Will computers dominate poker as they did with chess?

[El_Hombre_Grande]

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And I suspect you haven't, hence the resentment against humans that outplay you.

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ROFLMAO

Nice debating technique: Posit some situation with no evidence and use it to support dubious cod psychology.

You are the one who has introduced the word 'parasite'

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If you had, you would know that live considerate pros are treated quite kindly by poker room staff and management, and viewed as quality customers, and not the parasites you describe. This is pretty much universal, so long as the pro isn't an ass who berates tourists.

Why? They pay rake. A ton of it.

They may make a profit, but they still paid rake. We know this specifically because on the hour or half hour every player (including the pros) must put out their money and pay the drop. They actually drop the pros money, and the casino actually takes it.
The pro never takes the casino's money; they get theirs regardless of who wins or loses. And if the pro wants that chair, he pays for it. Like every other shark, fish, and everyone in between.

In fact, if Santa Claus came in and dropped a bag of money on the table every hour on the hour, and everyone was a winner, the casino would still take home the same rake. (EDIT; they might bump it a little once the word got out about Santa Claus, and I suspect the dealer would get better tips.) But the point is, a room full of sharks paying rake is fine from the casino's perspective.

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And you've just explained, quite well, why on line poker rooms don't care about bots. As far as they are concerned they do exactly the same thing the human pro's do in B&M.

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And let me know how "bot world" works out. Again, I can only assume that vast numbers of people will be lining up to play, because they supposedly don't care whether their opponents are human or a Robot.

[/ QUOTE ]Robot world is your fantasy, not mine or RedManPlus's.

I'm merely looking at the situation dispassionately from the POV of:

A fish
A poker room operator
A 'pro'
A robot operator

And the only two who I can see worrying about the proliferation of capable robots are the 'pro' and the robot operator.

They each have a strong interest in keeping the number of operating bots to a minimum.

Of course the robot operators do have one advantage over the pro's: If the number of robots increases sufficiently it will become harder and harder for the pro's to make any meaningful amount of money and they will leave the tables making them more profitable for the remaining robots.

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Again, please present your evidence that Joe Public is willing to play against Bots. He isn't. He wants to play against humans, and in general, will not play if he believes that the internet scene is full of bots. If you beleive otherwise, open botworld. I use the example to show the sheer stupidity of an argument premised on the fallacy that Joe Public is fine with Bots. It/he/they aren't, and you continuing to argue based on the premise that Joe Public views online poker against robots as something worth paying for makes this thread a waste of time. You and I both know botworld would be a miserable failure, and that is why I continue to use it as an example.


Next, I like how you simply ignore whatever contradictory evidence there is to your position. You claimed that the sites are opposed to winners, I pointed out that this is very much not the case in the live setting, and you claim that it makes both bots and grinders acceptable in online.

Again, it may be that bots will someday outplay humans, as was the original point of this thread. I simply say that if the sites can't prevent them from infesting the online sites, it will the end of the cash cow for the sites. Unless, of course, they find a foolproof way of preventing the public from knowing that their opponents are software driven machines, instead of a slob from Chicago in his underwear.

Again, to the extent you believe otherwise (I don't beleive you really do but is necessary rhetoric for your attack on winning players) good for you. But I wouldn't hire you to run my poker site.

[Devilboy666]

The thing is that most players THINK that they are 'pretty good' and thus they play online thinking that they can win, and write it off to bad luck when they don't. If they KNOW that they will not win, they won't play!

[timmay28]

Wouldn't image verifications go a long way towards curbing this problem? If a site sees that a player is constantly not able to enter the correct code shown on their screen, and always gets logged off at such times, then it's insta ban time.

[RIIT]

El Hombre Grande:

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"He (JoePoker) wants to play against humans, and in general, will not play if he believes that the internet scene is full of bots."

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This is a valid statement if your usage of the word bots is equivalent to "players he cannot beat"

If this is not the case then the burden of evidence is upon you to explain why anybody would not want to play inferior opponents for real money regardless of who or what is behind the losing opponent(s).

I see tons of speculation on the "winningness" of robots and no hard evidence.

The issue of JoePoker's "willingness" to play against robot opponents cannot be measured until the "winningness" of bots is measured in a meaningful way. But, right now there's no way to use online sites to collect useful evidence because of the social stigma surrounding the use of bots. Even if somebody already has such evidence, they cannot come forward because they'll get stoned to death for having collected it in the first place (especially if they won money). And, furthermore even if somebody did present evidence from online sites, how can we know that guy didn't skew the results by helping the bot win or lose depending on his agenda?

Our only chance for meaningful evidence in the near future are the 2 upcoming botting events.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

[talentdeficit]

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Wouldn't image verifications go a long way towards curbing this problem? If a site sees that a player is constantly not able to enter the correct code shown on their screen, and always gets logged off at such times, then it's insta ban time.

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captchas (the image verifications you're talking about) are trivial to work around. they're more a placebo so players feel sites are doing something than an actual attempt to stop bots.

anyways, i don't understand why people think bots could play optimally, but still not dominate. a bot that plays optimally (unexploitably) can't be beaten. it may take money off the fish slower than a human player could, but it will beat everyone in the long run.

[El_Hombre_Grande]

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El Hombre Grande:

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"He (JoePoker) wants to play against humans, and in general, will not play if he believes that the internet scene is full of bots."

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This is a valid statement if your usage of the word bots is equivalent to "players he cannot beat"

If this is not the case then the burden of evidence is upon you to explain why anybody would not want to play inferior opponents for real money regardless of who or what is behind the losing opponent(s).

