To declare that internet poker has experienced a tumultuous time would be putting things mildly. Do not forget the cheat scandals, the political problems, and the banking problems that the poker rooms themselves have gone through over the years. To say nothing of stupid celebrity soap operas that somehow make the news. It is enough to make players consider ditching this hobby completely. However then what would you do for entertainment? Then there is the fact that some folks actually play internet poker for a living.

However many professional players would tell you that the tables have become much harder to win at in recent years. History are the times when a person could join a game at PokerRoom.com, play for 2-3 hours in the evening and easily make $100 while watching your favorite show. Nowadays it appears that many folks have learned how to play good enough. This is a real bummer, but not unexpected. Players are simply not going to keep on losing their cash for sustained periods. This is basic economics in reality. Unless the fish are rich they have to learn to play better or they will be forced to quit.

One interesting evolution in the game that has garnered some attention is the arrival of poker bot programs. There are those who would blame these for helping the tables harder. But the truth is that most of these programs are fish themselves and therefore only occupy the very lowest stakes. There are a few of decent ones around though. The poker rooms vary widely in their enforcement of their anti-bot policies, but the main trend is moving in a direction of tolerance. There are several reasonable reasons for this.

Firstly, we are back to simple economics again. The competition makes things trying. To keep operating any operation must generate enough income, and internet poker rooms are no exception. Poker bot programs are the best customers that the poker company has. They generate the most rake. Some rooms simply cannot afford to have them leave. Only the very top rooms have the luxury to do that, and the ones who do are basically are just making a public relations move.

Second, we ought to examine the question, are these automated playing programs really all that bad of a thing to have at the tables? What harm do they do? The games have more players due to them, and some poker sites may be out of business if they were gone. So in actuality they create liquidity, which helps all of us in the end. They retain no definable unfair edge over real players, being as they have no access to any additional information. The only ones who are complaining about them are serious players who think that bots are to be blamed for the games being tighter. But as already discussed, that was an inevitable and unavoidable development anyway.

Finally, pokerbots do not really go against the spirit of the wonderful game that we call poker. In fact they bolster it. Adjusting your poker bot profile to play how you want it to is probably the climax of a players poker learning experience. It is the next progressive step for the committed student of the game. Getting it to do what you want is very gratifying, and a bunch of fun. Don't knock it until you have tried it. And who can tell, it might save online poker in the process.