build a poker bot

I have been playing online poker for a while. Some times it gets monotonous, so I looked into building a poker bot. Codingthewheel is the only site I have yet to run across. They recommend C++, which I will be attempting to learn over the next few days/weeks. I have a good educational start, so tech issues should be easier than for the layman. Even if the project isn't compleatly successful, I hope to learn more about the game and use it as a learning experience.

Any useful input/ suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Right now I am looking a good editor and compiler for C++

P.S. any good data mining software, don't think poker tacker works w/ my usual site. May just go to new site for simplicity. If anyone is interested, maybe we could have bot wars on this site, LOL.