Chess vs Poker Online

[GeeseHoward]

Last Saturday I was playing poker at the casino when I met a very interesting guy called Jaan Ehlvest. At first I thought he was just another holiday maker having a good time, after a few hours of conversation he explained he was here for a chess festival. It wasn’t till the next day when I looked up on the internet, I came across a long list of articles and results. I had been sitting next to one of the best chess players in the world, from what I have read there is only about 1000 or so grandmasters. Here is a little section of information I pulled up:

“Jaan Ehlvest was born on the 14th of October 1962 in the USSR. He was awarded the IM (International Master) title in 1982 and the GM (Grand Master) title in 1987.

“Jaan Ehlvest—International Grandmaster and World Championship Candidate. Fourth in the world in 1989; currently in the top 60.

If you are interested in reading more, you can visit his official website Ehlvest Chess Gates.

On Sunday evening he invited me and my girlfriend for dinner just after he won the chess fesitival in Curacao. A lot of the chess players at the table seemed to be interested in online poker and I was more than happy to answer any of their questions. The main interest of the evening was about the possibility of online chess for money. I explained although it wasn’t impossible the main worry for the general public is the use of bots (programs with some artificial intelligence that are sent to do a task in lieu of a real person).

Poker is a game of imperfect information; perfect information is a term from game theory. It basically means that information about other players’ actions is always available on the table. For instance in chess, you can see all of the moves that the other player makes, and he can see yours. In poker this is not the case, one of the most popular forms of poker is Texas Hold’em and by far the most played form of poker in the world. The main reason for this is because it requires the most amount of skill. You are dealt two cards which are faced down and you must use those two cards (hole cards) and the board to make a five card hand. I don’t want to go in to great detail but if you want to learn more about Texas Hold’em you can read or play for fun at PokerRoom.com.

Poker is a simple game when compared to chess; the odds of each hand occurring is easy to learn with very limited experience, which puts the human on the same level with what a computer can do. However I am not saying poker is an easy game, it’s far more complex than just understanding odds. There is a large essence of bluffing, reading and psychology of the game which I won’t go in to today.

In chess the computer has an advantage because as I explained before it is a game of perfect information. Humans do not have the speed of calculating ability that computers have. Today’s home computers and software are capable of calculating the perfect information of chess. However a computer will never be able to comprehend the imperfect information in poker.

However I wouldn’t give up on the idea, working in online poker for some years I know it’s possible to detect a perfect playing pattern with the use of a computer to prevent the use of bots even though they are pretty useless. So in theory it could be used for chess but proving it would be another problem.

I was just about to finish this article and I just read about another player that was also sat at the table, Alex Shabalov another GM.

The Poker articles that I’ve been posting over the past few months are free content for your site. All I ask is my name (Oliver Jon Cross) and a link to eDrinker (www.eDrinker.com).

[almostbusto]

even if computers sucked at chess the market for gambling on chess would still be slim. ratings are too accurate, which means that someones EV in a match can be very accurately predicted. in which case, people are going to learn right off to not play players rated higher than themselves. So the only way to get a steady stream of matches is to engage in some form of hustling/sandbagging.

if you allowed players to negotiate time handicaps that might help the matter but chess isn't the easiest game to handicap.

fwiw, kasparovchess, which is now defunct, used to have the option to gamble on games or at least they advertised it. it might be possible that that feature never got off the ground, i never actually played there.

EDIT: just gotta be a nit and say for the record texas holdem NL/PL/FL or otherwise is not the poker variant requiring the most skill, and its not even close. also, poker is entirely solvable, and it is possible that a computer will be able to play perfectly in the future. computers can already play HU shortstack NL holdem perfectly.

[Gelford]

Dude, variance is very very very small in chess compared to poker. If I play a fish in poker ... in the long run I clean up, but short run I am very likely to lose a couple of sessions.

Chess the fish just get picked dry period. People like to gamble, not just to give their money away. Therefore there are no money to be made in chess, unlike poker or backgammon.

[Abbaddabba]

Sure there's money to be made.

How do you know if a player is going to be better or worse than you before starting the game?

You just see the name.

Casual players who do it for $5 a pop wont be too concerned about being too selective, but there'll be people who datamine all the players and figure out who is worth playing.

The average player in a small stakes game will be far inferior. Players who crush a given level move up. People who lose move down. People who're just trying it out play all sorts of stakes. And there are people who try to learn, lose in the process, and never manage to be successful.


Less lucrative than poker - probably. But as long as the rake is minimal, there is potential.

[Kaeser]

The biggest problem I see is finding poor players willing to play for money at chess. There's just too many free places to play.

The "play money" games at a poker site can be annoying to the amateur player because he feels the players "aren't playing right". But even at a free online chess site a player will try his best to protect or increase his rating as a matter of pride.

[David Steele]

However a computer will never be able to comprehend the imperfect information in poker.

I am not sure what you mean by "comprehend", but the computer has the same information available as a human, so no theoretical disadvantage for the computer.

This article was pretty bad so dont worry about it appearing on some site of mine, with or without a link to whatever you are selling.
D.

[engineer_mba]

Hi,

Another issue with playing chess for money is that the stakes are often much, much lower and a chess game takes longer than a hand of cards.

There are plenty of people who play chess for money (at least in person). While in college, there were always people sitting at Au Bon Pan at Harvard Square playing for $1-$2 per game. In fact playing chess was the sole source of income for two of these people so money can definitely be made.

I think the biggest problem is finding "chess fish" to play for money. Poker is a fantastic game in that sense. Money in converted to chips which are just pieces in the game. "Poker fish" must put in money just to play, whereas their chess counterparts get their bishops, knights, and rooks without needing to invest their hard earned cash.

Just my two cents,

Leo

[YOYO36]

the diference is that most chessplayers know they suck at ches
and dont play for money and most poker players think they are second to god,and because of that you can find a lot of donators in poker

[Floofy]

you could not find big fish but i could imagine decent strenght chess player loosing money to a pro

Its like if in poker every fish and donkeys left, really good players would still make money of decent players but it would obv be harder

[wax42]

[ QUOTE ]
However I wouldn’t give up on the idea, working in online poker for some years I know it’s possible to detect a perfect playing pattern with the use of a computer to prevent the use of bots even though they are pretty useless. So in theory it could be used for chess but proving it would be another problem.

[/ QUOTE ]Where are you getting this from? I've never heard of computers being used in this way to detect poker bots. Partypoker, etc. detect bots by looking for evidence on your computer, not by analyzing your play AFAIK. I don't think it would be possible to detect poker bots by analyzing their play. I think it would be much easier to detect chess bots by anayzing their play, but I'm not sure how feasible even that is.