Short AI article

[HedonismBot]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/com...cle2002699.ece

Surely article is wrong and poker is a more difficult game for a computer to win at. Bots can obviously win against bad players and full handed tables but could one ever beat a top pro heads up? I'm guessing that will be done sooner at GO than in poker

[lastchance]

From what I know, Poki is a fairly good program capable of beating most amateurs. I don't think Go programs are at that level yet.

[clowntable]

If you can buy in short enough there should be no problem to write a bot along the lines of "The Mathematics of Poker"

I'm also pretty confident that HU can be played somewhat optimally with deep stacks vs. a pro.

Go o the other hand, well I wouldn't even know how to start writing the bot :P

[Neil S]

How many combinations does it have to work through and figure out the EV for? That's the end-all question for these game bots.

For Go, it's huge, huge, huge. We're talking about a 19x19 board. Even if you exclude plays that are known bad most of the time we can only drop that to about a 17x17, so you can see that the computer will have a lot to think about for just a few moves ahead.

The choice tree of poker, particularly limit poker (but even no-limit once you exclude known-irrational pot sizes), is much, much, much smaller. Bet, raise, fold? And once the community cards come out, the combinations of possible opponents holdings become relatively small, too, because you can generally lump together most kinds of hands that missed the flop.

[amplify]

Surely you underestimate the complexity of Go.

[Neil S]

Additionally, for Poker it's relatively easy to calculate your equity at a given point in the hand, and compare that with the pot size and a given bet. You do have to put your opponent on a hand range, but that's something a human can tune for a bot pretty easily.

For go, evaulating a board position isn't so easy. The number of interactions from stone to stone, group to group, are ridiculous.

[amplify]

Computers don't have the STONES to play Go, HAHAHAHAHA.