Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

From the early days of computing, the ability of a computer to play chess has been held as a milestone event. And as we know, a few years ago a purpose designed computer from IBM indeed bested a best living human chess player in a match.

But is chess really the important milestone? It was considered the important computing milestone as chess was/is thought of as a deeply intellectual game - and indeed it is. However, it is a game of complete information, and thus it can be played by a computer using brute force, which is essentially what DeepBlue did in winning the match.

http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/home/html/b.html


But what about poker? Can a computer compete effectively against a human in a game of deception and incomplete information?

I don't think so. Even with an algorithm using game theory, I don't think there is enough information for a computer to make a brute force analysis that is ultimately +EV. Any skilled human playing this computer should be able to outplay it through manipulating pot odds, randomizing play, and exploiting the computer's plays.

Having said that - could the computer's play be randomized in such a way that the human is placed in a lose-lose situation? But then, wouldn't the human recognize that and place the computer in a lose-lose situation?

And I should mention that I speak mainly of NL - I think a computer could be +EV in a limit game for a number of reasons. But I think programing a computer to play NL effectively is an enormous challenge, and possibly more difficult than the challenge of beating Kasparov at chess.


Thoughts?


AB

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

A computer could THEORETICALLY be programmed to play poker in a game-theoretically optimal way. That is, there would be no strategy that could beat it in the long run, <caveats>.

I say theoretically, because the amount of calculation involved might be enormous.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

computers will be able to crush humans shortly. at both poker and chess. if they can't already (in chess it looks like computers have a slight edge right now).

computers might be lagging behind in poker because it isn't a hot research field. chess isn't so hot either but it used to be.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Of course it's not the "computers" that are lagging, it's the people programming them. Very few people understand poker well enough to be qualified to write the software.

Backgammon, which is also a game of chance and very complex, has been programmed well enough to play at a world class level.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Computers cannot play Go well. Yet computers are better than even the best Scrabble players in the world. It depends more on the game, and also how humans can quantify strategy.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Another important factor to consider is that poker is multiway. Not all multiway games have game-theoretic optima. It is likely that given any multi-player poker strategy S, there exists a set of (colluding) counter-strategies for which S has -EV.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Computers cannot play Go well. Yet computers are better than even the best Scrabble players in the world. It depends more on the game, and also how humans can quantify strategy.

[/ QUOTE ] that's because a computer can see every possible play whereas humans can only evaluate the plays they can find. this is different in poker, where every possible play is already known and can be analyzed.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

My thought is that a computer program would need artificial intelligence to compete against a competent human poker player.

Limit holdem would be a lot easier to program into a computer than NL. I honestly can't imagine what it would take to "teach" a computer program to effectively play a NL holdem game.

I'm betting that we're a long way off at achieving anything close at this time. A whole facet of poker is reading the players. I don't see how a computer can do that given the current technology.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]

I'm betting that we're a long way off at achieving anything close at this time. A whole facet of poker is reading the players. I don't see how a computer can do that given the current technology.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, we've made some decent progress. For HU limit, the University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group has created a program that can compete with expert humans. It is simply an enormous look-up table that represents an approximation to the game theoretic optimum. The look-up table reads something like, "If you hold XX, and the betting action thus far has been YYY, and the board is ZZ, then fold with probability f, call with probability c, and raise with probability r..."

Unfortunately, this approach does not extend to non-HU games. Also, for NL games, the look-up table size becomes unmanagable, making the problem intractable.

For non-HU games, the most promising AI architecture is roughly the following: maintain a belief state of the hidden information, update this belief state in response to opponent actions by Bayesian inference, and make decisions by approximating EV through Monte Carlo simulation. Poki uses this basic structure with modest results. Maven, the famous Scrabble program that beats world class humans, also uses this basic architecture, but the crucial difference between Scrabble and poker is the relative importance of the hidden information in making decisions.

I personally believe expert-level poker AI will be coming in the next decade.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Well there are bots succesfully making money (albeit small amounts) from pushbotting $22 and $33 turbos. As it stands most people who grind the lower limits full ring are very much playing mechanically, using basic reads, waiting for good hands then betting, and their opponents are generally so poor that this is a very +EV strategy, and there is no reason why a computer can't achieve this.

I think, though, you're wondering whether a computer would be able to beat the best players in the world. Right not, I don't think it's possible, and not for quite a while, though I'm pretty sure there is a branch of AI study that is incorporating game theory and as such could start beating the best in a short time.

