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The Last Day I Played Online Poker

Mazur 6 Comments
This is post #1 in an ongoing series of articles about my work as a poker bot developer.

October 2, 2008 was the last day I played online poker… well sort of.

I actually hadn’t played for many months prior to that, though that’s probably not what you’d have concluded if you looked at the activity on my account. The hand histories would have painted a different story–one of an extremely active, fairly profitable player at PokerStars’s Heads Up No Limit Hold’em Sit-n-Go’s, which are basically short one on one poker tournaments.

The thing is I didn’t play any of those games — a poker bot I built called EVe did.

October 2 was the day PokerStars figured it out.

October 2 was the day they suspended my account:

PokerStars Sunset

I’ve debated for a long time whether to write about it.

On one hand, the online poker community usually doesn’t react well to this type of thing (go figure). Bot discussions tend to get a lot of “People like you destroy the games”, “What a scumbag you are…I hope you get banned” and “I hope you die in a grease fire”-type responses and I definitely don’t want to die in a grease fire.

On the other hand, I learned in the process and I’d like to share some of my experiences. I have nearly two years of stories, spreadsheets, hand histories, and results that I think a lot of people will find fascinating.  Maybe, just maybe, talking about it will result in better bot detection techniques, which the poker sites very much need. I’d also like to try to convince any ambitious programmers out there that they’re better off eating glass than trying to create a poker bot (because at least with the glass you’ll quickly feel the pain and realize what a terrible idea it was, unlike building a poker bot).

After weighing the options I’ve decided to go ahead and write about it a little bit at a time. If the feedback is positive, I’ll keep writing and if not, I’ll probably stop. We’ll see how it goes.

More to follow.

New Plan: Small, Educational Projects

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I’ve had this idea in my head the last few weeks that I’m going to just jump into my next major project and learn the skills required to make it along the way. That’s kind of what I did with Domain Pigeon and since it got the job done, I didn’t consider any alternative processes. But, after reading the first few chapters of the Django and Flash books, I think it’s a much better idea to successfully complete a few baby steps before I try the long jump.

So, instead of diving headfirst into a large project I’m going to work on several small ones that will each require me to learn something new. Breaking it up into small, manageable components will let me focus on mastering a few skills at a time. One will be a small Django project, one will be a Flash project, etc. I might even do several of each, depending on how much I’m enjoying the work.

And who knows, maybe one of them will turn into something big and I’ll abandon my current plans.

We’ll see what happens.

Hecho en Mexico

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There are things all around you that you don’t notice and don’t question. We all have preconceived ideas and notions about what things mean and why certain things are the way they are. But every now and then you learn something that changes the way you see things… something that just blows your mind.

Growing up we had a small, colorful tapestry that my parents used to help decorate our laundry room. It was about two feet wide and three feet high and had a woman and a boy on it and the woman was holding a fruit basket on her head with one hand. On the bottom it said Hecho en Mexico.

Until I was about 15 I thought this meant Woman in Mexico. I must have passed it hundreds of times growing up, never questioning what it meant. Then one day in high school Spanish class I learned that hecho actually meant made in, not woman. It said Made in Mexico. Doh.

I went home and told my mom who had a similar “hrmph” reaction. We had held this idea in our head for such a long time and just like that, with a little bit of new information, the tapestry changed.

Here’s an interesting little exercise that Andy Hunt told us to try at the Philly Emerging Tech conference:

Close your eyes for a few seconds and think of the color red.

Open your eyes and look around.

Everything that’s red should stick out.

How do you know what to look for if no one tells you to look for it?

Fortunately, there’s an easy, often neglected way to broaden your knowledge: try something new.

Read the same blog everyday? Try a new one.

Been using the same programming language for 10 years? Been there… Try a new one.

Take the same route to work everyday? Try a new one.

Is English the only language you know? Try a new one.

Same wife everyday? Try a new one. (Just kidding honey)

Bottom line: the more experiences have the more things you’ll learn along the way. And the more you know, the more Hecho en Mexicos you’ll discover in your own life.