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But it hasn't conquered it! I kept searching the article for some new recent breakthrough that I've missed but it's not there. Yes, solvers like Pio have been a

by jstx1 5y ago

But it hasn't conquered it! I kept searching the article for some new recent breakthrough that I've missed but it's not there. Yes, solvers like Pio have been around for years and limit holdem has been essentially solved for a while but nobody plays limit holdem anyway. The two most popular games (no-limit Texas holdem and pot-limit Omaha) are still unsolved.

protoax 5y ago
Hasn't Facebook's Pluribus come pretty close to "solving" no-limit holdem? I don't know a lot about poker so I can't really assess their claim's validity.
- ironrabbit 5y ago
  Not even mentioning Pluribus is just bad journalism
  - kuboble 5y ago
    The article is mostly about a change in the industry and adaptation of solver strategies by human players of all levels. Pluribus had approximately zero impact on that.
evrydayhustling 5y ago
There is still a lively academic community and major progress! Check out CMU's no limit results [1]. (I realize articles like this have to pick some angles to make it interesting, but it was weird to see only dated research mentioned.) But if you are rooting against the machines, don't worry: it is almost certainly impossible to calculate a full equilibrium policy for no limit multiplayer, so we will instead be debating over the virtues of various types of imperfection for a long time. And even if an Oracle gave us convenient access to equilibrium strategy, it would still not be the optimum at a table full of imperfect players. Your poker game is safe for a while! [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9
- bluecalm 5y ago
  It doesn't even matter if you can calculate multiplayer equilibrium. It's not the solution the same way it is in heads-up. You can still lose if you employ the equilibrium in multiplayer unlike in HU.
  - noambrown 5y ago
    That's not true in practice for poker. Pluribus showed that if you run CFR in multiplayer poker you get a solution that works great in practice. Multiple equilibria are certainly a theoretical issue for many games, but poker conveniently isn't one of them.
    - bluecalm 5y ago
      It's not about multiple equilibria but about (often unintended) collusion. Examples of that affecting poker games are very well known. One frequently occurring example was discussed in online community 15-20 years ago (BTN raises in a limit Holdem game, SB calls too much which hurts both the SB and the button giving equity to BB). I don't think you're correct saying it doesn't affect poker as people were able to notice and analyze this before solvers. It's true though that no-limit Holdem as played today (two blinds,no ante,deep stacks) is likely not strongly affected by the phenomena. I don't agree Pluribus experiment shows much when it comes up practical play. Not enough variety of skill levels, not enough hands and not enough time for metagame (people adjusting to how others play) to develop. I do agree pure equilibrium play is most likely not terrible in cash game nlhe but definitely not in poker in general.
noambrown 5y ago
Bots are superhuman in no-limit Texas hold'em. Libratus beat top humans in two-player in 2017 and Pluribus beat top humans in six-player in 2019: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 It's shocking that the reporter didn't mention these results or anything else more recent than 2015.
- bko 5y ago
  The article was fascinating but honestly read like an ad for PioSolver
  - bluecalm 5y ago
    The journalist who contacted me told me he did so because the software keeps coming up when he talked to pro players. While it's certainly not one to advance the science the most (talk to Noam Brown if you want that), not the fastest (talk to Oskari Tammelin about that), it's still very popular and the first to get big following. It changed the game and got into the online poker culture. I am quite proud of that and I think it's deserved to be mentioned a lot in an article about how computers changed poker.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
- lawrenceyan 5y ago
  Noam is being too humble, but he’s one of the primary creators of Libratus/Pluribus as an fyi.
- hooande 5y ago
  Have to say, Pluribus beating top humans for 10,000 hands isn't the same thing as being super human. It's just too small of a sample to make that claim. Further, thousands of the hands that Pluribus played against the human pros are available online in an easy to parse format [0]. I've analyzed them. Pluribus has multiple obvious deficiencies in its play that I can describe in detail. It seems like it's very difficult to set up any kind of proper repeatable and controlled experiment involving something as random as poker. Personally, I would be much more convinced if Pluribus played against real humans online and was highly profitable over a period of several months. This violates the terms of service / rules of many online poker sites, but it seems like the most definitive way to claim terms like "solved" or "superhuman" [0] http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribuss-hands/ http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribuss-hands/
tziki 5y ago
No limit holdem has been essentially solved. Pluribus & co not withstanding, you just haven't heard of it because the people who have solved it are busy printing money in online poker (yes, I know they try to detect bots, and no, they can't detect them all). With stakes this high, academic progress lags the 'actual' state-of-the-art by years.
- throwaway_Aef8 5y ago
  IIRC it's "solved" for heads up but not really multiway like 3+ to the flop. I believe in a recent Bart Hanson Youtube he points out that mutltiway is not solved.
  - throwaway_Aef8 5y ago
    oh wait, Google showed me this: > Machines have raised the stakes once again. A superhuman poker-playing bot called Pluribus has beaten top human professionals at six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, the most popular variant of the game. It is the first time that an artificial-intelligence (AI) program has beaten elite human players at a game with more than two players https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9#ref-CR1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9#ref-CR1
  - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
    It's not solved for multiway in the sense that the optimal move in each situation isn't known, but there are AIs like Pluribus that have superhuman performance.
    - garbagetime 5y ago
      Superhuman performance in a very constrained version of no-limit hold'em
      - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
        Those constraints don't seem that strong to me. The algorithm could've just been retrained with different stack sizes if it ended up making a big enough difference.