However I'm pretty sure that is possible to succeed at a fairly high level without this, even now. With the amount of data out there, a computer could analyse all of the hands you've ever played and given any situation tell you what you've got to a certain amount of accuracy, and this would not be based on 'intuition' but raw data. As such a computer could play fairly optimally against you. Allow the computer to learn from it's mistakes..... you've got trouble. Allow the computer plenty of opportunity to randomize it's play.... I think the best players in the world would be able to beat such a computer but only through constantly (i.e. hand to hand) changing up styles, rotating through weak-passive, weak-tight, loose-passive, loose-aggressive on a completely random basis.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
that's because a computer can see every possible play whereas humans can only evaluate the plays they can find. this is different in poker, where every possible play is already known and can be analyzed.

[/ QUOTE ]

when do you ever find yourself in exactly the same situation twice in poker? Never: there are too many variables. You might have the same cards and be sitting in the same position, relative to your opponent twice. And be playing against the same opponent. But even the two situations here are not the same. The opponent might have changed psychologically in some way.

In my opinion no program will be able to play poker at world class level, there is too much human intuition involved.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

I think the computer will outply the humns in the long run poker is all about probailities. the computer will be ble to calculate the probalities more acurately, it will be able to call induce and stop your bluff optimuly. and there are thoudsands of computer programers, and mathmaticians out there who can write the program. texas holdem poker is a very easy game to learn and it is not as complicated as every one is making it out to be. the complication aspect of it is very overated sure u had pot odds ,drawing odds positave and negative expectations game theory any kid with a 5th grade education can learn this game and play it very well to dont have to be a rocket scientist to be good at it. sure doyal is good probaly the best but that comes with 50 years of experience, you also have people who have been playing for 50 years ans i can probaby beat them, and ive been playing only 6 months. but in the long run the computer will win but some one like doyal might beat the computer every now and then i may even beat it every now and then but in the long run we will lose.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

i disagree with you, there are more ways to check mate, a person then there are grains of sand in all the beaches in the entire world, if some one could design a computer to take that into consideration surely they can design a computer to handle all the straight flush fullhouse etc. etc. possiblities ches is way more complex than poker poker is all bout mathmatical probalities the probalitiy your rockets will hold up againts 10 people in the game, the probaility that half will fold, the probaility the aces are good if the board hits 3 of the same suit or 3 cards in sequence, there is not that much to consider in poker as it is in chess. my point is if they can design a computer to beat a human in chess surely they can design one to beat a human in texas holdem.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Computers cannot play Go well. Yet computers are better than even the best Scrabble players in the world. It depends more on the game, and also how humans can quantify strategy.

[/ QUOTE ]

The problem with go is dimensionality. It is a game of complete information like chess, but if a computer can look ahead, say, eight moves in a chess game then it can probably look ahead only two or three moves in Go, given the same processing power.

Tied in with this is the ability to evaluate future positions. A chess program can look at all the possible game situations in eight moves time and use a collection of rules to give each one a value. That set of rules has been designed by the programmer.

In Go, it is much harder to design a useful valuation algorithm. This is partly because differences will be less pronounced (you're only looking ahead a couple of moves) so you need to be more accurate, and partly because of the way the game is played: there is more intuition and pattern recognition, and less rigorous analysis.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

I got a e-mail the other day from some company boasting they had a computer program that would play for you on you internet sites. They said it wins 98% of the hands it plays. Of course I didn't trust it. If they could pull that off, why sell it to me or anyone else. Just setup a bank of cpu's and drag the money.

NL poker is for humans.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

I keep reading arguments about how computers will not be able to play poker well because it is a game of "incomplete information." This seems like a bad argument to me. Once we know our own hole cards, our opponent can only have 1 of a possible 1225 holdings. Whatever is holding back progress in the field, it is not because computers cannot deal with evaulating about twelve hundred possible hands that our opponent may have.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Yes a computer could play some damn good poker, you can bet your boots on that. But it would never be able to exploit weak players as badly as the world class players.. he would settle for a smaller, more reasonable win rate against them.

This is what seperates poker from chess.. a chess computer can beat a weak player just as effeciently as a grandmaster can.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Computers will never be able to beat a world class human at a multi-street game. The feel element is too important in a game like hold 'em IMO. Humans know when to adjust their playing styles and change gears.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Yes a computer could play some damn good poker, you can bet your boots on that. But it would never be able to exploit weak players as badly as the world class players.. he would settle for a smaller, more reasonable win rate against them.

