Pokerbot 9000

While browsing through my poker forum of choice (www.cardschat.com), I've seen a couple topics regarding online poker assistance programs. A program that basically sits underneath your pokerstars or full tilt or whatever else window and gives you all the odds and info that you would normally have to figure out on your own, to make the decision process a lot easier. Now, at first glance, this is a great idea - if you have trouble calculating all the odds, let the computer do it for you, right?

Still, I was a bit surprised to see the majority of the respondants to the topic agree that it was a good program and that using it wasn't a bad idea. Maybe it's just me, but I don't think that using such a program is a good idea at all, no matter what your level of play is or what stakes you're at.

My reasoning? Well, for one thing, if you're constantly glancing between the cards and the odds that are displayed, you're a lot more likely to stop paying attention to the other players, which is never good. I mean, if the program is telling you where the odds are for everything and you're just kind of running on autopilot, you may not notice that SuperPoker112's just bluffed you out of the third hand in a row.

Also, considering that most online poker players also play at least occasionally in real life, using such a program means you're likely to fall apart when that crutch you've been leaning on becomes absent during a live game. If you're so used to having the odds figured out for you, you might notice your ability to figure them out on your own has gotten very rusty. Or, if you've never really been able to figure them out, you'll never get that far. Your poker playing will become very stagnant, and you'll continue to be a live-game fish.

That said, I can certainly see why somebody might want a program to prevent them from losing serious money on some miscalculations. I just think that, if you're going to use one, you'd have to be able to remain alert to the rest of the table and continue to do a lot of the work in your head to stay sharp.

I know that I'd likely end up letting it wreck my play, so such a program will never find its way onto my computer screen.