I see tons of speculation on the "winningness" of robots and no hard evidence.

The issue of JoePoker's "willingness" to play against robot opponents cannot be measured until the "winningness" of bots is measured in a meaningful way. But, right now there's no way to use online sites to collect useful evidence because of the social stigma surrounding the use of bots. Even if somebody already has such evidence, they cannot come forward because they'll get stoned to death for having collected it in the first place (especially if they won money). And, furthermore even if somebody did present evidence from online sites, how can we know that guy didn't skew the results by helping the bot win or lose depending on his agenda?

Our only chance for meaningful evidence in the near future are the 2 upcoming botting events.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...age=0&vc=1

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Oh, LOL. I don't think anyone will be complaining about stupid, losing bots. I have no idea whether super-bots are real or not; I think they may be largely a figment of the imagination. My comments are directed towards the public perception of bots, and the future of online poker. People view losing to a better human as fair, and losing to a computer program as getting cheated, at least when they thought they were playing a human.

I never meant to imply that i think superbots have taken over the internet. I don't think that's so, I think they are in their infancy, and now is the time for the sites to do what they can do to combat them.

The fundamental difference between the grinder and the bot is Joe Public's willingness to voluntarily match wits with a potentially insurmountable computer program that never tilts and never tires.

FWIW, I routinely play live against a number of regulars that I have no doubt understand that I (and a number of others) have an advantage over them when we play. They still play. Why? Well, I make mistakes.... lots of them. Not as many as they do, but I make dumb calls, I get distracted by boobs, etc. , I get tired, hungry, etc.

Those same "fish" would never agree to a computer version of me that had the same overall edge as i do. Why? But its the same EV, you say? I say you are right my friend,but you are not viewing the world from the "fishes" vantagepoint. To them, a computer bot looks like an insurmountable opponent whether it is or not. It is simply a concept that will never be sold to the general public, and I think the sites are well aware of that.

[RIIT]

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When it comes to Poker AI specifically, I think one of the main stumbling blocks is the "get rich quick" mentality which is stifling current research. This not only applies to the wave of bot-builders trying to cash in from using their bots online, but is also evident in academia (eg: the lack of repeatability in the UofA papers and the subsequent commercialization of their work in the "Poker Academy" software). Past research on games like chess did not have this problem and I think the sharing of information means it was not as handicapped by greed as Poker AI is currently. I'm quite sure that if all the academic man-hours that were aimed at computer chess were somehow re-applied to Poker AI then we would have some very strong poker engines available today.


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Actually, no one is getting "rich quick" building Poker Bots. It's something that looks good to penniless students.
Older people think in terms of stable business models. 99% of kind of people with world-class talent required to advance Poker AI... have chosen the financial markets, internet start-ups, or even the Spam World (all MUCH more lucrative, any IPO can net you millions).

For example... I run a successful trading business centered on Automated Trading Systems. I have the background and resources to get into the Poker Bot business. It's very interesting mathematically. But you cannot build a stable business around it... and it's very low on the social acceptability scale... so I have not been able to justify moving resources from a very profitable trading operation in order to build a Poker Bot operation.

Did you see any "great minds" involved with the Full Tilt Bot thing? Relative to what people are doing on Wall Street... that was/is a Mickey Mouse operation.

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RedManPlus, jukofyork: In regards to the lack of available info on the subject, I'd say that RedMan's observation about the social stigma is certainly applicable. The majority of this thread is speculative in nature mostly because none of us can point to any type of real money data in order to bring evidence to bear. Those who might already be operating pokerbots have zero incentive to share their results especially if they're winning for fear of losing their wet dream income. (the same sentiment probably applies to a pro online player as well - and I think the comparison between winning pros and winning bots has already been cited).

The sites also have a lot of reason to want to draw attention away from the subject because anything perceived as having a winning edge (bots or pros) will scare away the regularly depositing losers who are the lifes blood of any site.

I'm not poo-pooing the speculation and theory here, that's fine nothing wrong with it. However, I've seen too many discussions like this and I can almost outline the entire life cycle of these kinds of threads by now.

For me personally, I'm ready to see some hard evidence one way or the other. I for one am greatful for the two significant botting events this year:

The UofA HU duplicate matches

The 2007 Pokerbot World Championship

And I look forward to the results. I assume they will be published so all of us can benefit. I asked the OP in the NVG announcement for the UofA event about published HH's and got an "I don't know" reply. IMO, the UofA must publish the HH's and I can't see any reason for them to decline to do so. As for the PBWC results, we are going to get to see what they call the "godmode" documentation which is the server stored hand histories that contain all card information for all players - which is very cool.

The UofA guys are stressing statistical significance with 2k hands, static blinds, and headsup play against pros that have a $5k carrot guaranteed for each session win. The PBWC guys are stressing real world tournament conditions with additional emphasis on proving that poker server shuffled honestly and did not hint any player.

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"Will computers dominate poker as they did with chess?"

[/ QUOTE ] In the future maybe. But not this year.

In the UofA contest, I predict that both pros will edge out the UofA bot.

In the PBWC contest, I predict that all 3 rings will go to human players.

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Setting all modesty aside, I'd simply like to note the accuracy of my first prediction. [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

[En Passant]

A computer program is only as smart as the person making it.

[qpw]

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A computer program is only as smart as the person making it.

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Actually, they are, generally, a lot less smart than that!

[allyasia]

just look at the bad beat on pokerstar and fulltilt.
this game, bot cannot be a consist winner