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Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

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Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#41

Post by hanasu »

ketralnis wrote: post #17
jaaames wrote: post #16

Former professional poker player here, no limit holdem cash games, mid stakes. NLHE cash games are considered the hardest to solve given the depth of the decision trees. Other formats like sit and gos, spin and gos, and tournaments can be modeled and solved in a more simplistic way. A group of us (cash game pros) discovered a group of players on the Ongame network around 2010. We combined our databases and found a fe…

What made you think that these groups of players were associated with each other? What made you think that they were bots, beyond just winning often?

To put it extremely simply, there are specific ranges of acceptable statistics about what winning play looks like in poker. With thousands of hands of data winning players can intuitively pick out stats that are out of line.

For example, there are two related stats: went to showdown, and won money at showdown. These calculate how often you get to the last card and reveal your hand against another player/group of players to win the pot, as well as the frequency you actually win these showdowns. Generally, the more you are showing down hands against opponents, the lower your chances of winning money, simply because it's not always possible on average to have better hands than your opponents above a certain frequency of times you're getting to showdown. If a bot/player had access to other players' hole cards (like actually happened on the Ultimate Bet network) a telling example might be that they go to showdown way more than average while also winning money at showdown far above an average rate.

There are tens (if not hundreds by now) of common poker stats, this is just a simplified look at one related pair.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#42

Post by hanasu »

arisAlexis wrote: post #27

Maybe interesting I have built a backgammon bot in the past detailed history here https://medium.com/@arisAlexis/the-money-machine-dream-e4ab5...

On a related note, the team who built the best backgammon engine a while back (Snowie) has also released a poker version.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#43

Post by hanasu »

ludamad wrote: post #11
doug1001 wrote: post #5

i worked in anti-fraud for a large online gaming house for about six years from 2003 to 2009 so my information is not current. At that time, there were no bots (whether in the wild or in academic, eg, University of Alberta) that could competitively play no-limit, likewise for tournaments (which account for a large portion of the total hands played in online poker Sites). Anyone know if this has changed?

http://www.pokernews.com/news/2015/05/man-is-greater-than-ma... Person beats no-limit bot recently http://www.pokernews.com/news/2015/06/suspected-bots-on-poke... Omaha bots winning $1.5 million in the wild. I assume this (Omaha bot) is quite advanced past what you were dealing with?

In theory, an Omaha bot wouldn't have to be as advanced as a hold'em bot simply because the 'theory' of that game is not as strong as hold'em yet. Omaha still attracts a greater percentage of losing players as well.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#44

Post by hanasu »

doug1001 wrote: post #4
deepnet wrote: post #2

Are there any public datasets of poker games ?

yep, from the UC Irvine Machine Learning Repository ( http://archive.ics.uci.edu/ml/datasets/Poker+Hand); a vetted data set of just over one million Texas Hold'em hands, 11 attributes per hand (suit and rank of each of the five cards plus the hand "value", eg, "full house")

Quick note for anyone trying to get to this link: remove the extra two characters from the end.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#46

Post by xivzgrev »

EGreg wrote: post #40
jaaames wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. In poker you never play like you or your opponent(s) hold a specific hand, you always do the analysis against a range of hands. Every action (bet, call, raise) at any point (preflop, flop, turn, river) in the hand gives you extra information, which helps you narrow that range (more tightly define it) and help you make better, and hence more profitable decisions. Your range in every hand starts with all possible…

I used to do a lot of this in real life. Not to say these aren't bots, but I seem to have discovered unconventional strategies in Chess and Poker due to never having had formal training - and I want to describe the rationale. They would work as effectively in real life as these bots did online: When I had, say, suited connectors, I'd often reraise preflop (in late position). Why? So people would put me on a high hand…

It makes sense but did you engage in these strategies as frequently as the oc said he observed them? Like you said there were preconditions you needed eg suited connectors. That doesnt sound as likely to me as what oc commented on.

