3 ms·

..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?

by menubar 13y ago

jamesaguilar 13y ago
Hmm. I don't think that is how it works. I don't think these computer programs are permitted to take into account special knowledge in their AIs. I suppose the interviewee in this article could be lying, but I don't see that as the highest probability hypothesis.
pedrocr 13y ago
>Isn't this obvious? Not at all. This article certainly doesn't imply it and it would be illegal. Do you have any evidence of that being done?
- gonvaled 13y ago
  You are joking, aren't you? You are telling me that nobody would program a secret algorithm, standing to win loads of money, to tilt the chances at the right moment? Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ...
  - pedrocr 13y ago
    >You are joking, aren't you? No, I'm not. >You are telling me that nobody would program a secret algorithm, standing to win loads of money, to tilt the chances at the right moment? No I didn't make that generalized statement. What I did say was that in this particular case that hypothesis is of low probability: 1) The people building the machines don't make money on poker playing, but by selling them to casinos 2) The article explicitly mentions that they actually have a machine that plays too well and that they've had to dumb it down to give players enough of an incentive to play. So there's no need to cheat. 3) Casinos are heavily regulated and their hardware is known to be verified more thoroughly than both ATMs and voting machines. You don't risk a billion dollar business to nickel and dime a few customers. 4) Casinos make their money milking gambling addicts, making sure they don't take their money fast enough that they'll give up. Fixing the games would only reduce their variance not their final outcome and they have enough scale that the variance isn't high at all. >Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ... Adding a bunch of exclamations does not an argument make.
    - gonvaled 13y ago
      Sorry, not convinced. All that control and regulation applies to more important parts of society, and it does not work (NSA). So, according to you, I, Mr. unbeatable hold'em player, can go to this machine, bet a million dollars and be sure that, in that perfect moment when I know I am going to crush it, it will not play tricks against me? When I lose, how do I know? How can I be sure that it has not dealt itself favorably? It is not a matter of whether they are doing it: it is a matter of whether they can do it. If there is no independent dealer, this is not for me. It does not matter what the law says, which are the incentives, how they are generating profit, ... As long as the machine can theoretically deal itself a good hand, I am not playing it. And, by the way, as long as the machine can know what cards I am holding, I am not playing it either. Give me an independent dealer, and then we talk.
      - ubernostrum 13y ago
        You must be an absolutely miserable person. I'm terribly sorry.
      - pedrocr 13y ago
        >So, according to you, I, Mr. unbeatable hold'em player, can go to this machine, bet a million dollars and be sure that, in that perfect moment when I know I am going to crush it, it will not play tricks against me? No, I never said you could be sure of that. What I do argue is that no one has much of an incentive to cheat you in this case. >It is not a matter of whether they are doing it: it is a matter of whether they can do it. If there is no independent dealer, this is not for me. Don't change the subject. The discussion was around if they were doing it. We all know it could be done, that's why we discussed this in the first place. >And, by the way, as long as the machine can know what cards I am holding, I am not playing it either. Give me an independent dealer, and then we talk. That's fine. You require 100% certainty of not cheating and this machine doesn't offer it. That is in no way an argument to say that they are in fact cheating. It's not even an argument to say that the probability that they are indeed cheating is very small (which is what I argued).
      - clarky07 13y ago
        You can't bet a million dollars. it's limit hold-em. not no-limit.
  - cuu508 13y ago
    writing a game that cheats and doesn't raise suspiction might be as hard as writing a game that plays fair :-)
    - gonvaled 13y ago
      Parafrasing Clarke, "A sufficiently complex system is indistinguishable from magic". You, and nobody, will not notice small probabilistic variations. Whenever you discover it (let us say, 30 years from now), you will be told that there was a difficult to find bug in the random generator. Nobody will be prosecuted. It could be a couple of lines of code in a subsystem somewhere, available only to a handful of engineers, and understood only by two of them - both of them with nice bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
      - ianstallings 13y ago
        This is true but the Gaming Control Board audits the software and they are also audited by outside parties. Could they cheat? Of course. So can human dealers, rigged card shufflers, etc. But Las Vegas makes its money from table games, slot machines, and apparently poker machines that play so well you'd have to be a pro to win consistently. It's not in their best interest to cheat you. As always in life: your mileage will vary.
  - awakeasleep 13y ago
    You're missing the bigger picture: the cheating has already been done and the game is over. It's perfectly legal to make games that, bound by physics and probability, pay more to the casino than the players. There is no need to cheat, get it? The only thing casinos need to work at is attracting a bigger slice of the pie to their games.
gonvaled 13y ago
Well, exactly! I have three aces, and the computer has double pairs. We are in the turn. I go all in!!! The computer calls ... and deals itself a full house. I am bankrupt :( How do I know? How can I ever trust playing poker with a machine, when it is doing the dealing? Or, let me put it this way: I will play any machine, no limit, if I can do the dealing (secretly, that is, as the machine is doing). Another issue entirely is chess: no secret dealing going on. All are playing with the same in-game information.
- Permit 13y ago
  This is easily remedied by retaining a human dealer. It's fairly trivial to create a computer that can identify dealt cards on the table.
  - gonvaled 13y ago
    That would be fair, to be sure - or, to be precise, as fair as playing any other table in the casino. The dealer can still be cheating, but doing that in the open does not raise any further suspicions as any other table in the casino would raise.
  - tbirdz 13y ago
    You could still have the problem with a human dealer. There are many ways to cheat at dealing cards, and a very skilled human could be able to do it without being detected.
- LargeWu 13y ago
  Any Vegas casino found to be employing such machines would be subject to fines far, far beyond what they could ever win from these machines. Suspension of their gaming license is also a possibility. Casinos have huge disincentives to rig their games. I believe you severely overestimate the likelihood that a casinos regularly cheat, at least in Nevada.
  - TomGullen 13y ago
    That argument might of had more weight to it several years ago. The Ultimate Bet scandal does show that companies are willing to risk their entire business for comparitvely meagre rewards. A default position of mistrust when it comes to gambling is a healthy and safe attitude.
nonsequ 13y ago
I had the same thought. Unfortunately, the article doesn't make it crystal clear how much information the neural net uses to bet against you. It would be patently unfair if it actually knew your hand. According to the article, this is not the case. I suspect it does perfectly count cards that it has seen in its hand or community cards. This seems okay as well-trained human players can do the same. I suspect the machine would get even more play if this were obvious, maybe if it played at a table with a real dealer and could read community cards on the table. The technology to do this certainly exists.
- LargeWu 13y ago
  Counting cards in a poker game is really trivial, even for novice players, since you shuffle the deck after each hand, and in Texas Hold-em, once a card is exposed it is not taken out of play until the hand is over (unlike, say, stud games). All you have to do to count cards is look at your hand and look at the board.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
sunkencity 13y ago
At least it's tuned to the bias of the RNG on the device.

