# Poki

Poki is well-rounded artificial intelligence system designed to play full-ring Texas Hold'em. Poki is the result of years of research into computer poker techniques. Poki models each specific player independently, tracking their playing styles. Poki will adjust its play over time to counter your style of play.

Poki uses what it knows about your habits to put you on probable hands. Once Poki has put you on a hand, and evaluated the strength of its own hand, a formula-based betting strategy is used to decide on a randomized action.

Poki keeps track of your play based on your profile. If you use a new profile Poki will treat you as a new, unknown player.

### Configuration Options

Poki is very configurable and can be turned into everything from a wild and aggressive raiser, to an uber-tight rock, to a loose and passive calling station.

#### Pre-flop Settings:

There are five tightness levels to choose from (tight, moderate, loose, loose-passive, and small stakes advisor). See Preflop Limit Tightness Settings for detailed information on these settings.

The pre-flop deception level lets you choose how much randomization Poki will use in pre-flop actions. If you set the slider towards honest Poki will raise with strong hands, call with moderate strength hands, and fold everything else. With high deception (tricky) Poki will have a higher chance of calling strong hands and even some very weak hands, and will raise some moderate hands.

#### Post-flop Settings:

For post-flop play there are four sliders. The first slider controls how tight Poki will play. If you set Poki to all-the-way loose then Poki will never fold post-flop. Similarly, if you were to set Poki to the maximum tightness it would only stay in with the absolute best hand. For solid play you should set this value to around 45%.

The second slider controls Poki's aggressiveness. If you set Poki to be passive, it will tend to check and call more than bet or raise. If you make Poki aggressive it will favor betting and raising.

The third slider controls how deceptive Poki will play. For instance, setting Poki to tricky will increase the chances of Poki check-raising or slow playing strong hands.

The last slider controls how much Poki will use its opponent modeling information. If Poki is set to use the math it will base its decisions more on the mathematical strength of its hand than the strength of its hand relative to a specific opponent. This sets the style to either 'play the man' or 'play the cards'.

#### Post-flop Calling Settings:

Both post-flop calling options will cause Poki to call more often, making the play much looser. This is especially useful when trying to simulate loose players.

Use Implied Odds will make Poki call more with questionable drawing hands, such as gut-shots or overcards.

Defend Large Pots causes Poki to call to the showdown with only moderate-strength hands if the pot is large enough to warrant it.

### References

> The Challenge of Poker.
> Darse Billings, Aaron Davidson, Jonathan Schaeffer, and Duane Szafron,
> Artificial Intelligence Journal, vol 134(1-2), pp 201-240, 2002.
> `http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~darse/Papers/AIJ02.html`

Back to Opponents