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Personally, I think it would be much more interesting to see an AI compete in a multi-player game with, say, ten human pros at the table. Not just heads-up.

• blazespin 10y ago
  All you'd discover is that poker is a very very volatile game and the number of tournaments it would have to play in to prove anything would be beyond time available. It's worth noting that most poker pros will constantly re-buy in early rounds in big tournaments. It's a general recognition that it takes money, not skill to survive. Being at the later tables helps them maintain their fame, which is really their business. Of course, if you're playing against amateurs or drunks, you can always win. But usually at the real tournaments they are few and far between.
  • mmanfrin 10y ago
    It's a general recognition that it takes money, not skill to survive. This is complete bullshit. Rebuys in the first round only help to insulate you from the chaos of the first round, where there tend to be a lot of wild players who gamble. Tournaments go on for 20, 30, 40+ rounds. The fact that people have won multiple championships and that many people continue to reach the final tables is evidence against the notion that it's just about money.
    • blazespin 10y ago
      Wrong. The rebuys let you build up a big bankroll as you feed your table. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_Main_Event_champions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Series_of_Poker_... Notice how there is never any repeat winners? (Well, except maybe Chan and one other.) Try sitting down at a table in vegas and play tight. Watch as everyone leaves. They just can't make enough money, you just lose it all to the rake.
      • xapata 10y ago
        You're mixing your analysis of tournament and cash games. There is no rake in a tournament, at least not in the same fashion. Also, I'm not aware of a tournament that allows rebuys or top-ups that give a stack larger than the initial stack. I don't really play tournaments, though. Cash games only. I play often enough. If the table is too tight, I go loose and take all the blinds. Sure, beating the rake can be tough, but it's not impossible.
      • abduhl 10y ago
        The WSOP main event does not allow rebuys.
    • thinkloop 10y ago
      > The fact that people have won multiple championships and that many people continue to reach the final tables is evidence against the notion that it's just about money. In modern poker (not the old days where few were playing), the max bracelets anyone has won is 5. Assuming that past a basic threshold of skill it's a 50/50 crapshoot, there's a 1 in 32 chance you get that on luck. There are thousands of people above the basic threshold. "Professional" poker really is about tourists and drinkers. The grind is too slow, painful, and volatile. I know a couple of people who support themselves on only poker. That's their strategy year round between tournies. The reason they play the big tournies is to get lucky, and parlay their fame into sponsorships and such.
  • gozur88 10y ago
    >All you'd discover is that poker is a very very volatile game and the number of tournaments it would have to play in to prove anything would be beyond time available. A pro in an adjacent seat once remarked "There's so much luck in tournament play you'd need a dozen lifetimes to know if you're actually beating them."
• jim-greer 10y ago
  There's so much variance in the game that it would be hard to know how good the AI really is. If they're doing 120K hands heads-up, they'd need to play far more in a full table. Getting that many pros to play that many hands would be difficult. And what's wrong with heads-up, anyway? It's not as popular as multiway, but it's a fascinating game. In a full table game, you usually only end up playing 20-25% of your hands. Heads up you play 90%+. You end up in leveling wars with your opponent more often, too ("he knows that I know that he knows I usually wouldn't play a premium pair this way").
  • petters 10y ago
    Maybe you are right, but in Poker championships you see many of the same names in the top from one year to the next, right? (I could be wrong about this) That could suggest the variance is manageable. I'd like to see more players because we have seen so many two-player AI contests before (chess, go). It would for example be interesting to see MCTS in this setting.
    • jim-greer 10y ago
      The variance is manageable if you play enough hands. This is one reason why a lot of pros prefer to play online - by playing many tables at once, you get more hands in and can better overcome the variance. As for tournaments, the variance is even greater, since it is closer to all or nothing. To mitigate this, pros "buy a piece" of each other. Or swap equity. If either wins they pay the other a percentage. If you do this with enough other pros, you even out your swings...
  • deleted 10y ago
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  • wapz 10y ago
    I don't know if you've actually played poker, but heads up you still probably play only 20-30% of your hands (unless it's a tournament at least). A lot of full table games you can play less than 10% of your hands (just my estimation. A pro can probably tell you better numbers).
• RockyMcNuts 10y ago
  I think collusion might be the outcome.
  • rjvir 10y ago
    Assuming the bot can communicate with other players, what's stopping it from being smart enough to negotiate it's own collusion schemes?
    • deleted 10y ago
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    • RockyMcNuts 10y ago
      LOL if it can figure out how to communicate, negotiate a share of the reward money, and pay off the other players ... but should the other player's trust it to keep up its end of the deal? on one hand it's a prisoner's dilemma, on the other hand what's the computer going to do with the money, throw a party in Vegas?
• bluetwo 10y ago
  I would be happy seeing a table of nothing but AIs.