# Poker AI's designed for casual play

DISCLAIMER: So I asked this on StackOverflow and was told it was not a good question for the community but was suggested to check here. If this question sucks or just doesn't belong here either, feel free to let me know. It seems a fair question to me, but I know it's important to maintain high standards on these sites.

So I just put the finishing touches on a poker game in JavaFX. Part of the functionality in this program is a single player mode, where you can play hands against the computer. To be transparent, this is a university project, so I'm not aiming for perfection. More, just an ai that behaves semi-intelligently for game variation and minor challenge for casuals.

So to be clear, I am aware of general poker strategy, and have found numerous articles/research papers/links on more in-depth poker AI's designed to compete against competitive players. I guess as an analogy, there's the Easy mode bots in League of Legends, then there's the deep learning AI that beat a DOTA pro in laning.

I'm definitely aiming for the former here. While I currently have a basic algorithm that works as:

if(gamestate = flush, straight, 3-pair, full-house, face card pairs)
{
raise 1/4 pot;
}
else if(gamestate = pair, potential flush or straight, etc)
{
check/call;
}
else
{
fold;
}


So I already have functionality that can detect current board/hand states, but I do not have any functionality that can estimate chances at winning the hand, compare with opponent's possible hands, etc. Since the game only needs to be for casual play, the more advance algorithm's seem like massively overkill.

I guess my wishful thinking hope is that something exists similar to min-max in tic tac toe, although poker is obviously more complex. But something that can make some kind of rough approximation of hand value, that wouldn't require thousand's of if statements to cover every possible situation.

So if anyone knows of any algorithms that would be used in, for example, a poker phone game or such, I'd really appreciate some help. To reiterate, if this question is too vague, I'm happy to provide any other information about my existing research, program design, or anything in this vein.