This is what seperates poker from chess.. a chess computer can beat a weak player just as effeciently as a grandmaster can.

[/ QUOTE ]

I could not agree more.

Also, computers edge over humans depends greatly on how deep the stacks are. Deeper stacks favors humans, at least for now, as it involves more room for strategy.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Chess computers CANNOT beat a weak player just as efficiently as a human player. Human players can set -EV traps that pay off against bad players. Computers are too good/stupid to do that.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Chess computers CANNOT beat a weak player just as efficiently as a human player. Human players can set -EV traps that pay off against bad players. Computers are too good/stupid to do that.

[/ QUOTE ]

You are dead wrong, good computers CRUSH weak human players.

Regarding the whole computer vs man at chess, the deep blue match is not all it's cracked up to be. They basically cheated by changing the program during the match, agreeing to share information and withheld and whole bunch of bs...
In correspodence chess a human would still crush a computer...

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

I am not dead wrong.

I agree that good computers crush weak human players.

My argument is that good human players can win more quickly and efficiently.

Against a bozo, 1. e4 2. Bc4 3. Qf3 isn't that bad. You play some bad moves for a big payoff. Computers are too smart to be that stupid.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

1. g4 e5 2. f3 loses even faster, but does it mean that black has an advantage in the starting position?

I don't think that trying to find the fastest to win or the most idiotic way to lose proves anything in chess. Please do not mention the Hikaru Nakamura now.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

"This is what seperates poker from chess.. a chess computer can beat a weak player just as effeciently as a grandmaster can."

Because there is no bonus for beating somebody badly. But say there were extra points for checkmating in less than say 45 moves. If tournaments were comprised of good and bad players alike, a computer would lose to humans it could beat head up.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
"This is what seperates poker from chess.. a chess computer can beat a weak player just as effeciently as a grandmaster can."

Because there is no bonus for beating somebody badly. But say there were extra points for checkmating in less than say 45 moves. If tournaments were comprised of good and bad players alike, a computer would lose to humans it could beat head up.

[/ QUOTE ]

David, you are undoubtedly wrong about this. First, a chess computer can be programmed to play any number of different ways or open in any number of different ways. Thus, if there is an opening that is objectively weaker against a stronger player, but allows the computer to win in fewer moves against a weaker player, the computer can simply be programmed to do just that.

Indeed, a common program retailing for about $100 such as Fritz is so strong that it could play an inferior opening and still beat many mid-level grandmasters in a tournament like you proposed or heads up.

These programs are known for finding mates in the shortest number of moves which humans have missed in analysis. So there is no reason to think that the program would do anything other than find the quickest mate once it has gone into the opening it has been programmed to play.

Simply put, with a strong enough computer the most efficient response to a given chess move could be calculated whether its the first or last moves of the game and the human has no advantage here as he/she cannot more efficiently exploit a weak move.

Back to the more interesting question -- Can a program eventually beat the best poker players in the world? I sure would like to see you weigh in on that one.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Back to the more interesting question -- Can a program eventually beat the best poker players in the world? I sure would like to see you weigh in on that one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely not. No neural net's going to come close to an optimal human brain for pattern recognition and psychology. That's what will always set the human poker player apart.

HU, yeah, this program could crush 99% of opponents. But at a full table, not so much.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

CHESS
-----

Yes, there were some strange occurences in the game where
Kasparov missed a fantastic draw against Deep Blue on the
Black side of the Ruy Lopez (e.g., how could a "bot"
overlook that a king move, although natural to a human
player, was a blunder that would lead to a repetition of
position?) although I still have some doubts. If I had to
choose whether if IBM had put in a human player at some
points of the match (or overruled the move that Deep Blue
chose) or if they did not, unfortunately, I think they did
for this game for at least two moves!

If you want me to be more specific about the move numbers of
the game, I can show you the reasoning behind my belief. As
for the other games, I didn't see this because it either
escaped my attention, or it simply didn't happen.

I totally agree that if you take two best "bots" and the
eight best correspondence players of the world (now) to
play a double round-robin, I am very confident that a bot
would not win the tournament. Also, I wouldn't be surprised
at all if both bots had a minus score. [And I wouldn't be
surprised if many OTB world class human chess players would
have a minus score!]


