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As someone who has played poker my entire life as well as a programmer, and have drifted passively into playing online poker recently over the real game. I foun

As someone who has played poker my entire life as well as a programmer, and have drifted passively into playing online poker recently over the real game. I found this fascinating and hadn't really considered taking the data science route to playing until I read this article as it's more of a hobby. I always have a minimum I'm willing to walk away losing should I do badly, however this approach has changed my view. Does anyone else on HN have more resources like this, applying data science to poker. I will google, but on forums like this one, I find personally recommended resources to be very helpful.

imafish 9y ago
I don't have any specific resources on data science, but there are a lot on here about AI in poker (which I reckon is also a kind of data science): http://poker-ai.org/phpbb/ http://poker-ai.org/phpbb/
- mad_tortoise 9y ago
  Great thank you, that will have a lot of what I'm looking for.
thret 9y ago
Holdem Manager is still the best program for it I believe, but it only works for holdem. You're out of luck if that game bores you. It is most useful for analysing your own game - you have access to your entire hand history so it is extremely valuable for finding out your weaknesses.
- mad_tortoise 9y ago
  Thanks, well holdem is my preferred game and doesn't bore me at all. I'll definitely be checking out Holdem Manager.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- hudibras 9y ago
  Poker Tracker is the other major program. Both have essentially the same features. Holdem Manager is PC-only, however.
- hanasu 9y ago
  I've used Pokertracker Stud in the past, and I recall they had an Omaha version as well. This was ~10 years ago however, not sure if either are still available.
kbelbina 9y ago
There's an entire industry around collecting and selling poker data, see: https://www.hhsmithy.com https://www.hhsmithy.com
- mad_tortoise 9y ago
  Rad, this is a very interesting rabbit hole for me I stumbled upon today. Keen to combine my programming and poker knowledge for some minor profit and fun mroe than anything else.
  - jdironman 9y ago
    A few more sources that are free: Databases of IRC poker matches hands: http://web.archive.org/web/20110205042259/http://www.outflopped.com/questions/286/obfuscated-datamined-hand-histories http://web.archive.org/web/20110205042259/http://www.outflop... (Actually uses web-archive and handhq.com data.) For reading: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications.html http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications.html
rootw0rm 9y ago
back in the day i used PokerTracker a lot, good software. back before the big poker sites got shut down I had a side project that was a hook library/bot/hand history logger. of course, the state of the art in this subject is this crew: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ i have no spare time but after reading this i know i'm going to have even less because a new poker project is starting...
splonk 9y ago
Data science really has somewhat limited application to poker. Or at least, it's a very big hammer for a pretty small screw. The two big stats he talks about (VPIP and PFR) were well known more or less as soon as the first tracking software came out around 2003 or so, and they're very simple counting stats. Those two stats alone probably cover 90% of what you ever need to know to profile a player. I'd guess that the next most important stat is WTSD, "went to showdown", which is basically a measure of how often someone folds postflop. Everything after that is slicing a small amount of data into increasingly smaller slices, at least as far as opponent modeling goes. Even for your own hands, where you see every result, there's so much noise on the individual hand level that it's hard to do good direct comparisons. You can easily have a million hand sample where, for example, you make more money with 22 than 88. Some people will (most likely erroneously) conclude that they there's something wrong with how they play 88. The more likely explanation is that even with a million hands, once you break out how often you get dealt 22, choose to play it preflop, flop some hand where you'll continue (most likely a set), have the other person in the pot have enough hand where they'll continue far enough to generate a big pot, and then play some sequence where you actually do generate a big pot, you're down to maybe a dozen instances, so a single outlier influences your results a ton. tl;dr - don't worry about data science. If you play online, use one of the standard HUDs, look at VPIP, PFR, WTSD, and ignore everything else except overall win rate and standard deviation until you're damn sure you know what you're talking about.
- jaclaz 9y ago
  >Or at least, it's a very big hammer for a pretty small screw. You were meaning nail? Or was it intentional?
  - splonk 9y ago
    Just a joke. Wrong tool, but it'll sort of get the job done if you hit it hard enough.

imafish 9y ago

I don't have any specific resources on data science, but there are a lot on here about AI in poker (which I reckon is also a kind of data science): http://poker-ai.org/phpbb/ http://poker-ai.org/phpbb/

mad_tortoise 9y ago
Great thank you, that will have a lot of what I'm looking for.

thret 9y ago

Holdem Manager is still the best program for it I believe, but it only works for holdem. You're out of luck if that game bores you. It is most useful for analysing your own game - you have access to your entire hand history so it is extremely valuable for finding out your weaknesses.

mad_tortoise 9y ago
Thanks, well holdem is my preferred game and doesn't bore me at all. I'll definitely be checking out Holdem Manager.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
hudibras 9y ago
Poker Tracker is the other major program. Both have essentially the same features. Holdem Manager is PC-only, however.
hanasu 9y ago
I've used Pokertracker Stud in the past, and I recall they had an Omaha version as well. This was ~10 years ago however, not sure if either are still available.

kbelbina 9y ago

There's an entire industry around collecting and selling poker data, see: https://www.hhsmithy.com https://www.hhsmithy.com

mad_tortoise 9y ago
Rad, this is a very interesting rabbit hole for me I stumbled upon today. Keen to combine my programming and poker knowledge for some minor profit and fun mroe than anything else.
- jdironman 9y ago
  A few more sources that are free: Databases of IRC poker matches hands: http://web.archive.org/web/20110205042259/http://www.outflopped.com/questions/286/obfuscated-datamined-hand-histories http://web.archive.org/web/20110205042259/http://www.outflop... (Actually uses web-archive and handhq.com data.) For reading: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications.html http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications.html

rootw0rm 9y ago

back in the day i used PokerTracker a lot, good software. back before the big poker sites got shut down I had a side project that was a hook library/bot/hand history logger. of course, the state of the art in this subject is this crew: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ i have no spare time but after reading this i know i'm going to have even less because a new poker project is starting...

splonk 9y ago

Data science really has somewhat limited application to poker. Or at least, it's a very big hammer for a pretty small screw. The two big stats he talks about (VPIP and PFR) were well known more or less as soon as the first tracking software came out around 2003 or so, and they're very simple counting stats. Those two stats alone probably cover 90% of what you ever need to know to profile a player. I'd guess that the next most important stat is WTSD, "went to showdown", which is basically a measure of how often someone folds postflop. Everything after that is slicing a small amount of data into increasingly smaller slices, at least as far as opponent modeling goes. Even for your own hands, where you see every result, there's so much noise on the individual hand level that it's hard to do good direct comparisons. You can easily have a million hand sample where, for example, you make more money with 22 than 88. Some people will (most likely erroneously) conclude that they there's something wrong with how they play 88. The more likely explanation is that even with a million hands, once you break out how often you get dealt 22, choose to play it preflop, flop some hand where you'll continue (most likely a set), have the other person in the pot have enough hand where they'll continue far enough to generate a big pot, and then play some sequence where you actually do generate a big pot, you're down to maybe a dozen instances, so a single outlier influences your results a ton. tl;dr - don't worry about data science. If you play online, use one of the standard HUDs, look at VPIP, PFR, WTSD, and ignore everything else except overall win rate and standard deviation until you're damn sure you know what you're talking about.

jaclaz 9y ago
>Or at least, it's a very big hammer for a pretty small screw. You were meaning nail? Or was it intentional?
- splonk 9y ago
  Just a joke. Wrong tool, but it'll sort of get the job done if you hit it hard enough.