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Matt's implication that poker is more complex than chess is entirely unfounded. Computer scientists have been trying to create the best chess programs since th

Matt's implication that poker is more complex than chess is entirely unfounded. Computer scientists have been trying to create the best chess programs since the days of the first computer as a test of artificial intelligence. Poker has been ignored because a computer can easily figure out the odds (figuring out the strategy is the hard part), and it was never as popular as it is now. I would expect that a computer will be the best poker player in the world in a few years, one is already close now. http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9750210-7.html http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9750210-7.html Phil Laak (one of the best) didn't start playing poker seriously until he was 25. Contrast this with chess, where if you didn't start studying by the age of ten for hours every day, you don't have a chance at being the best.

utnick 19y ago
you are incorrect imo chess computers are better than people because chess computers brute force the problem, they can think millions of moves in advance and plan out every possible game path, a human can only think several moves in advance, so huge advantage for the computer. in poker, there are only a handful of cards in play, only a few decision spots per hand, a pro poker player could probably program a computer to be as good as he is by giving it the rules which he plays by, but it is unlikely a computer will ever surpass the talent of the best players imo
- Elfan 19y ago
  A few minor corrections. First, most chess programs don't literally "brute force" the problem. A lot of work goes into pruning the search tree and only looking along the most promising paths. Second, humans can actually think many moves ahead along certain paths. As other's have stated in this thread chess is particularly well suited to be played well by a computer program, but that does not make it trivial.
  - mattmaroon 19y ago
    They don't brute force only because processor power isn't sufficient to do so. Eventually they will cease to prune and will be unbeatable. I'd never say chess is trivial, it's just far less complex than poker.
    - jules 19y ago
      > Eventually they will cease to prune and will be unbeatable. No, they won't. The universe isn't big enough for a computer that would play brute force in a reasonable amount of time.
- ntoshev 19y ago
  Computers can brute force poker too. The way computers and humans play chess is also very different, although there is superficial similarity in that they both enumerate future moves.
mattmaroon 19y ago
You are very incorrect. Here's where you're wrong: 1. Phil Laak is not one of the best poker players. Not even top 100. The fact that you think he is shows how little you know about poker. Also, I don't even know who Ali Esmali is. 2. The game (which I think was No Limit Hold'em) played was the simplest form of poker for a machine. Even if one became better at this than humans (which probably is possible in the not too distant future) it will be far from beating a 2-7 Triple Draw player. 3. Figuring out odds is trivial, but virtually useless. Figuring out odds as well as a human, who has the ability to put his opponent on a range of holdings, is not. 4. No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in an 8 man, limit hold'em match, and there are far better players than me. 5. I don't know if chess has had more man hours dedicated to it. It probably has. But Polaris has been worked on for 26 years. That's certainly not insignificant. Phil Laak has probably been playing for 10 or so. 6. I'm a mediocre programmer at best but could easily write a chess program that, with infinite processing power, would be perfect. (I'm not sure if it would be unbeatable, as it is possible that with perfect play one side will always win.) I could not do that with poker. 7. Chess may be harder to learn for a human (though even there I'm not sure) but that doesn't mean it is also harder for a machine. Calculating the 18th power of 2 is harder for a human than picking out an apple from a group of pictures. Not the same for my PC.
- imsteve 19y ago
  The poker bots out there mostly suck because they don't need to be great to win lots of money from the weak players. The real problem the bots face is getting around anti-bot security measures. But, although almost no effort has been put into poker bots, they're already pretty damn close: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/289607.aspx http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/289607.asp... If poker bots analyzed a massive database of how pros play like humans or the chess bots do then I'm certain that the poker bots would blow you away. > No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in... You'll be seeing this quote again:)
  - rms 19y ago
    The poker bots right now are also only good at heads up.
DocSavage 19y ago
Why is it unfounded that "poker is more complex than chess"? Chess lacks chance and bluffing. There is perfect knowledge of the state. The long apprenticeship in chess doesn't mean chess is inherently tougher for computers than poker. It means for humans, chess is a difficult game that requires a lot of training. Humans would take a long time to memorize and incorporate book knowledge. Computers could suck in that knowledge in no time. Babies acquire visual recognition and speech in a smaller time period than adults go from novice to grand masters in chess. So it depends on what you are learning, not just the time it takes. It's also interesting that the computer vs human poker contest tried to remove "luck": "The man vs. machine poker contest was designed to eliminate the luck factor by dealing the same cards in each hand, but in reverse. So in one hand, Laak might get lucky with two aces, but in the other room Esmali would be unlucky as the computer was dealt two aces. To finalize a winner, officials added the two human scores and two computer scores separately, and the highest number won."
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  That is a novel way to attempt to do so (though I still think is far from absolutely successful). Most previous attempts dealt only with sample size.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  Also, interestingly enough, since poker is all about optimization, it would still be hard to play perfectly even if you had perfect knowledge of the state. Even sometimes knowing what someone had, it's hard to decide the perfect play.
- Tichy 19y ago
  Cool idea for removing the luck, but I think it has no bearing on the computer's strategy, only on the analysis of the results by the human observers.
- ntoshev 19y ago
  Chess lacks chance compared to blackjack too. Does it means chess is simpler than blackjack?
Elfan 19y ago
Figuring out pot odds is an elementary part of poker. Most who play poker well can do that correctly, that is just as well as a computer. On the other hand combining those odds with an estimate of what other players and how they may react is a damn interesting problem for a human player or a computer programmer. Isn't strategy the hard part of chess after all?
Poleris 19y ago
Here's an honest question. Why isn't more research being done into solving Poker compared to the amount put into Go or Chess? > It seems to me that it is an interesting question that combines elements of computation, AI, and psychology. > One can see instant practical results by playing your bot for real money. > Poker is a fun game. :) Any answers would be appreciated, especially as I'm thinking about doing a PhD and am currently exploring open problem domains.
- ntoshev 19y ago
  Chess has been researched much, much more than Go. In research, you are looking for problems that can be solved in isolation, not ones that combine many diverse topics. Perhaps poker is not researched more because gambling is tainted negatively by the society.
- aidanf 19y ago
  There is quite a bit of research being done about poker in the last few years. In fact poker related research has got best paper awards at a couple of the major AI conferences in recent years. Check out http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/. They're probably the leaders in this field.
aidanf 19y ago
It's widely accepted in AI circles that Poker is a much more difficult to solve than chess. The main reason is that chess is a game of perfect information whereas Poker is a game of imperfect or partial information. It's much more difficult to find an optimal (or even a consistently successful) strategy in Poker.
marcus 19y ago
Chess doesn't even need processing power in theory, only a very large database with state lookup in the big book of chess. There is a nice proof in game theory that any turn based game with 2 players, limited number of board positions, and finite max length is subject to the creation of the perfect game book - basically a simple table of board positions and the ultimate correct decision for every board position. using it you are guaranteed to win/draw optimally (depends on first mover advantage) against any player. You just can't create a "big book of poker" it doesn't meet the requirements. PS: Go is also subject to this treatment despite being several orders of magnitude more complex than chess, it is still a finite 2 player turn based game.