POKER
-----
On the other hand, although PokiBot might be able to play
really well in HU LHE, I don't think it would crush
significantly weaker poker players in NL HE, especially in
the context of a ring game, as well as a world-class NL HE
player. It's simply because it's often how much you win on
a hand that makes a big difference and a world-class NL HE
player would win more than a bot (as they currently stand in
NL HE) in a ring game.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Back to the more interesting question -- Can a program eventually beat the best poker players in the world? I sure would like to see you weigh in on that one.

[/ QUOTE ]

Definitely not. No neural net's going to come close to an optimal human brain for pattern recognition and psychology. That's what will always set the human poker player apart.

HU, yeah, this program could crush 99% of opponents. But at a full table, not so much.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your assessment of heads up is interesting. In saying 99% of opponents, does that mean the hypothetical program could beat many of the best players in the world? At the very least it could be programmed to play a non-exploitable strategy so that the best would have no advantage over it, don't you think?

I don't see why a similar program could not be devised for a ring game taking into account each participants propensities by their previous play in the game, and then determine the best play when taking every players possible holdings in account. Admittedly, this is far into the future.

I guess one difficulty would be observational cues and psychological factors. Though you could program the computer so that if someone was beat within the last x amount of hands by an improbable turn of the cards and that player subsequently bet or raised, then y% of the time that player had a weak holding.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Well, yeah, you can never really gauge incomplete information to a degree of precision that can be sustained indefinitely.

Note: I said 99% of players, not 99% of the world's best. That's the 1%.

Depends on how far into the future we're talking. A century, nah, I don't think so. A millennia, sure. Even then, what would be the point? By then, any Turing-capable AI will self-trigger causality. But that's another discussion.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
CHESS
-----

Yes, there were some strange occurences in the game where
Kasparov missed a fantastic draw against Deep Blue on the
Black side of the Ruy Lopez (e.g., how could a "bot"
overlook that a king move, although natural to a human
player, was a blunder that would lead to a repetition of
position?) although I still have some doubts. If I had to
choose whether if IBM had put in a human player at some
points of the match (or overruled the move that Deep Blue
chose) or if they did not, unfortunately, I think they did
for this game for at least two moves!

[/ QUOTE ]

The hand of Joel Benjamin may or may not have played a part in the match. But that's really incidental, because all that means is that there was a bug or problem in the program that did not allow it to see/calculate that variation, which could be addressed by improving the program or the hardware. There was nothing inherent about the positions that I'm aware of that allowed a human to find the best move where a computer could not. Though on that day that computer did not.


[ QUOTE ]
I totally agree that if you take two best "bots" and the eight best correspondence players of the world (now) to
play a double round-robin, I am very confident that a bot
would not win the tournament. Also, I wouldn't be surprised
at all if both bots had a minus score. [And I wouldn't be
surprised if many OTB world class human chess players would
have a minus score!]

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't see why a computer like deep blue running for as long as it takes for a correspondance player to make a move wouldn't out calculate and beat the correspondance player. Chess is utlimately calculating various analysis trees, opening theory and end game theory are just short cuts. On what basis would a human have any advantage?

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
"This is what seperates poker from chess.. a chess computer can beat a weak player just as effeciently as a grandmaster can."

Because there is no bonus for beating somebody badly. But say there were extra points for checkmating in less than say 45 moves. If tournaments were comprised of good and bad players alike, a computer would lose to humans it could beat head up.

[/ QUOTE ]

The only problem is this is just not true. I'll have to repeat this I guess.. COMPUTERS CRUSH WEAK PLAYERS... with greater ease than human do.....

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Oh, Strega, you'll have to make exceptions for Fischer and Tal here, I believe, and maybe Capablanca. IIRC, Fischer destroyed his opponents, some of who were highly regarded in their own right, in a multi-board match, no?

I'd rank that as a pretty good gauge of whether Fischer could beat Deep Blue.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Oh, Strega, you'll have to make exceptions for Fischer and Tal here, I believe, and maybe Capablanca. IIRC, Fischer destroyed his opponents, some of who were highly regarded in their own right, in a multi-board match, no?

I'd rank that as a pretty good gauge of whether Fischer could beat Deep Blue.

[/ QUOTE ]

No not really, I played Tal in a simul and crushed him, he's only human. Kasparov played multi board matches as you call it with much higher players most of them International Master level and won. Fischer, Kasparov or Tal have never crushed their peers in a simul, it never happen. The point I was trying to make it that folks are tossing around that computers beat weak player slower than master do and that’s just false. Computers excel at tactics, and exploit any small tactical advantage over weak opponents, humans tend to play positional concepts or “flawed tactics” and in most cases a computer will crush a weak human quicker than a solid master would, that's just the way it rolls.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Fair enough. But it's complete-information game, right? I'm not sure the same can be said for poker. Hell, it's theortically possible, I know I can mimic AI's in simulations. To a certain extent.

