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In 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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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 ...
No, I'm not.
>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?
No I didn't make that generalized statement. What I did say was that in this particular case that hypothesis is of low probability:
1) The people building the machines don't make money on poker playing, but by selling them to casinos
2) The article explicitly mentions that they actually have a machine that plays too well and that they've had to dumb it down to give players enough of an incentive to play. So there's no need to cheat.
3) Casinos are heavily regulated and their hardware is known to be verified more thoroughly than both ATMs and voting machines. You don't risk a billion dollar business to nickel and dime a few customers.
4) Casinos make their money milking gambling addicts, making sure they don't take their money fast enough that they'll give up. Fixing the games would only reduce their variance not their final outcome and they have enough scale that the variance isn't high at all.
>Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ...
Adding a bunch of exclamations does not an argument make.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
..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 en…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
..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 en…
In 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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
..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 machi…
In 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.
A simple example, common stats software for poker will record what % of hands an opponent raises on the button if it's folded to him. If this figure is 80% you know his hand range is extremely wide. "Playing the man" simply is recognising that in this situation your opponents hand range is very wide so you can often raise the bet and take the pot without further resistance.
It'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.
That said, if there's a mistake in there, a pro can eventually figure it out.
As you allude, the math of poker does break down in no-limit.
It'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.
>Casino commissions, however, mandate that a gaming machine cannot change its playing style in response to particular opponents.
The algorithm is encoded in a neural net; there is no calculation of raw probabilities involved, at least in the sense programmers are used to.
In 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.
I'd settle for a robot that makes me a salad. That's one of the projects I might work on, once my current project, a robot that grows me a salad (automicrofarm.com), is successful.