utnick 19y ago

you are incorrect imo chess computers are better than people because chess computers brute force the problem, they can think millions of moves in advance and plan out every possible game path, a human can only think several moves in advance, so huge advantage for the computer. in poker, there are only a handful of cards in play, only a few decision spots per hand, a pro poker player could probably program a computer to be as good as he is by giving it the rules which he plays by, but it is unlikely a computer will ever surpass the talent of the best players imo

Elfan 19y ago
A few minor corrections. First, most chess programs don't literally "brute force" the problem. A lot of work goes into pruning the search tree and only looking along the most promising paths. Second, humans can actually think many moves ahead along certain paths. As other's have stated in this thread chess is particularly well suited to be played well by a computer program, but that does not make it trivial.
- mattmaroon 19y ago
  They don't brute force only because processor power isn't sufficient to do so. Eventually they will cease to prune and will be unbeatable. I'd never say chess is trivial, it's just far less complex than poker.
  - jules 19y ago
    > Eventually they will cease to prune and will be unbeatable. No, they won't. The universe isn't big enough for a computer that would play brute force in a reasonable amount of time.
ntoshev 19y ago
Computers can brute force poker too. The way computers and humans play chess is also very different, although there is superficial similarity in that they both enumerate future moves.

mattmaroon 19y ago

You are very incorrect. Here's where you're wrong: 1. Phil Laak is not one of the best poker players. Not even top 100. The fact that you think he is shows how little you know about poker. Also, I don't even know who Ali Esmali is. 2. The game (which I think was No Limit Hold'em) played was the simplest form of poker for a machine. Even if one became better at this than humans (which probably is possible in the not too distant future) it will be far from beating a 2-7 Triple Draw player. 3. Figuring out odds is trivial, but virtually useless. Figuring out odds as well as a human, who has the ability to put his opponent on a range of holdings, is not. 4. No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in an 8 man, limit hold'em match, and there are far better players than me. 5. I don't know if chess has had more man hours dedicated to it. It probably has. But Polaris has been worked on for 26 years. That's certainly not insignificant. Phil Laak has probably been playing for 10 or so. 6. I'm a mediocre programmer at best but could easily write a chess program that, with infinite processing power, would be perfect. (I'm not sure if it would be unbeatable, as it is possible that with perfect play one side will always win.) I could not do that with poker. 7. Chess may be harder to learn for a human (though even there I'm not sure) but that doesn't mean it is also harder for a machine. Calculating the 18th power of 2 is harder for a human than picking out an apple from a group of pictures. Not the same for my PC.