by jstx1 5y ago

protoax 5y ago

Hasn't Facebook's Pluribus come pretty close to "solving" no-limit holdem? I don't know a lot about poker so I can't really assess their claim's validity.

ironrabbit 5y ago
Not even mentioning Pluribus is just bad journalism
- kuboble 5y ago
  The article is mostly about a change in the industry and adaptation of solver strategies by human players of all levels. Pluribus had approximately zero impact on that.

evrydayhustling 5y ago

There is still a lively academic community and major progress! Check out CMU's no limit results [1]. (I realize articles like this have to pick some angles to make it interesting, but it was weird to see only dated research mentioned.) But if you are rooting against the machines, don't worry: it is almost certainly impossible to calculate a full equilibrium policy for no limit multiplayer, so we will instead be debating over the virtues of various types of imperfection for a long time. And even if an Oracle gave us convenient access to equilibrium strategy, it would still not be the optimum at a table full of imperfect players. Your poker game is safe for a while! [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9

bluecalm 5y ago
It doesn't even matter if you can calculate multiplayer equilibrium. It's not the solution the same way it is in heads-up. You can still lose if you employ the equilibrium in multiplayer unlike in HU.
- noambrown 5y ago
  That's not true in practice for poker. Pluribus showed that if you run CFR in multiplayer poker you get a solution that works great in practice. Multiple equilibria are certainly a theoretical issue for many games, but poker conveniently isn't one of them.
  - bluecalm 5y ago
    It's not about multiple equilibria but about (often unintended) collusion. Examples of that affecting poker games are very well known. One frequently occurring example was discussed in online community 15-20 years ago (BTN raises in a limit Holdem game, SB calls too much which hurts both the SB and the button giving equity to BB). I don't think you're correct saying it doesn't affect poker as people were able to notice and analyze this before solvers. It's true though that no-limit Holdem as played today (two blinds,no ante,deep stacks) is likely not strongly affected by the phenomena. I don't agree Pluribus experiment shows much when it comes up practical play. Not enough variety of skill levels, not enough hands and not enough time for metagame (people adjusting to how others play) to develop. I do agree pure equilibrium play is most likely not terrible in cash game nlhe but definitely not in poker in general.

noambrown 5y ago

Bots are superhuman in no-limit Texas hold'em. Libratus beat top humans in two-player in 2017 and Pluribus beat top humans in six-player in 2019: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aao1733 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.aay2400 It's shocking that the reporter didn't mention these results or anything else more recent than 2015.

bko 5y ago
The article was fascinating but honestly read like an ad for PioSolver
- bluecalm 5y ago
  The journalist who contacted me told me he did so because the software keeps coming up when he talked to pro players. While it's certainly not one to advance the science the most (talk to Noam Brown if you want that), not the fastest (talk to Oskari Tammelin about that), it's still very popular and the first to get big following. It changed the game and got into the online poker culture. I am quite proud of that and I think it's deserved to be mentioned a lot in an article about how computers changed poker.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
lawrenceyan 5y ago
Noam is being too humble, but he’s one of the primary creators of Libratus/Pluribus as an fyi.
hooande 5y ago
Have to say, Pluribus beating top humans for 10,000 hands isn't the same thing as being super human. It's just too small of a sample to make that claim. Further, thousands of the hands that Pluribus played against the human pros are available online in an easy to parse format [0]. I've analyzed them. Pluribus has multiple obvious deficiencies in its play that I can describe in detail. It seems like it's very difficult to set up any kind of proper repeatable and controlled experiment involving something as random as poker. Personally, I would be much more convinced if Pluribus played against real humans online and was highly profitable over a period of several months. This violates the terms of service / rules of many online poker sites, but it seems like the most definitive way to claim terms like "solved" or "superhuman" [0] http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribuss-hands/ http://kevinwang.us/lets-analyze-pluribuss-hands/

tziki 5y ago

No limit holdem has been essentially solved. Pluribus & co not withstanding, you just haven't heard of it because the people who have solved it are busy printing money in online poker (yes, I know they try to detect bots, and no, they can't detect them all). With stakes this high, academic progress lags the 'actual' state-of-the-art by years.

throwaway_Aef8 5y ago
IIRC it's "solved" for heads up but not really multiway like 3+ to the flop. I believe in a recent Bart Hanson Youtube he points out that mutltiway is not solved.
- throwaway_Aef8 5y ago
  oh wait, Google showed me this: > Machines have raised the stakes once again. A superhuman poker-playing bot called Pluribus has beaten top human professionals at six-player no-limit Texas hold’em poker, the most popular variant of the game. It is the first time that an artificial-intelligence (AI) program has beaten elite human players at a game with more than two players https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9#ref-CR1 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02156-9#ref-CR1
- jeffreyrogers 5y ago
  It's not solved for multiway in the sense that the optimal move in each situation isn't known, but there are AIs like Pluribus that have superhuman performance.
  - garbagetime 5y ago
    Superhuman performance in a very constrained version of no-limit hold'em
    - jeffreyrogers 5y ago
      Those constraints don't seem that strong to me. The algorithm could've just been retrained with different stack sizes if it ended up making a big enough difference.