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How A.I. Conquered Poker

nytimes.com

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Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#71

Post by jdmoreira »

cortesoft wrote: post #63
isaacg wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know, in Magic: the Gathering, the best bots are far worse than most players. Part of the difficulty is that the rules are so complicated that there are only a couple of complete rules implementations. Beyond that, it's an imperfect information game with far more actions per game than poker, so optimal-solver techniques haven't seen success.

Wouldn’t the fact that the game is constantly changing, with new cards being added and old ones being removed, also make it harder to solve?

That's harder on humans than on computers. Computers have perfect information on what the legal cardpool is at game they are playing

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#72

Post by hooande »

noambrown wrote: post #38
jstx1 wrote: post #27

But it hasn't conquered it! I kept searching the article for some new recent breakthrough that I've missed but it's not there. Yes, solvers like Pio have been around for years and limit holdem has been essentially solved for a while but nobody plays limit holdem anyway. The two most popular games (no-limit Texas holdem and pot-limit Omaha) are still unsolved.

Bots are superhuman in no-limit Texas hold'em. Libratus beat top humans in two-player in 2017 and Pluribus beat top humans in six-player in 2019: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 It's shocking that the reporter didn't mention these results or anything else more recent than 2015.

Have to say, Pluribus beating top humans for 10,000 hands isn't the same thing as being super human. It's just too small of a sample to make that claim.

Further, thousands of the hands that Pluribus played against the human pros are available online in an easy to parse format [0]. I've analyzed them. Pluribus has multiple obvious deficiencies in its play that I can describe in detail.

It seems like it's very difficult to set up any kind of proper repeatable and controlled experiment involving something as random as poker. Personally, I would be much more convinced if Pluribus played against real humans online and was highly profitable over a period of several months. This violates the terms of service / rules of many online poker sites, but it seems like the most definitive way to claim terms like "solved" or "superhuman"

[0] http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribuss-hands/

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#73

Post by muldvarp »

bluecalm wrote: post #9

I am the solver programmer mentioned in the article. I think it came out pretty decently. Maybe not all the details are right (I was late answering fact checking email) but I think it's a decent read and the author has done a good job!

2016 you said "It's a very small niche and getting less popular but we are still doing very well." Did this turn out to be true or has PioSOLVER become more popular again?

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#74

Post by pclmulqdq »

marcodiego wrote: post #6

Is there any remaining logic game which AI hasn't become superhuman? IIRC Monte Carlo tree search has done wonders in this area.

Contract Bridge is still untouched. I'm not sure if it's because of lack of resources, but it has a lot of difficult elements: cooperation, huge search trees due to imperfect information, and information theoretic aspects of bidding.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#75

Post by tunesmith »

soferio wrote: post #39

What teaching or training tools are out there for a very average player at no limit Texas hold’em who just wants to get at bit better to a respectable level at a modest time commitment , and does not need to be a pro-level player?

Yeah, really I just want an open-source poker solitaire that asks me what I should do and then shows me the odds after I answer.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#76

Post by DennisP »

JacobThreeThree wrote: post #40
rainonmoon wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poker is not really all about money. Plenty of games might only ask you to stake like $5 but the joy and aim of the game is really to outplay the table, not take home $25.

For the purpose of AI "conquering" poker the money makes a huge difference. Would you play the same way if you were betting your life savings versus $5?

No, but my play would deteriorate at the high stakes. A computer would play the most optimal strategy it can regardless.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#77

Post by knicholes »

treme wrote: post #64
soferio wrote: post #39

What teaching or training tools are out there for a very average player at no limit Texas hold’em who just wants to get at bit better to a respectable level at a modest time commitment , and does not need to be a pro-level player?

www.runitonce.com 25$/mo essential membership will give you enough from beginner to semi pro easily.

Lol, awesome. I built the Stripe integration for this site in 2013. The first day we launched, we landed over $100k in subscriptions.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#78

Post by Wingman4l7 »

smallerfish wrote: post #21

I think there's room for a "battlebots meets online poker" product. Imagine buying your bot a real money budget and setting it loose in a tournament to combat other bots.

This has happened before, but only once that I know of. It was hosted by the creator of the (apparently now defunct) WinHoldEm "poker botting" software, Ray E. Bornert II. It never ran again, only a small handful of the more experienced bot authors attended, and turnout was poor, with the highest max buy in at $100 (http://robopoker.blogspot.com/2007/12/pokerbot-world-champio...). It was called the 2007 Poker Bot World Championship (PBWC).

The online poker community is extremely hostile towards poker bot software in general; you would be very hard-pressed to find an existing poker website that would be willing to encourage and host such tournaments.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#79

Post by DennisP »

splonk wrote: post #52

(Former pro and high stakes player, occasional solver developer) This is actually one of the best poker articles I've ever seen in generalist media. Not too clickbaity, reasonable high level overview of game theory, a (very accurate IMO) quote from old pro Erik Seidel about the state of the game just 15 years ago, a discussion on variance vs. EV and results, and most importantly, an emphasis on math, randomization te…

Interesting, I read some Sklansky books about 15 years ago and he talked about semibluffs, where you're partly bluffing but you've also got some chance to win. Sounds like strategy has evolved into doing the exact opposite.

Re: How A.I. Conquered Poker

#80

Post by noambrown »

hooande wrote: post #72
noambrown wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bots are superhuman in no-limit Texas hold'em. Libratus beat top humans in two-player in 2017 and Pluribus beat top humans in six-player in 2019: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 It's shocking that the reporter didn't mention these results or anything else more recent than 2015.

Have to say, Pluribus beating top humans for 10,000 hands isn't the same thing as being super human. It's just too small of a sample to make that claim. Further, thousands of the hands that Pluribus played against the human pros are available online in an easy to parse format [0]. I've analyzed them. Pluribus has multiple obvious deficiencies in its play that I can describe in detail. It seems like it's very difficul…

Normally 10,000 hands would be too small a sample size but we used variance-reduction techniques to reduce the luck factor. Think things like all-in EV but much more powerful. It's described in the paper.
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