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I never really meant that the calculations should be without context. One could keep a "running distribution" to update P (probably a bunch of Ps, actually) as

I never really meant that the calculations should be without context. One could keep a "running distribution" to update P (probably a bunch of Ps, actually) as you play. Maybe we're now just looking at the same thing from different angles. You say "use psychology" and I say "use numbers", but in the end, maybe it's the same thing and it's harder than I'm giving it credit for. Thanks for the poker lesson, by the way. Next time I see a game I'll be more interested.

gizmo 18y ago
Ah-hah. But that's the problem. So you need some kind of distribution for each of the different tactics the player plays. And then you need some heuristics to predict which tactic is going to follow which tactic. It's a slippery slope, I guess. I don't know where to draw the line myself. It can be argued that as soon as something is modeled by a computer it ceases to be psychology and becomes mundane math. But I do still believe that most tactics people use to trick others with need to show up in the code in some way. I won't use the "Clearly you've never done x" line again. It was cheap and uncalled for. Thanks for calling me out on that.
mattmaroon 18y ago
So psychology and math in poker are sort of two sides of the same coin. Generally, psychology means narrowing your opponent's range of possible holdings as much as possible, while preventing him from doing the same to you. You do this to enable yourself to make better math-based decisions, and cause him to make worse ones. If you can accurately pinpoint your opponent's range, and predict how he'd react with the hands in that range on future rounds, the game becomes a rather trivial math problem for a computer. It can simply enumerate all of the possibilities and determine the correct course of action. Unfortunately narrowing a person's range and predicting how they'd play in future rounds is very hard to do for a human, and presumably even harder for a computer.

gizmo 18y ago

Ah-hah. But that's the problem. So you need some kind of distribution for each of the different tactics the player plays. And then you need some heuristics to predict which tactic is going to follow which tactic. It's a slippery slope, I guess. I don't know where to draw the line myself. It can be argued that as soon as something is modeled by a computer it ceases to be psychology and becomes mundane math. But I do still believe that most tactics people use to trick others with need to show up in the code in some way. I won't use the "Clearly you've never done x" line again. It was cheap and uncalled for. Thanks for calling me out on that.

mattmaroon 18y ago

So psychology and math in poker are sort of two sides of the same coin. Generally, psychology means narrowing your opponent's range of possible holdings as much as possible, while preventing him from doing the same to you. You do this to enable yourself to make better math-based decisions, and cause him to make worse ones. If you can accurately pinpoint your opponent's range, and predict how he'd react with the hands in that range on future rounds, the game becomes a rather trivial math problem for a computer. It can simply enumerate all of the possibilities and determine the correct course of action. Unfortunately narrowing a person's range and predicting how they'd play in future rounds is very hard to do for a human, and presumably even harder for a computer.