Chess vs. Poker vs. Computer

AlienBoy · #1 10-27-2006, 07:57 PM

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

CityFan · #2 10-27-2006, 08:01 PM

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.

almostbusto · #3 10-27-2006, 09:02 PM

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.

George Rice · #4 10-27-2006, 10:21 PM

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.

gull · #5 10-27-2006, 11:00 PM

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.

rubix · #6 10-28-2006, 12:01 AM

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.

alphatmw · #7 10-28-2006, 12:41 AM

[ 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.

rjohson · #8 10-28-2006, 10:12 AM

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 · #9 10-28-2006, 10:40 AM

[ 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.

PantsOnFire · #10 10-28-2006, 01:20 AM

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.