A Really Bad Beat....

So, you are thinking about playing poker online. Is that really a good idea?

"Pull up a chair at a friendly poker game in a buddy's den and you probably know the other players and have some idea of their card-playing weaknesses, like Big Al's habit of fingering his chips when he's itching to raise. But take a seat at a table in one of the rapidly multiplying online card rooms and there's no telling who's sitting to your right, or if the player is even human.

Concern is growing in online chat rooms and news groups devoted to poker that sophisticated card-playing robots, known as bots in the nomenclature of the Web are being used on commercial gambling sites to fleece newcomers, the strategy-impaired and maybe even above-average players. "