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DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

arxiv.org

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Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#41

Post by smnplk »

IgorPartola wrote: post #36
bcassedy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure happy to answer questions. Note that professional in this context just means made a living through poker. There are a ton of people like myself that earned a good living playing online or in casinos. A small minority received long-term sponsorships. 1. I started playing in high school and college. Like everything else I do I dove in to get better and eventually I was good enough that I was making good money play…

Thanks! One more question for you and @jat850: So with the online games, etc. is the point just that you are better than the next guy to join the game so you just end up winning against players that are not as good? How reliable is something like that? It's true that a sucker is born every minute, but is it really feasible to make a living off it vs just staying income-neutral (e.g. win some, lose some, not really ma…

A hobby poker player here.

The main goal of any poker game is to win money. You win money from your opponents, you don't play agains the house. Although , the house (poker site) does take a small percentage of every pot you win, this is called rake. Do note, that in some games, rake can be so high that it is not profitable to play the game even if you are much better than your opponents. The only way to win money on the long run in poker is to be better than your opponents, so you need to look for bad opponents, it is a well know strategy called table selection or "bum hunting" :)

Nowdays it is still very feasible to make a living off poker, but you will have better chance finding bad player in live games.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#42

Post by osti »

reverend_gonzo wrote: post #11
falcolas wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I imagine it's mostly just playing the percentages. Bet when it has a high percentage of winning, fold when it doesn't. It doesn't need to read its opponents if it can play the percentages perfectly.

This is true for Limit Hold'em, but very much not true for No Limit. Limit Hold'em is a solved game, because as long as you're playing the odds, you can play perfectly. No Limit changes things because the bets can vary wildly. If you play a tight game (just play the odds), and opponent will get out whenever you're in, and will bluff just to see if you call or fold. Bluffing is a major component in No Limit, and there…

That's not true at all for limit, the perfect bot's bluff frequency is probably higher than most humans. Play against it yourself here http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#43

Post by pdog »

zitterbewegung wrote: post #29
MikeTV wrote: post #14

> DeepStack becomes the first computer program to beat professional poker players in heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em Whether any others have been made before now is anyone's guess. Botting is a known problem in online poker. If there's a golden goose out there, I'm sure it's being kept under wraps.

You can collude multiple bots or perform other tasks which could make the botting problem in Texas Holdem not equivalent to the same achievement that they present in the paper.

The big games are typically heads up to avoid the collusion problem.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#44

Post by LewisJEllis »

valarauca1 wrote: post #40
bcassedy wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. When I last played for income in 2012, the site I played on had 1-2 bots at virtually every table from the $10 buyin cash games all the way up to the $200 buyin games. Around the time I stopped playing it came out that there was a botting ring that had been winning at $1000 buyin games for some time. Most of their income does come from the weaker players at the table, but many of these bots were good enough…

Most these bots are likely using standard well established techniques. Strategic play, card counting, etc. A handful of heuristics make you an above average player and will get you thrown out of a casino. They'd be trivial to program. I guess all that is novel here is a bot learned these techniques on its own.

With all due respect, do you have any idea what you're talking about? This is poker, not blackjack. Card counting is useless and there's no strategy that will get you thrown out of a casino because it's not the casino's money you're playing for.

I'm not sure what sort of "standard well-established techniques" that "would be trivial to program" you're talking about. Optimal play in no-limit hold'em is a tremendously complicated mixed strategy with a massive decision tree. To make things even more interesting, in almost any given situation there will be multiple "correct" plays that, to avoid being exploitable, should each be made some percentage of the time at random.

This AI is novel because it achieved a result that (as far as anybody knows) has never been achieved before, not because it figured out how to do something on its own.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#45

Post by dsp1234 »

grizzles wrote: post #35
osti wrote: post #13

To be fair, none of the so called pros are considered big names in today's no limit heads-up games. They should probably challenge ppl like WCGRider, Jungleman etc. next. On another point, CMU just can't seem to catch a break, their thunder continuously being stolen by UofAlberta in poker research, first in limit, now no limit. UofA clearly tried to publish this before the CMU poker challenge that's supposed to begin…

Doug Polk is WCGRider.

