[Knockwurst]

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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.

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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.

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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.