..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?

by menubar 13y ago

..or, he greatly underestimated the fact that the computer knows what cards it has dealt to you. Isn't this obvious?

Hmm. I don't think that is how it works. I don't think these computer programs are permitted to take into account special knowledge in their AIs. I suppose the interviewee in this article could be lying, but I don't see that as the highest probability hypothesis.

pedrocr 13y ago

>Isn't this obvious? Not at all. This article certainly doesn't imply it and it would be illegal. Do you have any evidence of that being done?

gonvaled 13y ago
You are joking, aren't you? You are telling me that nobody would program a secret algorithm, standing to win loads of money, to tilt the chances at the right moment? Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ...
- pedrocr 13y ago
  >You are joking, aren't you? No, I'm not. >You are telling me that nobody would program a secret algorithm, standing to win loads of money, to tilt the chances at the right moment? No I didn't make that generalized statement. What I did say was that in this particular case that hypothesis is of low probability: 1) The people building the machines don't make money on poker playing, but by selling them to casinos 2) The article explicitly mentions that they actually have a machine that plays too well and that they've had to dumb it down to give players enough of an incentive to play. So there's no need to cheat. 3) Casinos are heavily regulated and their hardware is known to be verified more thoroughly than both ATMs and voting machines. You don't risk a billion dollar business to nickel and dime a few customers. 4) Casinos make their money milking gambling addicts, making sure they don't take their money fast enough that they'll give up. Fixing the games would only reduce their variance not their final outcome and they have enough scale that the variance isn't high at all. >Because it is illegal!!!? Ohhh! Illegal! Surely nobody does illegal things? Not in a casino, not in a company, not in a government ... Adding a bunch of exclamations does not an argument make.
  - gonvaled 13y ago
    Sorry, not convinced. All that control and regulation applies to more important parts of society, and it does not work (NSA). So, according to you, I, Mr. unbeatable hold'em player, can go to this machine, bet a million dollars and be sure that, in that perfect moment when I know I am going to crush it, it will not play tricks against me? When I lose, how do I know? How can I be sure that it has not dealt itself favorably? It is not a matter of whether they are doing it: it is a matter of whether they can do it. If there is no independent dealer, this is not for me. It does not matter what the law says, which are the incentives, how they are generating profit, ... As long as the machine can theoretically deal itself a good hand, I am not playing it. And, by the way, as long as the machine can know what cards I am holding, I am not playing it either. Give me an independent dealer, and then we talk.
    - ubernostrum 13y ago
      You must be an absolutely miserable person. I'm terribly sorry.
    - pedrocr 13y ago
      >So, according to you, I, Mr. unbeatable hold'em player, can go to this machine, bet a million dollars and be sure that, in that perfect moment when I know I am going to crush it, it will not play tricks against me? No, I never said you could be sure of that. What I do argue is that no one has much of an incentive to cheat you in this case. >It is not a matter of whether they are doing it: it is a matter of whether they can do it. If there is no independent dealer, this is not for me. Don't change the subject. The discussion was around if they were doing it. We all know it could be done, that's why we discussed this in the first place. >And, by the way, as long as the machine can know what cards I am holding, I am not playing it either. Give me an independent dealer, and then we talk. That's fine. You require 100% certainty of not cheating and this machine doesn't offer it. That is in no way an argument to say that they are in fact cheating. It's not even an argument to say that the probability that they are indeed cheating is very small (which is what I argued).
    - clarky07 13y ago
      You can't bet a million dollars. it's limit hold-em. not no-limit.
