The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
nytimes.com
The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
1–10 of 99 posts
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#2In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears.
Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#3In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears. Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you.
Isn't this obvious?
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#4In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears. Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?
Hmm. I don't think that is how it works. I don't think these computer programs are permitted to take into account special knowledge in their AIs. I suppose the interviewee in this article could be lying, but I don't see that as the highest probability hypothesis.
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#5In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears. Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?
>Isn't this obvious?
Not at all. This article certainly doesn't imply it and it would be illegal.
Do you have any evidence of that being done?
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#6In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears. Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?
Well, exactly! I have three aces, and the computer has double pairs. We are in the turn. I go all in!!!
The computer calls ... and deals itself a full house. I am bankrupt :( How do I know? How can I ever trust playing poker with a machine, when it is doing the dealing?
Or, let me put it this way: I will play any machine, no limit, if I can do the dealing (secretly, that is, as the machine is doing).
Another issue entirely is chess: no secret dealing going on. All are playing with the same in-game information.
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#7It's probably carefully tuned to calculate the raw probabilities and it also forces the player to reveal his cards to run statistics on his style. That's why it's the limit version. This machine has no chance in a classic no-limit texas where the opponent may be only profiting from large bets unjustifiable in expected value most of the time with very little style statistics.
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#8Earlier quoted context omitted.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?
>Isn't this obvious? Not at all. This article certainly doesn't imply it and it would be illegal. Do you have any evidence of that being done?
You are joking, aren't you?
You are telling me that nobody would program a secret algorithm, standing to win loads of money, to tilt the chances at the right moment? Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ...
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#9In his book Super System, Doyle Brunson wrote that a computer would never be able to play elite poker because you played the man, not the cards or the game. He greatly underestimated the power of modern computing it appears. Personally, I'd rather see resources go into a robot that can cook for me but development follows the money I suppose.
..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?
I had the same thought. Unfortunately, the article doesn't make it crystal clear how much information the neural net uses to bet against you. It would be patently unfair if it actually knew your hand. According to the article, this is not the case.
I suspect it does perfectly count cards that it has seen in its hand or community cards. This seems okay as well-trained human players can do the same. I suspect the machine would get even more play if this were obvious, maybe if it played at a table with a real dealer and could read community cards on the table. The technology to do this certainly exists.
Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em
#10The article says the machine can't be beaten. And then points out that a pro has consistently won against it.
This article is filled with bold claims by people that want to sell the idea IMHO. I'm not buying it because even limit texas Hold'Em has never been solved mathematically by super computers, let alone a single machine. Limit Hold'Em is close to being solved but if you check out the last match of pros against a supercomputer you'll find that it's close, but the computer is not a clear winner: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/man-machine/Competitors/
I'm just not buying it. Can it beat the average player? Probably. Pros do it everyday. But can it beat a pro consistently and claim a clear victory over humans? To be determined.
Edit: I found a take from High Stakes Limit Pro Anthony Rivera on 2p2: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=29762774&po...
His stance is that it's probably a break-even situation where you are basically playing another pro, and that he'd rather be playing craps. I guess they really have made a great machine. :D