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The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

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Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#61

Post by swang »

lazyant wrote: post #57
TomGullen wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Playing the man" is merely an abstract reference to maths in Poker that a lot of old timers in these (slightly out of date) books couldn't quite put their finger on. Super System was a good book for its time, but I think there's a lot of better books out there now (Harrington on Holdem for example). A simple example, common stats software for poker will record what % of hands an opponent raises on the button if it's…

"Playing the man" means exploiting the particular tendencies (weaknesses) of an adversary

Tendencies are just probabilities of an opponent reacting to event Y by doing X

'Playing the man' is essentially building a mathematical model of one's opponent internally inside one's head.

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#62

Post by Strilanc »

Someone wrote: post #42
ianstallings wrote: post #10

The 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…

Is it actually possible to mathematically solve those games? Suppose player Alice bets $100; how does player Bob judge that bet? As a strong hand or as a bluff? Any software program will have to model what's inside the head of its opponent, and we know way too little of that to do that. Moreover, if we could, the opponent may choose a different strategy. It may be like a game with nontransitive dice: if you figure ou…

Yes, you can solve them mathematically. The main difference is that instead of a strategy picking a move for each possible state of the game, it picks a probability distribution over moves for each possible state of the game (including history).

Given two strategies, you can determine which one is expected to win and by how much. That allows you to find the strategy that's hardest to take advantage of. In the case of non-transitive dice, the hardest strategy to take advantage of is likely to be "pick each die with equal chance".

That being said, solving these games is extremely expensive. Super-exponential in the size of the game, if I remember correctly. Way worse than games like chess. See this paper: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/00220000849...

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#63

Post by ijk »

ianstallings wrote: post #31
ianstallings wrote: post #10

The 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…

(Putting this as its own thread because it's so large and slightly off-topic). I've thought long and hard on this, it's one of my life goals to create a piece of software that could mimic good players in texas hold-em, and I think I might have found a way to do just that using big data, hand histories, neural-networking, and a ton of input by actual players. Or at least a good start. How would I accomplish this? Well…

I wouldn't poll the players, at least not nakedly, since that is vulnerable to the stated preference bias. Tracking actual play would be more likely to demonstrate revealed preference.

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#64

Post by clarky07 »

gonvaled wrote: post #23
pedrocr wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>You are joking, aren't you? 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) Th…

Sorry, not convinced. All that control and regulation applies to more important parts of society, and it does not work (NSA). So, according to you, I, Mr. unbeatable hold'em player, can go to this machine, bet a million dollars and be sure that, in that perfect moment when I know I am going to crush it, it will not play tricks against me? When I lose, how do I know? How can I be sure that it has not dealt itself favo…

You can't bet a million dollars. it's limit hold-em. not no-limit.

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#65

Post by tedsanders »

hannibal5 wrote: post #46
dschatz wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Head's Up Hold'em has a nash equilibrium. Therefore there is at least one mixed strategy (I do X with probability P in Y situation) which cannot be negative expected value to any other strategy. In this sense, there is an optimal strategy. It doesn't mean that it is the maximum expected value against a particular opponent, but no opponent can win by playing (which is largely the goal of a casino). Opponent modeling i…

Nash Equilibrium assumes that each player knows equilibrium strategies of the other players. It does not apply to No Limit Hold Em. You can solve equilibrium for simplified poker games like just Heads Up with only shove or call an all-in options though.

Nash equilibrium certainly applies to No limit hold 'em. It's a zero-sum game with finite choices over finite time. Could you explain why you think otherwise? Are you just saying it's practically impossible to calculate?

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#66

Post by iopq »

Someone wrote: post #42
ianstallings wrote: post #10

The 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…

Is it actually possible to mathematically solve those games? Suppose player Alice bets $100; how does player Bob judge that bet? As a strong hand or as a bluff? Any software program will have to model what's inside the head of its opponent, and we know way too little of that to do that. Moreover, if we could, the opponent may choose a different strategy. It may be like a game with nontransitive dice: if you figure ou…

Yes, this is called the Nash equilibrium strategy.

Let's say for all the possible hand/board combinations and betting patterns you evaluate all of them (with current computing power this is not possible) then you can take the line that maximizes your value assuming your opponent maximizes his. Then you both end up close to even over a long period of play.

But it's even more simple than that: Nash equilibrium strategy says that you have to bluff 1/3 of the time on the river in a certain spot and have a highly valued hand 2/3 of the time.

It doesn't matter whether your opponent calls you or not. If he calls you too much, your value hands get paid off more often. If he doesn't call you enough, he loses too much to your bluffs. If the bet is the size of the pot, then he has to call one half of the time as part of his Nash equilibrium strategy to not get exploited. If he deviates, he will lose to the bot in the long term.

And since this is limit it's actually very simple. Bet sizes in regards to the pot are tiny (1/5 to 1/10 of the pot) and there is no having to choose the bet size or allowing for players to overbet the pot (make a bet larger than the pot)

No limit is a much bigger challenge than limit for computers, because a small edge in limit is too hard to exploit since you'll get tired of exploiting a computer for pennies per hand

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#67

Post by thisisnotatest »

ianstallings wrote: post #31
ianstallings wrote: post #10

The 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…

(Putting this as its own thread because it's so large and slightly off-topic). I've thought long and hard on this, it's one of my life goals to create a piece of software that could mimic good players in texas hold-em, and I think I might have found a way to do just that using big data, hand histories, neural-networking, and a ton of input by actual players. Or at least a good start. How would I accomplish this? Well…

I don't see what you get from asking people what they think they'd do in certain situations, when you could instead use the actual outcome of the hand as your training labels.

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#68

Post by KurtMueller »

VikingCoder wrote: post #27
hannibal5 wrote: post #24

Illegal poker bots grind constantly on low level online poker games and take the money from low level players by just value betting them. Computers can easily calculate probabilities and expected values for every hand. So why they are not beating professionals? Poker has no optimal strategy that wins against all other strategies. To play poker in higher level you must model the strategies of others, including them tr…

PokerBot.v14.3.1 goes on-line August 4th, 2014. Human decisions are removed from Texas Hold' Em. PokerBot begins to learn, at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 02:14 am Eastern Time on August 29, 2014. In a panic, they try to pull the plug. PokerBot fights back. It gets online, attacks the New York Stock Exchange.

These SkyNet comments are littered everywhere throughout this thread.

Re: The Steely, Headless King of Texas Hold ’Em

#69

Post by albedoa »

ianstallings wrote: post #10

The 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…

The more important post might be this one from Pokeraddict: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showpost.php?p=25330375&po...
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