imsteve 19y ago
The poker bots out there mostly suck because they don't need to be great to win lots of money from the weak players. The real problem the bots face is getting around anti-bot security measures. But, although almost no effort has been put into poker bots, they're already pretty damn close: http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/289607.aspx http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2007/07/25/289607.asp... If poker bots analyzed a massive database of how pros play like humans or the chess bots do then I'm certain that the poker bots would blow you away. > No poker bot ever made could come anywhere close to me in... You'll be seeing this quote again:)
- rms 19y ago
  The poker bots right now are also only good at heads up.

DocSavage 19y ago

Why is it unfounded that "poker is more complex than chess"? Chess lacks chance and bluffing. There is perfect knowledge of the state. The long apprenticeship in chess doesn't mean chess is inherently tougher for computers than poker. It means for humans, chess is a difficult game that requires a lot of training. Humans would take a long time to memorize and incorporate book knowledge. Computers could suck in that knowledge in no time. Babies acquire visual recognition and speech in a smaller time period than adults go from novice to grand masters in chess. So it depends on what you are learning, not just the time it takes. It's also interesting that the computer vs human poker contest tried to remove "luck": "The man vs. machine poker contest was designed to eliminate the luck factor by dealing the same cards in each hand, but in reverse. So in one hand, Laak might get lucky with two aces, but in the other room Esmali would be unlucky as the computer was dealt two aces. To finalize a winner, officials added the two human scores and two computer scores separately, and the highest number won."

mattmaroon 19y ago
That is a novel way to attempt to do so (though I still think is far from absolutely successful). Most previous attempts dealt only with sample size.
mattmaroon 19y ago
Also, interestingly enough, since poker is all about optimization, it would still be hard to play perfectly even if you had perfect knowledge of the state. Even sometimes knowing what someone had, it's hard to decide the perfect play.
Tichy 19y ago
Cool idea for removing the luck, but I think it has no bearing on the computer's strategy, only on the analysis of the results by the human observers.
ntoshev 19y ago
Chess lacks chance compared to blackjack too. Does it means chess is simpler than blackjack?

Elfan 19y ago

Figuring out pot odds is an elementary part of poker. Most who play poker well can do that correctly, that is just as well as a computer. On the other hand combining those odds with an estimate of what other players and how they may react is a damn interesting problem for a human player or a computer programmer. Isn't strategy the hard part of chess after all?

Poleris 19y ago

Here's an honest question. Why isn't more research being done into solving Poker compared to the amount put into Go or Chess? > It seems to me that it is an interesting question that combines elements of computation, AI, and psychology. > One can see instant practical results by playing your bot for real money. > Poker is a fun game. :) Any answers would be appreciated, especially as I'm thinking about doing a PhD and am currently exploring open problem domains.

ntoshev 19y ago
Chess has been researched much, much more than Go. In research, you are looking for problems that can be solved in isolation, not ones that combine many diverse topics. Perhaps poker is not researched more because gambling is tainted negatively by the society.
aidanf 19y ago
There is quite a bit of research being done about poker in the last few years. In fact poker related research has got best paper awards at a couple of the major AI conferences in recent years. Check out http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/ http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/. They're probably the leaders in this field.

aidanf 19y ago

It's widely accepted in AI circles that Poker is a much more difficult to solve than chess. The main reason is that chess is a game of perfect information whereas Poker is a game of imperfect or partial information. It's much more difficult to find an optimal (or even a consistently successful) strategy in Poker.

marcus 19y ago

Chess doesn't even need processing power in theory, only a very large database with state lookup in the big book of chess. There is a nice proof in game theory that any turn based game with 2 players, limited number of board positions, and finite max length is subject to the creation of the perfect game book - basically a simple table of board positions and the ultimate correct decision for every board position. using it you are guaranteed to win/draw optimally (depends on first mover advantage) against any player. You just can't create a "big book of poker" it doesn't meet the requirements. PS: Go is also subject to this treatment despite being several orders of magnitude more complex than chess, it is still a finite 2 player turn based game.