Can a bot settle the luck/skill argument?

[Skallagrim]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]

Do I wish we lived in a country that valued personal liberty and freedom above all else? Yes. Do we? No.

Skallagrim

[/ QUOTE ]

do any exist?

[/ QUOTE ]

In my personal experience, the Netherlands comes closest (at least Amsterdam). But even they have their nanny-staters (just a lot less moralists).

But we will keep fighting, maybe we get there in one of you younger folks' lifetime [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img].

Skallagrim

PS, I also agree that skill v. luck is only ONE argument on our side and that ALL arguments with merit need to be pushed.

[MiltonFriedman]

"Evangalists most likely dislike that bad players are gambling and being victimized. '

No, they mostly dislike that millions of people are enjoying themselves in their Gor-given, unalienable right to the "pursuit of Happiness".

These Un-American religous fanatics defy the Declaration of Independence which deemed such rights to be dviniely granted:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

[Dire]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You can program a computer to beat chess, poker and -- yes -- roshambo.

[/ QUOTE ]

A little off topic, but seriously? Roshambo? I'm a little skeptical because this implies there's an optimal way to play roshambo. I'm assuming if this is actually the case that there should be a reasoning based on game theory to prove it, but what assumptions must one make?

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm guessing the skill element is derived from tendencies, patterns of execution, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

They proved in the mathmatics of poker that the optimum strategy for Roshambo is being totally random in your picking (Dice or something)

In this game you can only exploit your opponents tendacys. But by playing a bot who is being totally random with his picks it would be impossible to beat him without LUCK.

In turn while being random with his picks he can be aquiring data from your picks and get an idea of what your tendacys are giving the computer the ability to adapt to your play to exploit it.

[/ QUOTE ]

Very off topic here, but randomness is not the 'optimum' strategy for roshambo in reality. Randomness is nonexploitable, but similarly incapable of exploitation. In reality, anybody who is 'playing' the game is going to be playing exploitably and so long as you are the 'superior' player, randomness is going to be far from optimal. And even if you do run into an opponent playing 100% randomly then your expectation is the same no matter what strategy you use.

So any exploitative strategy is obviously exploitatable making randomness the mathematically 'correct' play, but in reality - it's not so easy to figure out how to exploit exploitative play.

So no, the top bots in roshambo do not play random except as a fail safe when it seems that they are being succesfully exploited.

[TheEngineer]

[ QUOTE ]
So no, the top bots in roshambo do not play random except as a fail safe when it seems that they are being succesfully exploited.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://chappie.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/roshambot

[coxquinn]

[ QUOTE ]
The top roshambo bots would beat any humans who tried to 'play against' them. Doesn't mean anybody's going to be convinced paper rock scissors is a game of skill all the sudden.

[/ QUOTE ]

it is a game of skill

[coxquinn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So no, the top bots in roshambo do not play random except as a fail safe when it seems that they are being succesfully exploited.

[/ QUOTE ]

http://chappie.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/roshambot

[/ QUOTE ]

woops missed this--- ironically exactly how a poker bot would be programmed, when it thought it was getting outplayed it would default to always making all of your choices equal EV

[shdw01]

I think a stronger argument would be to design a bot that plays absolutely horrible. A game based only on luck, bad play is not penalized. Design a bot that will fold AA, go all-in while playing the board, etc. That will prove how skill does play a factor

[Dire]

[ QUOTE ]
I think a stronger argument would be to design a bot that plays absolutely horrible. A game based only on luck, bad play is not penalized. Design a bot that will fold AA, go all-in while playing the board, etc. That will prove how skill does play a factor

[/ QUOTE ]

The argument isn't about whether poker is exclusively luck based or not, it's about whether luck is the 'predominate' (however you want to define that) factor in the game. Like with roshambo, I think it's obvious that there is some skill in the game - but it's still not a game of 'skill' per say, since luck is the predominate factor.

[TreyWilly]

[ QUOTE ]
I think a stronger argument would be to design a bot that plays absolutely horrible. A game based only on luck, bad play is not penalized. Design a bot that will fold AA, go all-in while playing the board, etc. That will prove how skill does play a factor

[/ QUOTE ]

I think the bot should be programmed to do both. The designers could have it play 200k hands trying to win and 200k hands playing like a dolt. Then the results of each could be compared against the distribution of cards -- which should be somewhat the same after this sample -- and show that skill is THE PREDOMINATE factor.

You could take it even further and have a whole spectrum of skill levels for the bot, to show exactly how each improvement affects the results.

Of course, there is no bot capable of this at the moment (I don't think) but I don't see how the principle could be challenged.

[ike]

[ QUOTE ]
If programmers could successfully build a computer that could play optimally and crush the best human opponents, wouldn't that prove that poker was, in fact, a game where skill dominates?


[/ QUOTE ]

There are already lots of people who play very well who have consistently crushed their opposition over large numbers of hands. Bots that can do it too don't prove anything new about the game.

The endless skill vs luck argument is so frustrating. Its obvious to anyone intelligent and open minded that poker involves both luck and skill. The proportions can be easily quantified with numbers like ROI, BB/100, stddev, etc. You can say things like "Given player X's past results we can be 95% confident that he will be up money over the next N hands."

The problem is that the "mostly skill" criterion is vague and simple-minded enough that people who want to count poker as "mostly luck" can define it such that they are right. "Any given hand, the guy who gets the best cards wins" is infantile, worthless logic and trying to argue against it is futile. None of the clever tricks to show that its mostly skill that get discussed on these boards ad nauseum will make any difference. The facts of the matter should speak for themselves, but they don't, because the people making the decisions are not especially interested in facts.