5 ms·

If it is that much of a concern, perhaps we should focus more on games that remain difficult for computers. Go, Arimaa, and Texas Hold'em (but perhaps not for

If it is that much of a concern, perhaps we should focus more on games that remain difficult for computers. Go, Arimaa, and Texas Hold'em (but perhaps not for much longer) all come to mind.

binarymax 14y ago
Who is the 'we' in that sentence? Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, I can attest that your statement is likely to draw ire among the devotees. You may as well suggest Baseball players start playing football because of Bill James and Nate Silver.
- wslh 14y ago
  Another way to think about it is why run if a F1 car beats any human runner?
  - DoubleMalt 14y ago
    The problem is not that computers are better per se, but that help from computers is getting harder and harder to detect. I would more liken it to the development of doping in the endurance sports.
    - binarymax 14y ago
      Excellent analogy.
- DoubleMalt 14y ago
  Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, too, I must say that the fact, that computers breezed by the best humans disenchanted me with the game somewhat. I would not play in a tournament where I cannot be sure that my opponents aren't more than straw men for their computers. I suspect chess is on the way down the bicycle lane, as much as it pains me to admit this.
  - binarymax 14y ago
    I agree it is disheartening. I stopped playing in tournaments shortly before Kasparov's fateful defeat by Deep Blue. But I still love the game and am always up for playing a friendly match. However the suggestion that we give it up because machines are better is, in my opinion, insulting. If people still want to play in tournaments against humans, then they should be allowed to.
    - DoubleMalt 14y ago
      Well, of course, and I still love to play sometimes. But I would not play in any game where the stakes are high enough that I would suspect my opponent to try to pull an Ivanov.
  - pk2200 14y ago
    Please don't let stories like this discourage you from playing tournament chess. There are tens of thousands of tournaments each year, and typically just 1 or 2 incidents of cheating. There will always be some element of cheating in any competitive endeavor, whether it's business, academia, sports, video games, etc. If you enjoy chess, play chess! :)
martinced 14y ago
Texas Hold'em, contrarily to chess or Go, is a game of imperfect information. So psychology comes into play and that is basically impossible to "solve" unless we have real AI (not anytime soon and the implication would be way broader than "beating Hold'em"). Fixed-limit Hold'em is easier to play because the decision tree is trivial. It's still an imperfect information game but the best bots can already beat some of the best professional players. But No-Limit Hold'em is another thing entirely: the decision tree is so huge that it's impossible to bruteforce. Impossible as in: unless a major scientific discovery we'll never ever be able to bruteforce it (there's not enough entropy in the know universe to do so). So we're stuck and waiting for amazing discoveries in the AI field (and psychology field).
- DoubleMalt 14y ago
  That was said about Chess vs. Dames. And along came Deep Blue.
- nicpottier 14y ago
  Chess bots don't know the 'perfect' move for most of the game either (only start and end games), that doesn't mean they can't beat human players. Can you be more specific as to what is so impossible about building a smart betting poker bot?
- DanBC2 14y ago
  I'd be interested to see the results of two bots playing against humans. Bot One just plays the odds. Bot Two just plays the odd, but has a small chance of bluffing - it has a poor hand but plays as if it has a great hand. I'd be interested to see the results after several thousand hands. And if people could tell the bots apart from people. This is, obviously, nothing like AI. But sometimes trivial tricks are powerful. Look at the early discussions about ELIZA for an example. I don't play poker, but my friend tells me that it's fun to play in tournaments because it's not just odds. You get people who have terrible poker faces, who are easy to read. That same friend also plays (and makes a little bit of money) from online poker. I have no idea how the psychology works there.
  - 14y ago
nicpottier 14y ago
I'll give you Go, but Texas Hold'em? I am only a casual player of both chess and poker, but I don't see any way that the difficulty in building an extremely good automated Texas Hold'em bot is anywhere on the same order of difficulty as building an extremely good Chess bot. What am I missing? Isn't the rage with Hold'em lately that the internet players who play mostly straight are cleaning up vs those who try to read people?
- shasta 14y ago
  I'm not an expert, but I believe the difficulty with Texas Hold'em is modeling the other human players. "Heads up", where there is an optimal strategy, is essentially solved.
  - heyitsnick 14y ago
    This is not the case. Firstly, although it is proven that there is an optimal (game theoretic) strategy to play (Nash), we are not close to 'solving' it. There are attempts to solve limit hold'em, and the current systems beat human players, but they are not close to fully solving the game tree. Attempts to solve big-bet games (NL, PLO) are not even "solved" at a rudimentary level. Modelling human players is the much easier part. There are winning cash game bots in both FL and NL up to midstakes games, and they are a serious issue. Many use default exploitative strategy that perform well against common opponents.
    - bromang 14y ago
      do you know if there have been any attempts to solve other perhaps simpler forms of poker? in particular, five card draw seems like it could be "solved"...
      - betterunix 14y ago
        We discussed this in a course I took a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn_poker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn_poker
heyitsnick 14y ago
Chess players are switching to blitz/rapid chess. It dominates online on the main chess servers. For high level tournaments, they just need to ensure controlled environments so issues of cheating are minimized.
- rpearl 14y ago
  It only dominates (and has dominated for basically the whole existence of internet chess) because games are short, fun, and non-committal. Playing a tournament game means spending hours on one game. That's exhausting and not something people "do for fun." On the other hand, you can get in a dozen 5 minute games in around an hour. Computers still overpower humans on 5 0 chess. Even a crappy non-optimized bot I wrote can get 12 levels of the tree plus quiescence essentially instantly.

