OpenHoldem Review: The Open-Source Poker Bot Framework

OpenHoldem is not a bot you download and run. It is a framework: it reads the table, exposes what it sees as variables, and executes whatever logic you write. Everything that makes it play well or badly is up to the user.

What it is

• Category: open-source bot framework.
• Platform: Windows, desktop poker clients.
• Price: free (open source).
• Origin: a fork of an earlier commercial framework, developed by volunteers over many years.

How it works

A “table map” tells OpenHoldem where cards, stacks and buttons appear on a given client’s table. A “profile” (originally in its own formula language, later also in scripting languages through plugins) decides what to do with that information. Community table maps and profiles exist for various rooms, most of them old and many broken by client updates.

Strengths

• Free and fully inspectable; nothing hidden.
• Flexible enough to build anything, including hooking in an external decision engine.
• A long documentation and forum history for anyone willing to read.

Weaknesses

• The default profiles play badly. A profitable strategy has to be written or bought.
• Table maps need constant maintenance as clients change, and the community that made them has thinned.
• Windows desktop clients only; no direct support for mobile club apps, which is where most soft games are now.
• Its process signature is well known to room security teams.

Who it is for

Programmers who want to understand how a screen-scraping bot works or build their own, and who accept the maintenance burden. Not for anyone who wants something that plays out of the box. Using it, like any bot, violates the terms of essentially every room; see legality.