Play poker against bots

How to play poker against bots

1. Deal a tablePick 2–9 seats and a blind speed (5–9 seats need a free account). You land in the lobby with the table’s link.
2. Choose a level and speedIn the lobby, set “Bot level” from Level 1 (easiest) to Level 5 (hardest), and “Bot speed” to Normal — human-like, or Instant.
3. Add bots to open seatsTap “+ Add bot” on each seat you want filled. One bot needs no account; for more, sign in free with an emailed link — no password, no card. Change the level between taps to mix levels at one table.
4. Start the gameTap Start. You plus one bot is a heads-up match, no account needed; fill every seat for a full ring game.

Bots can sit at any table size. Human-like speed gives each bot a thinking pause — usually a couple of seconds, a little longer when it faces a bet, and never more than 10 seconds. Instant makes them act at once, which is the quickest way to get through a lot of hands.

How to read the bot profiles

Each bot is a set of rules, and each bar above measures one rule in one precisely defined spot. They describe intent, not results: a bot that bluffs the flop 65% of the time in that spot can still show down a monster the next hand. The bots also mix their play with random draws, so the same spot doesn’t always get the same answer.

Hands it plays

Share of starting hands it puts chips in with when nobody has raised yet (average over the six seat types; the band shows early seat to button).

Raises first in

Share of starting hands it raises with when first in, rather than just calling the big blind.

Bluffs the flop

How often it bets the flop with no pair and no draw after raising before the flop.

Calls with nothing

How often it calls a half-pot bet on the flop with no pair and no draw.

Raises big hands

How often it raises a normal-sized flop bet when it holds two pair or better.

Which hands each level plays

Before the flop, a bot’s level decides how many hands it plays and whether its seat matters. Pick a level and a seat to see exactly which starting hands it puts chips in with when nobody has raised yet.

Level 3 and Level 4 widen their ranges toward the button, as good players do. Level 1 plays everything and Level 2 plays the same half of the deck from every seat — which is exactly the weakness to attack: steal their blinds from late position and value bet them relentlessly. One quirk worth knowing: the Chen formula rewards connected cards, so hands like 7-6 offsuit make some ranges that K-6 offsuit misses.

Mixing friends and bots

Bots fill the seats your friends can’t. A common setup: four friends and two bots for a six-handed game, or you plus a single bot for heads-up practice while you wait for the group. Every bot shows a “BOT L3”-style badge in the lobby and at the table, so nobody mistakes a bot for a person.

• Late friends get priority. If someone opens the link when every seat is taken but the game hasn’t started, the most recently added bot leaves to make room.
• Seats lock at the start. Once you tap Start, nobody new joins — bots included — until the game is over.
• Bots play fair. Each one decides from its own two cards, the board, the pot, the stacks and the betting. Nothing hidden reaches it.
• The host stays in charge. Remove any bot from the lobby before the start with one tap.
• Bots can sit in league games, but never score. At a members-only league table, bots fill empty seats and the standings count only the members — padding a table with bots earns nobody points.

Planning a bigger night? Private tables explains who can join, and the virtual poker night planner sizes a game to your evening.

A practice path, level by level

Each level has a built-in weakness, and beating it teaches one skill. Work up the ladder: when you win comfortably at one level, move to the next. After a game, Rematch on the results screen deals a fresh table with the same bots at the same levels in one tap, so you can replay a level until it’s beaten.

1. Level 1 — learn to value betIt calls a half-pot bet with no pair and no draw, and only folds pure air to bets bigger than 1.5× the pot. So bet your made hands, bet them bigger than feels polite, and don’t bluff — it won’t fold.
2. Level 2 — steal pots, respect its betsAfter the flop it bets only with top pair or better and folds anything without a pair to a bet. Bet when it checks; when it bets, fold your marginal hands.
3. Level 3 — use position, fight back against c-betsIt continuation-bets 65% of flops after raising, with or without a hand, and folds to a raise without top pair. Raise some of those c-bets, and play more hands from the button than from early seats.
4. Level 4 — handle pressure and short stacksIt semi-bluffs draws, raises two pair or better 55% of the time, and under 10 big blinds moves all-in with the top half of hands. Its shoving range is wide, so don’t fold every decent hand to it.
5. Level 5 — test your heads-up fundamentalsPlay it one-on-one: heads-up is where its game-theory tables apply. In multiway pots it plays like Level 4, so a full table of Level 5 bots is mostly a Level 4 table.

After each game, a signed-in player’s decisions get a Fizz Score: each one is compared with game-theory models and labeled by its estimated cost as a share of the pot — acceptable (up to 10%), inaccuracy (10–30%), mistake (30–80%) or blunder (over 80%). It’s an advisory second opinion, shown only after the game, and it points at the hands worth replaying.

Your account’s Stats tab adds the classic numbers from your own games — VPIP, PFR, 3-bet, c-bet, fold to c-bet, aggression factor, win rate and more, by position — plus coach’s advice with one concrete rule to try. Put your VPIP (how often you put chips in voluntarily) and PFR (how often you raise before the flop) next to the bars above for a rough read on which level you play most like. Want a quick skill check first? The poker test grades twelve 6-max decisions and ends with a Poker IQ. For drills beyond the bots, see poker practice.

What these bots are — and aren’t

Levels 1 to 4 are hand-written strategies: rules about starting hands, position, pot odds, bet sizes and stack depth, with random draws to keep them from being predictable to the chip. Level 5 adds strategy tables computed offline with counterfactual regret minimization — the family of algorithms behind the famous poker AIs — for heads-up spots, and falls back to Level 4 wherever those tables don’t reach.

They are not neural networks, they don’t learn from your games, and none of them is unbeatable. They’re sparring partners built to be read: each level has a style you can recognize and a leak you can punish. To see where each style sits among real-life player types, read types of poker players; for how serious poker AI works, see poker AI explained.

Questions people ask

Keep going

• Poker practiceA scored drill, bots and post-game review.
• Poker AIRegret minimization, Libratus, Pluribus — explained.
• Player types testEight questions, one style, and bots that play it.
• Heads-up pokerTwo-player rules, blinds and a hand-strength chart.