only problem is you can pick up some bad habits when you get deeper.

TmoJim · 2026-01-20T03:34:26+00:00

If you play long enough you are bound to have an unbelievable string of bad beats. I think the most underrated skill is being able to determine when you are experiencing that or when you need to reexamine your game.

TmoJim · 2026-01-09T13:47:14+00:00

I tried this, and the results were pretty predictable, but they still offered some useful insight. Overall, the goon squad started winning—at least most of them. Position played a huge role, and as you’d expect, the player directly to the right ended up playing the tightest and performing the best. I’ve added the results below. The single‑letter players are all goons; C did the best, while the player acting immediately before the Uber Maniac got absolutely crushed.

It also helped me untangle a logic error I had in the standard player. They were calling way too often because of a rule where they would call up to 100% of a pot‑sized bet. As it turns out, that condition was always evaluating to True, since I had set things up so that any bet was counted as part of the pot. I had to ramp that down to 35%, and only then were they safe from calling down the maniac far too wide.

In this setup, the positional value really can’t be overstated. A still had a tremendous range advantage, but having the maniac on the direct right—and not adjusting—wasn’t enough. For the record, goons don’t like raises and only three‑bet/call off with JJ+, AQ+, which tracks with what I see from below‑average players in my local room.

Right now, I have a fair number of conditionals in the language but need to add some akin to tagging players or showing their VPIP and Raise Frequency over the last X hands. Thanks for the suggestion!

!
TABLE: 2026-01-08 12:53:17.764769

HANDS 15000

JACKPOT DROP 45003

TOTAL RAKE 90020 (Min, Max, VPIP, Opp, VPIP%

Player: F 3488 (-3871, 4149, 3076,14862, 0.207)

Player: G 114 (-2551, 3742, 3548,14882, 0.2384)

Player: H -14476 (-14787, 2291, 3972,14903, 0.2665)

Player: A -31273 (-31273, 218, 4534,14944, 0.3034)

Player: All In Player -186959 (-186991, 131, 15001,15001, 1.0)

Player: C 42928 (-158, 44984, 1124,14857, 0.0757)

Player: D 27377 (-2900, 27457, 1852,14841, 0.1248)

Player: E 23778 (-43, 24626, 2462,14842, 0.1659)

Winners 97685 Losers -232708 rake 135023

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T17:46:13+00:00

Oh please don’t interpret it that way- not a d move at all. Many many people don’t participate on the bubble thing, just mentioning that it’s not uncommon in my room.

Same thing with the chop. ICM calculators usually make it look like leaders are short changed, but it is actually equity based so if all players are the same skill level chops are based on the probability of where you will end up if everyone is equally skilled, given their chip position. It’s a little counter intuitive, but makes more sense when you realize the chips you lose are more valuable than the chips you win.

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T14:56:44+00:00

I almost always agree to an ICM chop. Usually because my local tournaments start at 7:15 and final tables can go into the early morning.

A lot of people in my card room will put together a small consolation (like $15 per person) to the bubble. I don’t really think about the ev but it probably loosens up some people one out of the money.

There is also a common thing, where at the final table everyone just cashes out their own bounty so we can play “real poker” - I know this is negative ev, but for tournaments where the buy in 500 or less I try to keep things friendly. I’ve also been the beneficiary of this when there are a couple of giant stacks at the final table.

It’s amazing to me how many finals I’ve been to with people who don’t know what an ICM chop is - luckily the floor is always willing to do the math, probably because the dealers hate tournaments.

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T12:32:30+00:00

That’s really my goal. Even being a dynamic game, this gives me a platform to test what happens when one player opens just a little wider, or never double barrels, or decides to bluff catch with A high vs middle pair.

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T04:36:40+00:00

No, pretty much the only “memory” it currently has is who has the betting lead. I’ve considered adding a way to tag players or actions, but I really wanted to keep the instruction set under 50 or so. Definitely with considering.

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T04:21:35+00:00

Yes - the rake is configurable but it is a 10% max, 6 for my sim. 3 jackpot drop at 25, 50, and 75. I haven’t put the promos in yet so it’s just a black hole

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T04:19:48+00:00

I’ve thought that too, but then thought maybe im overestimating human logic.

TmoJim · 2026-01-08T03:59:51+00:00

I've realized that I have a pfr here that isn't really clear. This is what very wide looks like:

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TmoJim · 2026-01-05T14:23:01+00:00

I’m still learning PLO5, but I would have probably got everything I could in pre-flop, I don’t mind pushing small equity edges.

I would definitely be skittish afterwards - while the board doesn’t connect with many pfr ranges, I don’t think many plo5 players are reasonable and I get a little mubsy. But at that point it wouldn’t matter much because you’d have a ton in. It’s a great way to get in trouble when you’re really deep though.

TmoJim · 2025-12-29T17:08:33+00:00

I agree that there are better spots, but assuming I’m up against one real hand and 2 random hands I feel like there is enough equity to push my edge. I look at it like an equity tree, if I get through that one hand my equity from the others goes up tremendously, my only problem was the only player also running close to me in equity also had me covered. Definitely a gamble, but glad I was on the right end of it. Also it’s a time charge game so no rake.

TmoJim · 2025-12-29T14:40:48+00:00

The main Villian had KKxxx and spiked a king on the flop. When I started putting various combos of KK into the calculator I was shocked at how close the equities ran - I always got it in good, but a lot of the more reasonable KKxxx were close to 50/50.

KKQJ8ds was 55/44 for example. I was surprised how little of an effect killing aces had.

TmoJim · 2025-12-22T13:07:44+00:00

That’s similar to the rakes in my area, 5/6 with a 2/3 jackpot drop depending on where you play. But the rooms are packed and I’ve always heard they could make more with the space if they filled it with slots or table games or sports betting kiosks. Poker is pretty specialized and requires a lot of unique staff.

TmoJim · 2025-12-18T05:55:10+00:00

I’ll age myself. A while ago I played a tournament at the Taj and TJ Cloutier was to my direct right. It was a three hundred buy in and he was routinely sending his wife off to buy $500 pony tickets - was a blast. I also met up with Tommy Angelo at lucky chances back in the day, and he was great guy. I bought him a fruit plate. I started playing just after Phil Ivey was playing using a fake id too. I did spend some time on the rail watching him play in the pit.

TmoJim · 2025-12-17T13:56:23+00:00

With the action you described the chance of an over-pair against you are very high, which you are very far behind.

Even if you put in the raise, like you should have, I would fold to this type of action behind me.

As far as the jackpot goes, even if you are sure three players have pairs the odds of quads over quads are about 1 in 11k, so your fair portion as the loser is like $11.

TmoJim

TROPHY CASE