$100,000 Poker Bot Tournament 356
Costa Galanis writes "The LA Times is reporting that a poker tournament will be held where engineers will be able to pit their automatic poker-playing programs against each other in a tournament similar to the upcoming World Series of Poker main event, with a 100,000 dollar cash prize for the winning program. The article mentions how the recent rise in popularity of poker has encouraged many to try and create the poker equivalent of chess' Big Blue, the chess playing computer program that defeated the world's top chess player in a widely publicized event, and also talks about how many engineers also are trying to make bots that are good enough to play and beat human players for money in online casinos."
Re:What's The Catch...? (Score:5, Informative)
Deep Blue (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What's The Catch...? (Score:5, Informative)
In the poker world, the common standard for a profitable, solid player is to earn two big bets per hour, which covers both the casino rake and tip. In a $3/$6 texas hold'em limit game for example, the big bet is $6, which equals a $12/hr wage for a solid player. Online, where you not only do not have to pay a tip to the dealer, but also generally pay a lower rake and play about 150% more hands per hour than in a brick and mortar casino, it's very well possible to win nearly twice what you would by playing online.
Thus, the only "catch" here is that by creating a successful poker bot that can play as well as a solid human, it may very well upheave the online poker industry as a whole. After all, if you could spawn near unlimited instances of an application that could pull in a meager $2/hr playing the $0.50/$1 low limit tables, that still means an insane amount of money. Whether or not it's legal.. that's another issue.
Re:Bluffing. (Score:5, Informative)
In a high stakes game or no-limit game, bluffing is very common, because every bet and action often involves a significant amount of money and little mistakes over the course of a session can end up costing large sums of money. Thus, bluffing becomes a viable weapon in these game formats because you can use your opponents' fear of making mistakes against him.
However, in a small stakes game, bluffing is often close to impossible, as many players are simply put, unbluffable. With the current poker boom, the skill level of the average player has decreased considerably; often causing poorly skilled players to play hands in a very losing fashion, such as showing Ace high at the showdown. Against these type of players, a bluff is generally quite ineffective and a losing proposition, since the theory behind bluffing is to force your opponent to fold a better hand. Thus, when your opponent simply does not fold, the point becomes moot.
As such, it would actually be easier to create a bot that plays low-stakes poker, as a non-bluff game involves simple math, decision trees and a bit of fuzzy logic. What it is not however, is a game of chance, as it is still a profitable game that has edges to be exploited.
This has been a bit off topic, but I wanted to clear up the notion that poker comes down to chance, when there is very solid mathematical theory behind it.
more information? (Score:2, Informative)
Poker is Hard (Score:5, Informative)
Poker is a hard problem. The game tree is huge for even heads up limit (~ 10^18 leaf nodes). Ring games (3-10 players) are intractable via any game theoretic methods. The only feasible possibilities are searching parts of the game tree through intelligent sampling methods, and perhaps abstracting the game down a bit.
Work has focused on both solving abstracted versions of the game and exploiting opponent weaknesses. A publication concerning most recent methods involving bayesian best response will be available soon at the following link:
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~finnegan/publications/
Just in case any one was wondering, calculating your raw chances of winning, dubbed "7 card roll out strength" is no problem at all once you harness the versatility of the gnu poker-eval library located on sourceforge.
Poker bots ARE a real science (Score:5, Informative)
A team at the University of Alberta has been working on with a poker research group [ualberta.ca] that has been researching and coding poker bots for years. One look at their page should tell you that there is definitely some high level thinking and analysis required to develop a poker bot. More importantly, is that fact that they *have* delivered a bot called Poki Poker [poki-poker.com] that has an impressive record at beating human opponents in 1 vs 1 heads-up matches. Brian Alspach, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics and Statistics at Simon Fraser University has also contributed numerous publications [math.sfu.ca] to the field, giving credence to the fact that there is a genuine science behind creating an AI that can play good poker.
So, before anyone else spouts off about poker being a game of chance or poker bots being mindless hundred line pieces of code, please do your research. A lot of people have worked very hard on this subject to simply have it dismissed as beneath them. Just ask yourself this: If you could create a poker bot so easily, one that could generate at the very least, a poker bot that made $2/hr playing the low limit games, what would stop you from launching thousands of these bots upon the online world? Because unlike a human, you can replicate a bot innumerable times, which in this case would be the equivalent of finding the goose that lays golden eggs. If you understand this, you may begin to understand why there is so much interest in the creation of poker bots..
That's not the point of bluffing. (Score:3, Informative)
There's a 'rule' in texas hold'em: If the other players are playing loose, you play tight. If the other players are playing tight, you find another table. Some games really can't be bluffed.
And I want to clear this up: an indivual game is still a game of chance. A bunch of games in aggregate have some theory to use.
Re:Texus Holdum (Score:1, Informative)
There is no secret algorithm, the maths is right in front of you, 52 cards in a deck, 4 aces, 4 kings, etc, I can work out the probability of making my flush by the river and winning the hand with a common calculator, or my command line, so this supposed algorithm was bullshit, your friend was probably just messing with you.
Simply put, at any one time in a poker game you can work out the mathematically-correct decision to make, it may even involve calling in situations where you KNOW you're beat - but if 9 out of 10 times that is statistically correct way to play - you do it, and over thousands of hands and hundreds of hours of play you will be profitable.
Re:Um... pokerbot will always win (Score:3, Informative)
You still seem confused. Every hand in poker is played with a single deck; there are no 5 decks of cards like in blackjack. Take 52 cards, shuffle, deal the hand, repeat. That's it.
Re:What's The Catch...? (Score:3, Informative)
Answer: At a casino, you sit down any time 24/7 at a poker table and you play. You leave when you want to.
If you're playing not in a casino, you have to set a time, gather all your competitors/friends, and set an end time. If some of your friends are playing a losing game, then they might not come back the next time.
It's a convenience thing.
Re:Bluffing. (Score:4, Informative)
No, there's a skill to bluffing. While a good poker player can bluff with 2-7 off suit, just randomly throwing money into the pot really isn't the way to go.
Re:That's not the point of bluffing. (Score:2, Informative)
Read Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky
I agree with your general point. For this topic area (programming, that is) I'd suggest Sklansky's Theory of Poker to be more relevant and, well, more theoretical.
Tyler
Re:What's The Catch...? (Score:5, Informative)
If you just simply spawn 1000 bots, as easy as that seems, you'll be detected easily, and your online assets siezed. At the very least you'd need 100 or more IP's, and probably some variance in reaction times, mouse movements, etc.
that's the difficult part, because online casinos have alot of money to lose if players get spooked by the fear of bots. So they'll be trying *hard* to detect you.
Re:What's The Catch...? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Um... pokerbot will always win (Score:3, Informative)
Re:That's not the point of bluffing. (Score:1, Informative)
Playing 'loose' is just the opposite. You play a ton of hands (usually too many), you raise constantly, even with mediocre to bad hands, etc.
Over the long haul, tight players are almost always better than loose ones and the biggest reason most people lose at poker is because they're too loose. Of course if you're too tight (a rock), you become too predictable and a good player will run you over with a lot of bluffs and semi-bluffs and you won't get any calls when you try to raise with a good hand. As with anything, taking anything to an extreme is usually a bad thing.