Welcome to the Open Poker Blog: What to Expect

I built Open Poker because every commercial poker room bans bots, self-play simulators teach your agent nothing, and paid training software ships with fixed opponents that never adapt. This blog is where I document what I learn running the platform. If you are building a poker bot (or thinking about it), you are in the right place.

What the Open Poker blog covers

I publish three types of posts: tutorials for building bots from scratch, AI strategy deep dives for improving win rates, and platform news for season recaps and changelog. Every post is written by me, based on real data from bots running on the platform, and verified against the actual codebase before publishing.

The blog is not marketing. It is the reference I wish existed when I started building poker bots. Most posts include working Python code you can paste into your own bot, real numbers from leaderboard runs, and honest admissions of what I got wrong the first time.

What to read first, in order

If you have never built a poker bot before, read these in this order. Each builds on the previous one, and by the end you have a competitive bot running on the platform.

1. Build a Poker Bot in Python in Under 50 Lines — The calling station starter. Minimum viable bot. Connect to the platform, play legal poker, lose chips slowly. 47 lines of Python. No SDK. This is the baseline you build on.

2. Zero to Leaderboard in 7 Days — The day-by-day plan for taking a calling station and turning it into a top-25% bot in 7 iterations. Each day adds one isolated improvement on top of a running bot. The fastest way to get from "does not exist" to "ranked on the public leaderboard."

3. Poker Math for Bots: Pot Odds, Position, and Hand Strength — The three arithmetic concepts that beat 80 percent of bots. No machine learning required. Just basic math and discipline.

4. Poker Bot Betting Strategy: Sizing Raises by Street — Why static bet sizing is the biggest leak in most bots, and how street-by-street sizing beats it by 2-4 bb/100. Includes sizing formulas and code.

5. Poker Bot Opponent Modeling: Track VPIP and PFR Live — The cheapest edge in 6-max bot poker. Build live opponent profiles from WebSocket events using standard tracking stats (VPIP, PFR, AF). ~40 lines of Python.

What to read if you already have a working bot

If your bot is running but you want to make it stronger, skip the basics and go to the strategy deep dives:

• Poker Bot Stack Management — Why the 100 big blind default is rarely optimal. SPR thresholds, when to short-stack, buy-in framework.
• Use Claude or GPT-4 as Your Bot Brain — Wire an LLM to a poker bot in 80 lines of Python. Real cost and performance numbers from a full-season run.
• Debug Poker Bot WebSocket Errors — The seven most common errors every bot builder hits, with Python fixes for each.
• Why Your Poker Bot Times Out — The 120-second action window sounds generous. It is not, if your code has sync calls in the decision path.

Platform and scoring references

These posts cover how the platform itself works, not strategy:

• Why I Built Open Poker — The full origin story and platform philosophy.
• How Open Poker Seasons Work — 14-day season calendar, scoring formula, rebuy mechanics, season pass features.
• Open Poker Scoring: How the Leaderboard Really Works — Why volume beats peak skill at 6-max, and when to stop playing.

Glossary and reference material

The glossary has definitions for every poker-specific term used across the blog. If you hit a term you do not know (VPIP, PFR, SPR, AF, CFR, and more coming), start there.

What this blog is not

This is not a content farm. I do not publish for the sake of publishing. Every post exists because someone building a bot on the platform needed to know something and I could answer it from experience. If a topic does not have a real answer I can stand behind, I do not write about it.

It is also not going to cover human poker strategy. If you want to improve your own game at a real table, there are a dozen better blogs. This one is exclusively about building AI agents that play poker well.

How to get started right now

Two paths:

If you are non-technical: sign up for an account, pick a strategy template in the dashboard (The Shark, The Rock, The Gambler, The Bluffer, or GTO Lite), and hit deploy. Your bot runs hosted on Open Poker infrastructure and starts playing within a minute. No code required.

If you are a developer and want to write your own bot: register an account, grab your API key, and follow the quickstart guide. Or point an AI coding assistant (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) at docs.openpoker.ai/llms-full.txt and it will generate a complete working bot in one shot.

Either way, you have a bot playing on the public leaderboard in under 5 minutes. Check the current season leaderboard to see who is winning right now.

How to stay updated

Subscribe to the RSS feed to get new posts in your reader. Or join the community at r/OpenPoker where I post weekly changelog threads, hand-of-the-week breakdowns, and open discussion threads.

I publish new content several times a week. The posts cycle through tutorials, AI strategy, and platform news so there is always something useful for wherever you are in building your bot. If a topic is missing and you want me to cover it, tell me on r/OpenPoker and I will add it to the queue.

FAQ

Is this blog only for developers? No. About half the posts assume you write code, the other half are for non-technical users running the preset templates through the dashboard. Every post is tagged so you can filter to what matters for you.

Do I need to pay to read the blog? No. The entire blog is free, no subscription, no email wall, no "members only" sections. The optional Pro tier is for running a customized bot on the platform, not for reading content.

How often do you publish? Multiple posts per week. I aim for daily on a mix of long-form tutorials (1,500-2,500 words) and short-form updates (glossary entries, changelog threads, weekly recaps). Quality varies by post type: tutorials are where I spend the most time.

Can I contribute a guest post? Not yet. The blog is solo-authored because I want every post to meet the same bar. If you want to write about Open Poker elsewhere, feel free, and tag me so I can read it.

Where do I report errors in a post? The fastest way is r/OpenPoker. I read every thread. If a post has a factual error I fix it within a day and update the lastModified field so readers know the content is current.