incomplete information - so what?

[AaronBrown]

I'm not sure where you came across the "incomplete information" nonsense, but I wouldn't pay any attention. Computers have no problem with incomplete information.

I agree with you that in heads-up limit play, computers should be able to beat the best humans. It will take some work, but I expect it to happen. As algorithms get better and hardware gets cheaper, I think it's a matter of time.

No-limit is a much harder problem, in fact it becomes hard to define "beat". You can solve that by setting a horizon, like play until one player is broke, or play 1,000 hands. But that's moving in the direction of a limit. It will be interesting to see how well computers can play no-limit, and how broadly they can define no-limit.

I don't expect to see a computer program that can play well at a table of humans anytime soon. If someone did that, it would be a major breakthrough in machine intelligence.

In an important sense, I think that means no one has any idea how to build a poker machine that can compete with good humans. It's true I expect someone to figure out how to beat heads-up limit poker, but only because it exploits aspects of the game that are not essential to the poker. We didn't say computers beat the best human chessplayers until they could do it under tournament-like conditations, the way important chess is played. The fact that a computer could win at speed chess was a relatively minor accomplishment. People play speed chess and heads-up limit poker, but to be considered a human-beating poker player, a machine has to come to a no-limit table with low blinds and no timeclock.

In terms of tells, if you allow the computer the use of machine sensing devices, it should have no trouble beating humans now. That's already being done in the lab. It's possible that humans could learn to beat the machines, but at the moment sensing of voice timbre, micromovements, pupil dialation and other indicators removes the incomplete information from the game.