- cuu508 13y ago
  writing a game that cheats and doesn't raise suspiction might be as hard as writing a game that plays fair :-)
  - gonvaled 13y ago
    Parafrasing Clarke, "A sufficiently complex system is indistinguishable from magic". You, and nobody, will not notice small probabilistic variations. Whenever you discover it (let us say, 30 years from now), you will be told that there was a difficult to find bug in the random generator. Nobody will be prosecuted. It could be a couple of lines of code in a subsystem somewhere, available only to a handful of engineers, and understood only by two of them - both of them with nice bank accounts in the Cayman Islands.
    - ianstallings 13y ago
      This is true but the Gaming Control Board audits the software and they are also audited by outside parties. Could they cheat? Of course. So can human dealers, rigged card shufflers, etc. But Las Vegas makes its money from table games, slot machines, and apparently poker machines that play so well you'd have to be a pro to win consistently. It's not in their best interest to cheat you. As always in life: your mileage will vary.
- awakeasleep 13y ago
  You're missing the bigger picture: the cheating has already been done and the game is over. It's perfectly legal to make games that, bound by physics and probability, pay more to the casino than the players. There is no need to cheat, get it? The only thing casinos need to work at is attracting a bigger slice of the pie to their games.

gonvaled 13y ago

Well, exactly! I have three aces, and the computer has double pairs. We are in the turn. I go all in!!! The computer calls ... and deals itself a full house. I am bankrupt :( How do I know? How can I ever trust playing poker with a machine, when it is doing the dealing? Or, let me put it this way: I will play any machine, no limit, if I can do the dealing (secretly, that is, as the machine is doing). Another issue entirely is chess: no secret dealing going on. All are playing with the same in-game information.

Permit 13y ago
This is easily remedied by retaining a human dealer. It's fairly trivial to create a computer that can identify dealt cards on the table.
- gonvaled 13y ago
  That would be fair, to be sure - or, to be precise, as fair as playing any other table in the casino. The dealer can still be cheating, but doing that in the open does not raise any further suspicions as any other table in the casino would raise.
- tbirdz 13y ago
  You could still have the problem with a human dealer. There are many ways to cheat at dealing cards, and a very skilled human could be able to do it without being detected.
LargeWu 13y ago
Any Vegas casino found to be employing such machines would be subject to fines far, far beyond what they could ever win from these machines. Suspension of their gaming license is also a possibility. Casinos have huge disincentives to rig their games. I believe you severely overestimate the likelihood that a casinos regularly cheat, at least in Nevada.
- TomGullen 13y ago
  That argument might of had more weight to it several years ago. The Ultimate Bet scandal does show that companies are willing to risk their entire business for comparitvely meagre rewards. A default position of mistrust when it comes to gambling is a healthy and safe attitude.

nonsequ 13y ago

I had the same thought. Unfortunately, the article doesn't make it crystal clear how much information the neural net uses to bet against you. It would be patently unfair if it actually knew your hand. According to the article, this is not the case. I suspect it does perfectly count cards that it has seen in its hand or community cards. This seems okay as well-trained human players can do the same. I suspect the machine would get even more play if this were obvious, maybe if it played at a table with a real dealer and could read community cards on the table. The technology to do this certainly exists.

LargeWu 13y ago
Counting cards in a poker game is really trivial, even for novice players, since you shuffle the deck after each hand, and in Texas Hold-em, once a card is exposed it is not taken out of play until the hand is over (unlike, say, stud games). All you have to do to count cards is look at your hand and look at the board.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

sunkencity 13y ago

At least it's tuned to the bias of the RNG on the device.