Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer

[Unknown Soldier]

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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.

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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.

[rjohson]

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.

[rjohson]

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.

[CityFan]

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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.

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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.

[Lee_C]

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.

[WhiteWolf]

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.

[Wanderlust]

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.

[CaptainNasty]

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.

[Pondus]

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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.

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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.

[gull]

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.