Is there a perfect NLHE Bot? Could there be?

[Rudbaeck]

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No computer can comprehend human emotions. You can program the correct math but not the emotional variable.

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It doesn't have to understand emotion to beat either limit or no limit.

[ColdCaller]

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Dues ex machina?

No computer can comprehend human emotions. You can program the correct math but not the emotional variable.

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You're just trying to use latin terms to make yourself look smarter. Deus Ex Machina means "god from the machine," but modern language doesn't even use it in the original context that it was introduced (IIRC it was originally referenced to huge constructs in Greek drama that saved the protaganist at the last minute), and now just refers to unlikely plot twists that save our hero at the last minute.

So please, stop trying to wax intellectual. I know it's a forum on the Internet and all, but geez.

[Borgland]

uummmm no. I figured we all knew the meaning or spirit of it. Man there's a lot of pricks here.

The emotion leading to tilting is what I was refering to and hitting the miracle card and such.

[mackthefork]

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Dues ex machina?

No computer can comprehend human emotions. You can program the correct math but not the emotional variable.

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I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.



I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.








Look Dave, I can see you're really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.


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Regards Mack

[TruckeeSlick]

Another interesting question is how to judge the bot's success. Since poker is about long term financial success one would have to create a scenario where top pros would be willing to play many, many thousands of hands instead of pursuing their regular grind. Would this be a series of heads-up matches or full tables? If full tables, cash or tournament formats?

There are some practical issues as well. The Poker Academy folks, orignally from the University of Alberta, are set up to have bot vs. human play for play money but they're in Canada. Presumably they'd have to send people and hardware to Nevada to legally play for real money. I presume they'd also have to get Gaming Comission approval, which would
mean the kind of exhaustive examination machine games normally get. Finally, they'd have to come up with stakes to interest pros. I can just see the reaction when a bunch of AI profs submit a six- or seven-figure academic grant application to set up a poker game in Vegas....

[AKsPRO]

Are bots perfect or imperfect is not really important at all. Seems some people dont understand why bots are so bad for online poker. The main problem of bots is their ability to KILL FISHES who bring money to us

[andyexpat]

I haven't read any previous posts !
Train a computer to analyse stats from PokerTracker, and you have one competent poker player up till the mid games.
A bot that can challenge the best players in the world is just a matter of time.
If you find this hard to comprehend, then think about "Artificial Intelligence". What is it's purpose ? [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img]

[acekingoffsuit]

I think there is IF the opponents don't know it is a bot.

The psychological shortcomings are more than made up for by its perfect calculation, and sober straightforward play.

Only IF opponents knew it was a program, could they overwhelm its inability to understand psychology.

*And even then, you probably could write into it a random factor (example: every 6 times, only call with AA for the first two rounds of betting. Or, every 30 hands raise 2x the pot on the flop, regarless of the cards.)

I'd take this bot over any human, provided he didn't know it was a computer. And even if he knew, I still might take the computer.)

[Meromorphic]

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No computer can comprehend human emotions. You can program the correct math but not the emotional variable.

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Are you sure?

[Snoogins47]

The "Deus Ex Machina" post ruled.

The NL vs FL discussion is pretty silly too. I could possibly see some reasons why NL may be more "complex" in this sense than FL: there is simply a wider range of informatino available, and a wider range of options to take. In FL, deriving the "best" strategy based on given information only requires comparisons of three decisions (well, this may branch out farther when you're including later streets) but essentially, an ordering of the profitability of "raise" "call" and "fold" will generally be all you need. This limited action also probably (I would imagine) amounts to better 'reads' more quickly, since we will have a lot more examples of "Player X raised the turn on such a board" than we will "Player X min-raised a 1/3rd pot size bet on the turn on such a board" with which to assess.

However, as anything, it comes down almost purely to semantics, and game structure. Despite the seemingly "more complex" nature of NL, I am firmly convinced that, if I had the programming knowledge to implement it (my 'coding' experience ended when I got my first computer that didn't come with QBasic) I could probably write a bot that could beat the small NL games online. I'm almost CERTAIN I could write a bot that would beat the small NL SNGs. Most decent players here could probably do the same. On the other hand, I'm not very confident in my ability to write a bot that could, say, beat a $1/$2 game. (note, by "write a bot" I really mean "write a successful rote strategy," not necessarily write the program itself... I want to stress that. I wouldn't know the first thing about actually coding a bot, but I could throw together pseudo-code to outline the 'strategy' that the bot uses.)

It may be harder to write a 'perfect' deep-stacked NLHE bot than a perfect FL bot, I don't really know. My gut tells me that it would be a LOT easier to write a "winning" NL bot, than a winning FL bot.

The game structure is important too. A very short-stacked NL game makes for easier "botting" than a deep-stacked one.

The "emotion" aspect somebody mentioned is somewhat interesting to think about. I think that were a bot to exist that had a lot of information about opponent play in the past, more weight would have to be given to more recent information... possibly a sort of sliding scale. There would also almost HAVE to be some sort of "override," where the computer could recognize that the opponent is playing significantly differently than he has in the past. If we made this too sensitive, a decent run of cards could trick the computer into reacting to a "tilting" opponent. If it's not that sensitive, we have a very slow 'reaction time' that will cause headaches if our opponent is playing drastically differently than he normally does. I wouldn't be shocked if humans tend to pick up on this much more quickly than would be feasible for a computer.