Hmph. It'd make an intriguing problem for the right programmer, but the Ungar gin example might be indicative of how truly difficult it is for a brute-force computational box to overcome the thinking process.

However, that's a rare breed of individual.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
Fair enough. But it's complete-information game, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes it is but not everything is known at any given moment. There are possible lines that go out side the scope of what can be known in the “moment.” I forget the particular ending but decades went by before a computer figured that some combination where it’s bishop vs. knight (and what other pieces I don't recall?) is a brute force win in something like 325 moves!

Since the OP put chess and poker and computers in the same sentence I think it’s worth really describing what that looks like. This is what happen more or less in chess and I’ll use poker as an example. First you are not asking if a computer can be programmed to play better poker than a human. That’s question does not exist in a vacuum because you are faced with money, big egos, large corporations, cheating and a drive to get it done without any boundary conditions. Makes no sense… OK… hang with me for a second (I’m tossing in poker for more or less what actually went down in chess)

1st the poker programming team will get a player to flip, they will hire a Chip Reese or someone as part of their team. They will study everything known about every top player, they will invite many (50 to 300?) of the top players in to the world to a million+ freeroll with the only condition that every hole card is captured on camera and you must submit to a brief interview a week after the event. The players will of course come on board, +EV, appearance fees too and what can it hurt it’s only a computer.. muahahaha..!?

Chip and team will start the frame work to build custom algorithms’ to beat key players, private man vs. computer poker matches will be held, again custom algorithms will be used and possibly adjusted as play goes on if the “team” determines anything out of sync. Structure conditions will be studied, we now know that Hellmuth plays 20% less optimally if blinds increase in 30 minutes as opposed to 45 minutes. This entire specific targeted BS goes on at the same time they are actually programming a computer to “play” the game. Possibly a fuzzy logic systems is tested and let run loose online, not as the final machine but to data mind for new information, maybe this fuzzy system learns something “most” poker experts to be true is false. All of his and the computer will have every table, every known situations, every bit of history it its system at all times. It will know to adjust the calling range of a Johnny Chan vs. any Phil, in any given situation and if they are wrong they’ll adjust again and again.... At some point real poker players won’t care because its such a “planned project” that you’ll still wonder if machines play better poker than humans in spite of the fact that the program has won the WSOP three years in a row, or has beaten a Phil heads up... it just won't matter or prove that much.....


Back to chess for a moment, Deep Blue team most likely had human intervention at key points……

Game Over (Deep Blue Film)

The move....

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

It depends, actually. There is a theortical possibility that IBM may have been successful with some of its cybernetics research.

Whether this was an accidental emergent process or it was forced-emergent is a matter of debate. If it's a runaway multiple=emergent, then IBM wasn't the causative effect, and Deep Blue had human intervention.

So I'm inclined to think that there was cheating. Kasparov might have been right, and there is a very high probability that he is correct.

It depends. Is the mass information flow and storage capacity of public nets and information churn enough to trigger a multiple-emergent? There isn't even a theortical quantity to base a sample on. The only comparsion we have is the human brain, and that hasn't even been analyzed to the core, much less built successfully as far as successful neural net prototypes go though.

So, yes, they probably had human intervention, but this cannot be taken as a 100% probability.

A Clarke posit in 3001 states that it takes a petabyte to hold the whole of a human lifetime. I believe the appendix cited a source of study where this was postulated in science. I don't recall the study, though, or the cited author, so... I don't know.

In the wake of such an eventuality, a Turing test would be insufficent to draw conclusions.

It's an interesting situation though. Realize that we're no closer to knowing what trigged our own self-awareness, much less how to model a situation in which one might emerge.

Hmm.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
i disagree with you, there are more ways to check mate, a person then there are grains of sand in all the beaches in the entire world, if some one could design a computer to take that into consideration surely they can design a computer to handle all the straight flush fullhouse etc. etc. possiblities ches is way more complex than poker poker is all bout mathmatical probalities the probalitiy your rockets will hold up againts 10 people in the game, the probaility that half will fold, the probaility the aces are good if the board hits 3 of the same suit or 3 cards in sequence, there is not that much to consider in poker as it is in chess. my point is if they can design a computer to beat a human in chess surely they can design one to beat a human in texas holdem.