So these may have been bots designed by watching for patterns, seeing a few people like you do them, try them out, see success, push the envelope, and see even more success.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#47

Post by rando444 »

doug1001 wrote: post #5

i worked in anti-fraud for a large online gaming house for about six years from 2003 to 2009 so my information is not current. At that time, there were no bots (whether in the wild or in academic, eg, University of Alberta) that could competitively play no-limit, likewise for tournaments (which account for a large portion of the total hands played in online poker Sites). Anyone know if this has changed?

I dedicated all of my free time to building poker bots from 2007 to 2009.

I was a part of the winholdem community, which a large group of us eventually got upset with the developer of the software and then rebuilt the software and called it openholdem.

The only ones that were successful back then was this small group who had their bots dump information about all the opponents at the table into a large database and built up profiles of everyone they encountered, and then programmed the bots to use these player profiles to figure out how to play against them.

Eventually this group stopped sharing their results with anyone not directly involved in their little project and went even more behind the scenes.

I imagine these things would be hard to detect since the botting software is running on a completely separate computer and only sending mouse clicks to the computer that is playing poker.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#48

Post by mod »

zen_boy wrote: post #34
arisAlexis wrote: post #27

Maybe interesting I have built a backgammon bot in the past detailed history here https://medium.com/@arisAlexis/the-money-machine-dream-e4ab5...

Here's a backgammon bot implemented in practise https://github.com/alexhanh/Botting-Library for anybody interested. It also contains highly optimised Blackjack bot. PartyPoker had a beatable blackjack due to bonus incentives they gave out (they've fixed it since).

Nearly everyone had a beatable blackjack, counting deposit bonuses, back in the day. They called it "Casino Whoring" or "Bonus Whoring." I started my poker bankroll that way and later moved into professional poker (HUSNGs).

I turned $100 into approximately $3500 with the whoring. My expected value was something like 2900--I got lucky enough to beat the table in addition to earning the bonus.

Many of them were something like "deposit $200, get $200 bonus, have to bet $xxxx before you can withdrawal" with approximately a $190 expected value if playing $1/hand blackjack, perfect play.

I didn't think it was any surprise to the casinos that they were beatable--I assumed they just relied on them as a loss leader.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#49

Post by mod »

TheCowboy wrote: post #15
doug1001 wrote: post #5

i worked in anti-fraud for a large online gaming house for about six years from 2003 to 2009 so my information is not current. At that time, there were no bots (whether in the wild or in academic, eg, University of Alberta) that could competitively play no-limit, likewise for tournaments (which account for a large portion of the total hands played in online poker Sites). Anyone know if this has changed?

Over the last year there was a situation where a player was using and sharing Nash "charts" for no limit on Pokerstars. Originally PS had allowed the software, but decided to change its police since it was more than just a preflop starting hand chart. I believe the charts were used in headsup SNGs, which makes sense since it eliminates a lot of variables in solving for game theory optimal plays, and a lot of the play…

I used to run a bot that would select my games for me. I developed it myself.

I played HUSNGs exclusively, and the bot would just scan the lobbies looking for below-average players to sit. It would them automatically sit them if I was not already playing 3 games (my winrate decreased drastically at 4 tables).

I had a 60% winrate during that time, which is very, very good in HUSNGs.

Re: Big data and poker-playing bots are blurring the line between man and machine

#50

Post by EGreg »

xivzgrev wrote: post #46
EGreg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to do a lot of this in real life. Not to say these aren't bots, but I seem to have discovered unconventional strategies in Chess and Poker due to never having had formal training - and I want to describe the rationale. They would work as effectively in real life as these bots did online: When I had, say, suited connectors, I'd often reraise preflop (in late position). Why? So people would put me on a high hand…

It makes sense but did you engage in these strategies as frequently as the oc said he observed them? Like you said there were preconditions you needed eg suited connectors. That doesnt sound as likely to me as what oc commented on. So these may have been bots designed by watching for patterns, seeing a few people like you do them, try them out, see success, push the envelope, and see even more success.

Sure why not. I am surprised why poker bots aren't better considering they can try different strategies over a huge number of hands. I was just saying that sometimes preflop reraising makes a lot of sense. The AlohaGo program made some awesome moves that challenge traditional theory. And so forth. That is what I was getting at. Not that they aren't bots.
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