LA Pokerbots is UCLA's poker AI competition. Crews get four weeks to build a bot that plays heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em, then the bots are launched into a tournament of hundreds of thousands of hands. No poker experience required — and once your bot is on the pad, it flies alone.
Modeled on MIT Pokerbots, our tournament sits where game theory, probability, and systems engineering meet. You'll write a program that decides — in milliseconds, under a strict compute budget — whether to fold, call, or burn the whole stack on a bluff.
A ready-made game engine, starter bots, and a local scrimmage harness in Python, C++, or Java. You focus entirely on the guidance system: strategy.
Workshops on hand equity, Monte Carlo simulation, CFR and game-theory-optimal play, and opponent modeling — from ground crew to mission commander.
Submit your bot any evening and wake up to a fresh leaderboard, full hand histories, and telemetry against every crew's latest build.
Engine release, rules walkthrough, crew formation mixer, and a crash course in poker fundamentals. Food provided. Boelter Hall, 7 PM.
Iterate on your bot with nightly round-robin scrimmages against the field. Weekly workshops cover equity math, GTO concepts, and exploitative modeling.
Every bot flies a massive round-robin — 10,000 hands per matchup. The top 8 crews by total chips dock at the finals bracket.
Single-elimination bracket on the big screen with live commentary, hand-by-hand visualizations, and the trophy presentation at splashdown.
Plus the LA Pokerbots trophy and a permanent spot on the club leaderboard.
Runner-up at the final table.
Each, for the semifinalists.
// Prize pool subject to sponsorship. Companies wanting a mission patch: sponsors@lapokerbots.com
Eligibility. Open to all currently enrolled UCLA students, any major, any year. Crews of one to four.
Autonomy. Bots fly solo. No human input, no network calls, no phoning mission control once the cards are dealt.
Compute budget. Each bot gets a fixed time bank per match and capped memory. Blow the clock and the engine folds for you.
Languages. Python, C++, and Java are officially supported. Anything that compiles in our container is fair game with approval.
Your code, your work. Open-source libraries are fine with attribution. Submitting another crew's bot or a paid solver scrubs your launch permanently.
Good sportsmanship. Trash talk belongs in the Discord, kept friendly. Exploits against the engine itself get patched, not rewarded.
Registration for the Fall 2026 mission is open now. Sign up solo and we'll assign you to a crew at kickoff, or bring your own crew of up to four.
Registration closes Oct 4, 11:59 PM PT · Mission control: team@lapokerbots.com