Criteria
Each product was measured on eight dimensions before the final winrate verdict. None of them by itself decides the comparison. The winrate over ~22,000 hands does — but the dimensions below explain why each product ended where it did.
1. Supported rooms
Which rooms the product runs on natively, which require manual setup, and which are out of reach. This matters because two products in this comparison (Inhuman, Deepermind) did not ship PPPoker support and had to be adapted by hand — that's a real cost in setup time, and a fair one to surface. The Android-emulator products (NZT, PokerBotAI) support a broader matrix of Asian/clubby rooms than the OpenHoldem family does, which influences which product is appropriate for which operator. None of the tested products run on the regulated tier-one rooms (Pokerstars, GGPoker public side) in any meaningful way.
2. Technical stack
What the product actually is, mechanically. Three families showed up:
- OpenHoldem family (Inhuman, Warbot, PokerBot.com profiles): screen-scrape + table-maps + custom strategy profiles, Windows VM, semi-automatic table seating. Open framework, lots of community content, older detection surface.
- Proprietary Windows engines (Shanky/BonusBots, Deepermind): vendor-specific engine, screen-scrape based, vendor-controlled profile distribution. Shanky uses a proprietary scripting language (PPL). Deepermind layers a genetic-algorithm decision policy on top.
- Android-emulator family (NZT Poker, PokerBotAI): emulator + cracked client + traffic-sniffer reading the game state directly from network packets + a cloud AI server that returns the recommended action + tap-emulation or packet-substitution for execution. The newest architecture in the field and the only one that finished positive.
Plus one outlier — 3upgaming runs an opaque vendor-installed VM (no documented engine).
3. Detection risk
What the vendor publishes for anti-detection guidance, what randomisation the product ships, and what was observed in practice during the test window. This is the dimension where the architecture mattered most: the OpenHoldem family's screen-scrape pattern is by 2026 a well-known detection signature on the rooms that bother to check, and the older engines (Inhuman, PokerBot.com, Shanky, Warbot) were either flagged or banned within the test window. The Android-emulator family is currently lower-profile because traffic-sniffer setups don't leave the same client-side fingerprint — though that's a race, not a permanent advantage.
The single most important fact about detection risk: it depends much more on operator discipline (unique residential IPs, sane GPS, plausible session schedules, coherent IP-location-timezone-time-of-day combinations across logins) than on the bot product itself. A great bot on bad infrastructure dies faster than a mediocre bot on good infrastructure. Every vendor in the comparison publishes some version of these recommendations; following them is the gap between a banned seat and a long-running one.
4. Supported game types
NLH is universally supported. PLO is supported by most. MTT support is patchier and tends to be the realistic ceiling on bot performance — long sessions, evolving stack depths, and ICM-aware decisions are where the simple strategy-profile approach fails. HU support is real for Shanky, Warbot, and the Android-emulator products. OFC and short-deck (ROE) are only on PokerBotAI in this field.
5. Setup friction
How hard it is to actually get a working seat running. For the OpenHoldem family this is "high" — VMs, table maps, profile selection, ongoing maintenance. Shanky and Warbot have the most polished install docs in that family. The Android-emulator products are noticeably easier — they ship documented installers and the vendor's support walks you through it — though the manuals themselves are uneven. 3upgaming installs everything for you, which sounds good until you realise you have no idea what's running on the VM. Inhuman, Deepermind, and PokerBot.com all sit at the "high" end of friction.
6. Pricing
Three pricing shapes in this comparison:
- One-time licence + maybe profiles: Shanky ($129/year NLH, $189/year all-PLO), Warbot ($104.89/year base + $30 per additional PC, +$10–200 for custom profiles), PokerBot.com ($50–150 one-time per profile), Inhuman (~$100/year + ~$25 VM image), Deepermind ($25/month, $49/year, $499 lifetime).
- Fuel / per-hand: NZT Poker (no flat licence, per-hand fuel cost scaled by room/format/stake/chip price). PokerBotAI (upfront access fee ~$500–2,000 per supported room + per-hand fuel).
- Subscription: 3upgaming ($1,200–1,500 setup + $600/month per bot).
Trials vary widely. Warbot offers ten minutes. Shanky offers a 200-hand trial. Deepermind has a free strategy tier. Inhuman has five minutes. PokerBotAI gives operator-controlled free play for roughly a day. NZT and 3upgaming have no trial at all.
7. Support and updates
How responsive the vendor is and how often the product is actually updated. Shanky and Warbot are the long-running vendors with regular update cadence and direct developer access via email or Telegram. PokerBot.com is functionally end-of-life — the owner is selling the project. Inhuman has a single-developer pattern with sparse updates. Deepermind has personal contact with the developer post-purchase but low update frequency. The Android-emulator products (NZT, PokerBotAI) both have dedicated Telegram support managers, development teams, and regular updates. 3upgaming has support that could not explain its own engine.
8. Public trust and reviews
What the broader poker community says. This is the dimension where the comparison gets messy — many of these products attract both genuine endorsements and competing-vendor slander, and parsing them honestly is hard. Some highlights worth surfacing:
- Shanky/BonusBots has a 2020 VICE write-up that mentions one profitable tournament cash on a single test, plus persistent BlackHatWorld / forum threads that place the realistic ceiling at micro-stakes.
- Warbot has a candid FAQ from the vendor itself that places the realistic ceiling at NL50 cash, $30 MTT buy-ins, "depends on the room."
- NZT has active Reddit / forum reports of bans on tier-one public rooms (which it doesn't market itself toward), pattern detection on sizing and timing in some clubs, and 2022–2023 negative threads with a Russian-language footprint.
- PokerBotAI has fewer public negative threads relative to NZT, a Hong Kong legal entity, and an active YouTube / social presence. Reviews are mixed but skew less toward "scam" accusations than NZT does.
- 3upgaming has very little technical evidence of efficacy, marketing-heavy blog content, and no honest trial period.
This dimension does not get a score in isolation. It does influence how I weight the winrate result — if a product had a strong winrate but a long trail of credible scam reports, I would say so. None of the positive-winrate products in this comparison fit that description.
9. Final verdict — winrate over ~22k hands
The dimension everything else feeds into. A product can be expensive, hard to install, and badly supported and still be the right answer if it wins. Conversely it can be cheap and well-supported and still be the wrong answer if it loses. The final column on the comparison page is the winrate verdict, and the answer is unambiguous in this field: PokerBotAI was the only product to finish positive, NZT was the only product to break even, the remaining five were negative, and 3upgaming was actively losing chips at scale.
For the per-product detail, return to the comparison. For how the bench was set up, see methodology.