Welcome to Poker AI!

We hope you are going to enjoy these forums, and all the information available on them!

First, make sure that you are well aware of the PokerAI terms of service agreement: http://pokerai.org/tos.html
You need to fully agree with it, and it updates, if you would like to continue to use this web site.
We would like to remind you that if you are registered member, you are already boudned (and have already agreed) to these terms of service.

FAQ

1) New members
If you are newly registered member, say hello here.

2) Get yourself aware of the forum structure, rules and access levels
Discuss the bellow topics only in the appropriate access level:

*** Poker AI forums category ***
The general forum under the PokerAI forums category are for discussion on:

• Academic discussions on Poker theory, Game Theory, Neural Networks
• Bot building: AI, strategy, general readings
• General purpose poker coding
• Practical poker discussions (in the Poker Discussion sub-forum)
• Posting and discussion on poker publications (The Poker Papers subforum)
• Other specialized poker research (e.g. research over our huge hand history database)

*** How to get access to the PokerAI strategy forums? ***
The information regarding level1 strategy forums is available here. See the related FAQ question N6 below.

*** Online botting forums ***
These forums are for topics about pokerbots on online sites where real money are involved:

• Legality and morallity of developing bots that play for real money
• Discussions on the terms of services of the various pokersites
• Discussions on how widespread bots are in online games
• Discussions on if and how sites are trying to detect bots
• Discussions and code related to development of bots or advisors
• Third party bots for playing on online sites, including posts trying to sell/buy bots
• Other controversial topics that might be against the terms of services agreements of some poker sites (e.g. using HUDs, modding images or reverse engineering poker software clients, using services like PokerEdge, tableratings, and so on).

Read here for more detais: viewtopic.php?p=15331

*** How to get access to the restricted (level 1) forums in online botting ***
To advance to level1, you need to have at least 50 posts, which should not be one-liners, but rather good contributon to the community and the discussions that are going on. At least 10 of these posts should be in the Poker Papers forum (Posting new papers, or commenting on existing papers).

3) Posting links, spam etc.
This forum is non-commercial (with no ads attached) so posting links is not a big issue. Of course annoying, illegal or irrelevant to pokerbotting spam is banned. Links to scam, shady sites, illegal downloads etc. is banned. Links to poker software, and especially to bot-related software are ok (when not banned by other rules). Links to other poker forums are OK, including links to stuff for sale (although you should keep in mind that we aren't associated, we don't guarantee, and we don't care about anything being linked or sold).

4) Selling/buying stuff
This forum is non-commercial. It does not supports financial transactions. So selling/buying stuff in this forum is not allowed. See more clarifications on this.

5) Legality/morality of poker botting
We have separate article/FAQ that covers legality, morallity and so on of poker botting, and we believe that building pokerbots both for fun as well as real money is generally OK (However some casinos expliciely forbid this, due to market and marketing reasons). You can check also this thread discussing on legality of pokerbots. Along with this, however, some people made it clear that while they like very much the AI/computer poker play sections of this website and forums, they do not like and don't want to support poker botting for real money, and be identified with it. For that reason, we have our PokerAI forums section (here), where we do not discuss botting for real money, and move away all such discussions.

6) Getting started with pokerbotting
If you are a complete newbie consider browsing and reading the Poker AI Wiki. Additionally, if you are a newbie and you have never did software programming, you should start by getting with any of the existing pokerbot platforms - OPI, OpenHoldem, WinHoldem, etc., or learning programming (or this thread about the best language to learn) or learning automation frameworks like AutoIt and AutoHotKey.
Following is a list of further helpful links that came up within various pokerai threads. These are now added in chronological order, and might superseed the usefullness of the above links:

• http://pokerai.org/pf3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=648

7) Some rules about private messages (PMs)
Keep in mind, that a private message sent to a level2 member might be shared with other level2 members. This rule is that simple. Additionally, a note to all users that are not even a level1: Your PM may end up reposted in the public space - that will usually happen if you PM some really lame things.

8) Privacy policies and security of PokerAI
Privacy and warranties is covered in the very general PokerAI terms of service agreement, and it is defining: in short, we are not responsible for anything that resulted of your use of PokerAI: http://pokerai.org/tos.html
Having said that, we of course do our best to protect your privacy. PokerAI runs within HDD encrypted virtual machine with state of the art encryption software. Such software is usually used in defense, to protect laptops and other hardware in events of robbery, and so forth. So if someone obtains PokerAI image, he will not be able to read it. We also have private hosting with many "home-made" customiztions, which makes public exploits not applicable.
You also need to know, that as any phpbb forum, we track user IP adresses, we obviously have your e-mail, and we obviously have access to the information that the browser sends to the server: Agent string, etc. We do archive a lot of this information, plus some that relates to your usage of these forums, and we do use it occasionally to investigate users.

Rule adjustments History
2007/12/05: Every registered user can now change his/her avatar.
2007/12/13: Level2 rules revised (members will have read-only access to HHEX, can ban users but cannot see other users IPs)
2007/12/19: Registered users policy separated from Level1 policy
2008/01/04: Small adjustments in reg and level1 policies; remote (linked) avatars disallowed
2008/02/01: Updated sections on how to get access to level1 and level2
2008/02/10: Problems with Mozzila should have been resolved now.
2008/03/10: Added Q&A N6, refering to the newly created strategy forums, and the legallity/morallity FAQ.
2008/03/22: Added Q&A N7, getting started with pokerbotting.
2008/05/14: Added Q&A N8 (some rules about private messages), and updated N7.
2008/05/18: Different PM limit set for level0 (80), level1 (500) and level2 (unlimited).
2008/08/15: Added chapter 9, regarding privacy and security.
2009/04/09: Major updates of PokerAI forum structure and rules.
2010/01/22: Selling/buying is no longer allowed. Inserted as point N4, all shifted with +1.

Problems with Mozzila should have been resolved now. Sometimes, I see problems when jumping to an url, e.g. the FAQ from the forums index, then it will ask for re-login. To solve this, make sure you use "Log me on automatically each visit":