If it is that much of a concern, perhaps we should focus more on games that remain difficult for computers. Go, Arimaa, and Texas Hold'em (but perhaps not for much longer) all come to mind.

binarymax 14y ago

Who is the 'we' in that sentence? Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, I can attest that your statement is likely to draw ire among the devotees. You may as well suggest Baseball players start playing football because of Bill James and Nate Silver.

wslh 14y ago
Another way to think about it is why run if a F1 car beats any human runner?
- DoubleMalt 14y ago
  The problem is not that computers are better per se, but that help from computers is getting harder and harder to detect. I would more liken it to the development of doping in the endurance sports.
  - binarymax 14y ago
    Excellent analogy.
DoubleMalt 14y ago
Having spent the majority of my teenage years studying and playing tournament level chess, too, I must say that the fact, that computers breezed by the best humans disenchanted me with the game somewhat. I would not play in a tournament where I cannot be sure that my opponents aren't more than straw men for their computers. I suspect chess is on the way down the bicycle lane, as much as it pains me to admit this.
- binarymax 14y ago
  I agree it is disheartening. I stopped playing in tournaments shortly before Kasparov's fateful defeat by Deep Blue. But I still love the game and am always up for playing a friendly match. However the suggestion that we give it up because machines are better is, in my opinion, insulting. If people still want to play in tournaments against humans, then they should be allowed to.
  - DoubleMalt 14y ago
    Well, of course, and I still love to play sometimes. But I would not play in any game where the stakes are high enough that I would suspect my opponent to try to pull an Ivanov.
- pk2200 14y ago
  Please don't let stories like this discourage you from playing tournament chess. There are tens of thousands of tournaments each year, and typically just 1 or 2 incidents of cheating. There will always be some element of cheating in any competitive endeavor, whether it's business, academia, sports, video games, etc. If you enjoy chess, play chess! :)

martinced 14y ago

Texas Hold'em, contrarily to chess or Go, is a game of imperfect information. So psychology comes into play and that is basically impossible to "solve" unless we have real AI (not anytime soon and the implication would be way broader than "beating Hold'em"). Fixed-limit Hold'em is easier to play because the decision tree is trivial. It's still an imperfect information game but the best bots can already beat some of the best professional players. But No-Limit Hold'em is another thing entirely: the decision tree is so huge that it's impossible to bruteforce. Impossible as in: unless a major scientific discovery we'll never ever be able to bruteforce it (there's not enough entropy in the know universe to do so). So we're stuck and waiting for amazing discoveries in the AI field (and psychology field).

DoubleMalt 14y ago
That was said about Chess vs. Dames. And along came Deep Blue.
nicpottier 14y ago
Chess bots don't know the 'perfect' move for most of the game either (only start and end games), that doesn't mean they can't beat human players. Can you be more specific as to what is so impossible about building a smart betting poker bot?
DanBC2 14y ago
I'd be interested to see the results of two bots playing against humans. Bot One just plays the odds. Bot Two just plays the odd, but has a small chance of bluffing - it has a poor hand but plays as if it has a great hand. I'd be interested to see the results after several thousand hands. And if people could tell the bots apart from people. This is, obviously, nothing like AI. But sometimes trivial tricks are powerful. Look at the early discussions about ELIZA for an example. I don't play poker, but my friend tells me that it's fun to play in tournaments because it's not just odds. You get people who have terrible poker faces, who are easy to read. That same friend also plays (and makes a little bit of money) from online poker. I have no idea how the psychology works there.
- 14y ago

nicpottier 14y ago

I'll give you Go, but Texas Hold'em? I am only a casual player of both chess and poker, but I don't see any way that the difficulty in building an extremely good automated Texas Hold'em bot is anywhere on the same order of difficulty as building an extremely good Chess bot. What am I missing? Isn't the rage with Hold'em lately that the internet players who play mostly straight are cleaning up vs those who try to read people?

shasta 14y ago
I'm not an expert, but I believe the difficulty with Texas Hold'em is modeling the other human players. "Heads up", where there is an optimal strategy, is essentially solved.
- heyitsnick 14y ago
  This is not the case. Firstly, although it is proven that there is an optimal (game theoretic) strategy to play (Nash), we are not close to 'solving' it. There are attempts to solve limit hold'em, and the current systems beat human players, but they are not close to fully solving the game tree. Attempts to solve big-bet games (NL, PLO) are not even "solved" at a rudimentary level. Modelling human players is the much easier part. There are winning cash game bots in both FL and NL up to midstakes games, and they are a serious issue. Many use default exploitative strategy that perform well against common opponents.
  - bromang 14y ago
    do you know if there have been any attempts to solve other perhaps simpler forms of poker? in particular, five card draw seems like it could be "solved"...
    - betterunix 14y ago
      We discussed this in a course I took a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn_poker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuhn_poker

heyitsnick 14y ago

Chess players are switching to blitz/rapid chess. It dominates online on the main chess servers. For high level tournaments, they just need to ensure controlled environments so issues of cheating are minimized.

rpearl 14y ago
It only dominates (and has dominated for basically the whole existence of internet chess) because games are short, fun, and non-committal. Playing a tournament game means spending hours on one game. That's exhausting and not something people "do for fun." On the other hand, you can get in a dozen 5 minute games in around an hour. Computers still overpower humans on 5 0 chess. Even a crappy non-optimized bot I wrote can get 12 levels of the tree plus quiescence essentially instantly.