[/ QUOTE ]

i think there is a lot more to poker you dont know about...

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

My statement assumes both chess and poker computers are using the strategy that has the best chance against experts.

In the poker case that means it will try too many bluffs against a sucker.

In the chess case it means that it will assume the bad player will find the best move against it.

Stuff like that.

If you want to postulate a computer that deviates from optimum strategy when it sees bad play you run into the problem of counter strategies designed to make that occur.

A counter counter strategy would be nightmarish to program, I think. Practically, the best one could hope for would be a program that plays optimally. One that would not crush bad players to the degree an expert human would.

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

Well, StregaChess' post on "the game" is a good summary of
the unusual events. Sure, I could be wrong about human
intervention, but I'll let others who have looked into this
carefully (if any) speak for themselves.

About chess analysis, it's true that every bot will look at
all positions up to a certain depth. The only problem is
that the "evaluation function(s)" are based on mechanical
calculation. A true world class chess analyst would have
better judgment, i.e., his "evaluation function(s)" is
better. Also, most world class players have a very good
"opening book", especially world class correspondence
players. Opening theory isn't as cut and dried as many
chess players might think.

Also, in the scenario I described, it's not really a very
good test of chess excellence for several reasons, so
apologies for poor experimental design! [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

1) I assume all the participants would know something about
their opponents: their name, whether they are bot, previous
correspondence games. It's pretty clear everyone would
treat a bot as if it would play like a bot, etc., so there
would be some advantage to the human participants.

2) Well, I hate to bring this up, but the humans would have
a HUGE ADVANTAGE a la Russians versus Fischer, only now
there would be two "victims"!

3) Also, depends on where these bots originate from: if one
of them was a huge corporation, I think you might get the
picture.... (ok, it's even uglier than 2 above!).

Re: Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer
 

[ QUOTE ]
if some one could design a computer to take that into consideration surely they can design a computer to handle all the straight flush fullhouse etc. etc. possiblities ches is way more complex than poker poker is all bout mathmatical probalities the probalitiy your rockets will hold up againts 10 people in the game, the probaility that half will fold, the probaility the aces are good if the board hits 3 of the same suit or 3 cards in sequence, there is not that much to consider in poker as it is in chess. my point is if they can design a computer to beat a human in chess surely they can design one to beat a human in texas holdem.

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I think your statement is completely wrong for exactly the reasons I attempted to infer in my original post.

Chess can be solved by brute force, which is largely what Deep Blue did. It can only be solved by brute force however because it is a game of nearly complete information. I say "nearly complete" because you don't know what your opponent is *thinking* - though you do know the available possible moves, and you can analyze thousands of move branches.


In poker, and most especially in multi handed situations, you have a fraction of the available information that you have in chess, so brute force analysis is impossible.

And much of the available information is subject to manipulation.

E.g. Is seat 3 betting with AA or KK? Or is he representing AA or KK? Is seat 4 overcalling with a draw? Or slowplaying a set?


Added on top of the uncertainty of available information, is the randomosity of the progress of the hand, and in hold'em the ability of certain cards to improve your opponent more than it improves you, and which is even more challenging in multi handed situations.

Now while some of this can be "poker stoved", much of it relies I think on human intuition.

For myself personally, in a live game my advantage is in my reads. I feel comfortable making certain plays as +EV when I can put my opponents on a specifically narrow range of hands. Even though that play is -EV for a wider range of hands.

I do not believe a computer can make such a judgement call on a human.

If I was playing against a computer, I would play against them as if it were someone I could not read intuitively - but since I would expect the computer to be making +EV game theory plays, I'm pretty sure I could I could manipulate information enough (i.e. bet sizes etc) that the computer would not be able to read me accurately, either. In fact, I think if I simply randomized my bet sizes the computer wold be unable to play effectively as over time it would be unable to find any pattern to my betting.

Or a strategy might be to play very consistently, always showing folded cards - then after a certain amount of play, reverse play styles completely. There would certainly be enough lag while the computer reassessed my play style change to steal pots.


Of course as I write this I wonder if this is the answer to a functional computer model - Play one way, switch gears and play random, switch and play TAG, switch and fish for a few hand, switch and play LAGTAG, etc.



Regardless and back to my original post, I still believe that "brute force" cannot be used to solve a NL multihanded game.



AB