HE has the perfect poker face, remembers each card, calculates all the odds and can think 20 moves ahead.

Meet Doc Cyborg and his ilk, the internet robots helping online players to clean up on gaming websites.

“Poker bots”, as they are known, are earning their human masters up to £50,000 a year by playing dozens of low-stakes games at once on the internet. The UK is enjoying an online poker boom, with almost 1m Britons expected to take part this year. An increasing number of them will be using robots.

Software that promises to “make money cheating” can be bought for as little as £25.

Many of the poker sites, which take a fee for hosting the games, have rules banning the bots and have teams dedicated to detecting them. They admit, however, that they are virtually powerless to stop them. Players who have lost to them regard them as little more than card-sharps in cyberspace.

One bot master claims he can earn £40 an hour using them. “I use software that plays poker for me in six different rooms and I’m raking in the dough,” he said in a posting on Cardschat, an online forum for players.

“Do you think that’s evil or genius? The software does lose, but I’ve never seen any playing like it. Bottom line: not only does it work, but I’m entertained watching it.”

In 2007, researchers from Alberta University in Canada deployed a bot player against Phil Laak, 36, a Dublin-born professional who is the boyfriend of Jennifer Tilly, the Hollywood actress. Laak only just won.

Last year, the same scientists repeated the exercise using a bank of bots known as Polaris against several professional players and the robots won every time.

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