The Grand Plan

• Create a basic bot, that plays something that looks like poker. ManualMode, DDPoker, PokerTH and PokerAcademy are great ways to develop your first basic bot offline, without having to care about stealth, hoppers and table maps at all (honestly: the TM for PA might need some tweaking, but that’s it).
• Once you have created a basic bot, fix or create a tablemap and start playing real opponents at a site, that does not care. Your first version will have some bugs and maybe simplified strategy. It won’t win you any money and you shouldn’t use a real account for that bot (just in case). Register as "Mickey Mouse, Mouseton", take a paysafe-card and cash some money in and start playing and improving.
• Once you have a winning bot at a meaningful samplesize you can start creating a farm. You still should choose a site that doesn’t care, but now you should care about stealth (at least a bit). Now it is time to learn about standard stealth and setup a clean system.
• Even when you have managed to create a profitable bot, you should still forget about sites like PokerStars, PartyPoker and FullTilt in the early stages of building a bot-farm. These sites do care (some a bit more, some a bit less) and they will bust beginners (you still are a beginner stealth-wise). But the other poker sites provide enough traffic in the microstakes and low-stakes to keep you busy for some time and to master the basics of stealth.
• Once you have reached that point you will be a forum-veteran and a honourable poker-botter. Then Max will invite you to a beer to Montreal and you will be welcome to ask any question you like.

FAQ

If you want to make big money you have to invest big money. (Nick Coldhand)