Creating a bot that wins (or buying a bot that makes the botter whine) is one thing. Putting it to the tables regularly to make some volume is another task that can be time-consuming and boring. Of course this one can be automated too, but only some tasks of the job are directly supported by OpenHoldem. OpenHoldem is mainly designed as a single-tabling poker-playing application. It is not designed for handling multiple windows (lobby, registration popups), scheduling sessions or interpreting non-numerical input. In this chapter we will consider the tasks that usually need to be done by a hopper.

• Start the casino

• Take care about potential casino updates

• Log in with username and password

• Prepare / verify correct settings

• Prepare the lobby (game-type and level)

• Select new tables (they might or might not open immediatelly, e.g if you register to a tournament)

• Buyin with the desired amount (once the table is open)

• Choose an empty seat

• Supervise the number of open tables (including registered tournaments that are expected to open soon)

• Manage the session time (open tables until end of session - x)

• Wait until all tables are finished and closed

• Close the lobby

• Close all instances of OpenHoldem (if desired)

• Automatically start new instances of OpenHoldem for popup-blocking and for the next table (since OpenHoldem 8.0.1)

• Connect to new tables that do not yet get served by other instances of OpenHoldem

• Arrange the poker-tables in a non-obstructive way so that every table can be scraped properly

• Close popups (true windows with the popup-blocker, painted casino-advertisements that look similar to windows with the i86-spam-buttons)

• Tick “wait for big-blind” in cash-games

• Tick “auto-post blind”

• Click “sitout” / “leave”, e.g based on session-time, opponents and PokerTracker stats.

• Click “rematch”

• Execute a custom rebuy-script if f$rebuy returns a positive number (rebuy-amount in dollars)

• Click the [x] in the title-bar to close the poker-table if f$close is true

• Disconnect if the table disappears and be ready for the next table

• Shutdown OpenHoldem, using the f$terminate-function (since OpenHoldem 8.0.1)

As you can see a hopper can be devided into four functional parts

• Starting and configuring software

• Closing software

• Starting new tables, the main hopper loop

• Managing a connected table (singular!)

The first two jobs are more or less trivial. Opening new tables in the main hopper loop is the main part of a hopper that can’t be done by OpenHoldem (designed as: single bot, single table, single window). So all you truely need nowadays is a table-opener (fire and forget). There are cheap and good table-openers available for the main casinos that get used by flesh-and-blood poker-players. Only for smaller pokersites you have to create such a thing on your own.

All the remaining tasks (posting blinds, rebuys, closing the table) can be done with OpenHoldems built-in hopper functionality that got added over time. This is not too difficult and only requires the configuration of a handful hopper-functions like f$sitout and f$close, plus some casino-specific tablemap-regions (sitout button) to make it work everywhere. Finally a small example to demonstrate the simplicity of OpenHoldems hopper-functions:

##f$close##
  WHEN (issittingout
    AND handsplayed > 0
    AND elapsedauto > 120)  // No autoplayer action since 2 minutes
  RETURN TRUE FORCE

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