Doug Polk is not one of the professionals who was part of this study. The list is in Table 1 of the paper.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#46

Post by bcassedy »

IgorPartola wrote: post #36
bcassedy wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure happy to answer questions. Note that professional in this context just means made a living through poker. There are a ton of people like myself that earned a good living playing online or in casinos. A small minority received long-term sponsorships. 1. I started playing in high school and college. Like everything else I do I dove in to get better and eventually I was good enough that I was making good money play…

Thanks! One more question for you and @jat850: So with the online games, etc. is the point just that you are better than the next guy to join the game so you just end up winning against players that are not as good? How reliable is something like that? It's true that a sucker is born every minute, but is it really feasible to make a living off it vs just staying income-neutral (e.g. win some, lose some, not really ma…

It's fairly reliable. Due to the random nature of poker, it's very easy to delude yourself into thinking that you're a better player than you are. This is true for hobbyists, gamblers, and professionals alike. Professional players may move up in stakes or even stay at the same stakes and think that they're stronger than the competition and write off their bad performance as a run of bad luck. Runs of bad luck (and good) can significantly skew your results even over a hundred thousand hands.

Because of this, players of all skill levels will play a long time in games where they are not favored. This is part of why it's so important to keep studying both your play and that of your opponents. If you rest on your laurels, those that do study will surpass you and you'll find yourself playing at a disadvantage without realizing it.

Online you're really able to make a good amount off even a small edge, as measured in big blinds per 100 hands, because hands are dealt so quickly and you can play more than one table at a time. For most of my career I was playing ~1000 hands/hour. In reality due to the rake, the cut the site takes from each pot, you need to have a substantial edge to make money, but this isn't as hard to achieve as you might think.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#47

Post by gallerdude »

MikeTV wrote: post #14

> DeepStack becomes the first computer program to beat professional poker players in heads-up no-limit Texas hold'em Whether any others have been made before now is anyone's guess. Botting is a known problem in online poker. If there's a golden goose out there, I'm sure it's being kept under wraps.

I always think the same thing about neural nets on the stock market.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#48

Post by natecarroll »

The players they recruited were incentivized by a $8,000 prize pool up for grabs among the 34 of them...average $EV $235. They have to play 3000 hands to get a shot at that money, which is probably around 10 hours of multitabling. So that's ~$24/hr in expectation.

And then of course you don't get anything unless you're one of the top three winners against the bot, so there's likely nothing to be gained from grinding out a marginal victory. You should just go ahead and play kinda stupid/aggro and hope you win some of the big flips and whatnot. There's literally nothing at stake for you except time value, so you might as well flame out early and then quit or run up a big stake to give yourself a shot at top 3.

Basically, the study design ensures the bot faces off against weak players playing in a way that would be sub-optimal in any other situation. Not surprised the bot won by a decent margin, nor that they are trying to spin this real hard in advance of the CMU poker bot matchup next week, which will be much more rigorous.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#49

Post by pokearl »

LewisJEllis wrote: post #44
valarauca1 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most these bots are likely using standard well established techniques. Strategic play, card counting, etc. A handful of heuristics make you an above average player and will get you thrown out of a casino. They'd be trivial to program. I guess all that is novel here is a bot learned these techniques on its own.

With all due respect, do you have any idea what you're talking about? This is poker, not blackjack. Card counting is useless and there's no strategy that will get you thrown out of a casino because it's not the casino's money you're playing for. I'm not sure what sort of "standard well-established techniques" that "would be trivial to program" you're talking about. Optimal play in no-limit hold'em is a tremendously c…

I think it's pretty clear he either legitimately thinks this is about blackjack or is completely clueless.

Re: DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence in No-Limit Poker

#50

Post by 6nf »

philosopheer wrote: post #33
feral wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No - If the only thing computers couldn't beat humans at was reading tells, they'd win online poker. But they don't yet do that: this paper is about beating humans at heads up, which is a much more limited domain than a full table. If you want to learn about why to bluff I'd recommend reading about using game theory to solve Kuhn poker.

online poker has the tremendous flaw that collusion between players is the most optimum strategy, and there is just noooo way to stop it. Collaborating poker-bots who outsource their peppy poker chatter to Bangalore (your feedback is important to them!) will soon be running all the tables if they aren't already. No, they'll never be the champions, because that suboptimal strategy would lead to discovery, but as a gia…

Collusion is avoided entirely by playing heads up only.
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