Slashdot Mirror
Artificial Intelligence in Poker
Markian Hlynka writes "The University of Alberta's research into Poker AI is featured in this New York Times article. There is also detailed discussion of the game of Poker, and the 'new breed' of players who have honed their abilities online. See the U of A's poker project for more information."
She'll probably want dinner first, though.
New York Times article reviewed. Gotta put an end to this.
Great, now the machines will get to shake every last penny out of me too.
KappaStone
If the AI is too good, we can't get the girls naked.
Mmm, EGA boobies...
Brocklesby Park Cricket Club
And when to use a Beowulf cluster to simulate every possible strategy.
Poker is not a card game, it's a people game (aka don't play the cards, play the people). It's all about bluffing and reading other people's bluffs. I'm baffled that people even bother playing poker on the internet. Even with webcams the game wouldn't be the same at all.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
I say we help him beta test not only his program, but also help him stress-test his web server.
Then does the AI cheat?
Are you secure enough in your masculinity to run 'man touch'?
For those who don't want to subscribe:
WHEN an accountant named Chris Moneymaker won $2.5 million in the World Series of Poker last May, the chatter in the poker world wasn't focused on his skillful bluffing, his tremendous luck or even the aptness of his surname. Everyone wanted to know how a man who had never before sat down at a tournament table could clean out so many skilled professionals.
While the Las Vegas hype machine focused on the rags-to-riches tale of a man who parlayed a $40 entrance fee into a huge pot, many poker players recognized that the amateur's success signaled the arrival of a new age in the game. Mr. Moneymaker may never have been in the same room as other players in a tournament of Texas Hold'em poker, but he had played extensively online, where the game is faster but the money is just as real. He was as much a rookie as Ichiro Suzuki, who joined the Seattle Mariners after nine years in the Japanese major leagues.
The online poker saloons that nurtured Mr. Moneymaker, 27, are just the beginning. Many players hone their craft with simulation software that allows them to test strategies by playing out thousands or even millions of hands. Some researchers are building software opponents that use sophisticated concepts from economics and artificial intelligence to seek out the best strategy, then use the knowledge to beat human players. The experience of playing thousands of games in roadhouses and casinos is being eclipsed by a cyborg-like intelligence produced by humans weaned on machine play.
The changes in the nature of the game are both subtle and striking. The advantages of some well-understood strategies are being tuned, and others are being abandoned. Some online enthusiasts, for instance, are even suggesting that the value of any information gleaned from watching the opponent's body for telltale tics or gestures is overrated. These so-called tells are too easily manipulated. More information comes in the pattern of bets, raises and calls. The money, they say, talks.
The biggest factor propelling change may be the speed of technology. Players do not wait while someone shuffles and deals. Chips do not need to be counted or watched. Computers handle the accounting, often finishing hands in as little as 30 seconds.
Steve Badger, the editor of the Web site playwinningpoker.com and winner of the 1999 World Series in a game called Omaha Hi-Lo, says that online poker halls are appealing because of their convenience.
"You could play them every day," he said. "You're able to play two games at the same time. Or you can sit and read or vacuum or do any infinite number of things while waiting for the next hand."
The online halls also offer substantially better rates. Most casinos pay for the lights and the dealer by subtracting either a fixed amount or a percentage from the pot. This levy, known as the rake, is often about $3 to $5 a hand in physical casinos, but about $1 or less online.
The rake depends on the stakes, which can be lower than those at physical casinos. Some online tables have minimum bets as low as 25 cents, an amount that makes learning the game cheaper. The speed of the game, however, ends up raising the amount at risk because 60 to 100 hands can be played in an hour. Higher minimum bets of $5, $10 or more are also common at tables with the better players.
Gautam Rao, a well-known Canadian player, said he stopped going to casinos in 2000, not long after his daughter was born, "because of the smoke and distance.''
"I told my wife I had to find a way to play online," he said. Now, he is able to play every night between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. while his daughter sleeps in the next room.
"The rake is much less," he said. "The number of hands is much more. There are never any misdeals. There are never any issues related to tipping. The average cost of winning a pot is so much less. It's so much more efficient."
The speed of play lets players work through the thousands of apprentice hands faste
I am dyslexia of borg - your ass will be laminated.
A: Excellent question! Please see the introductory sections of our academic papers, and Darse's M.Sc. research essay for a detailed explanation.
Excellent indeed! But how about a brief explanation for the impatient?
There are two kinds of egotists: 1) Those who admit it 2) The rest of us
Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of chess?
You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
I played strip poker with this computer I met in university once. Things were going great until I popped off the cover and found a positively ancient motherboard.
Gross! It was like I'd just walked in on my Walkman(TM) while it was rewinding.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
To create a poker AI you just have to figure out what the odds are of getting something after your first hand. Then based on odds the computer will decide which cards to get rid of and which to go for. This will typically result in the computer not going for the long shot royal flush and instead going for the safer full house which is more likely to happen.
A computer theoretically could be as good or even better than the average human at poker. It is able to calculate the odds of winning and is therefore able to make the best choice possible.
What would be really amazing would be if the computer was able to calculate based on how many cards other players turn in and adjust itself as neccesary.
Can you imagine having to try to look at the computer and imagine if it is bluffing? Talk about poker face...
is it included?
It's just a BloJJ
You can never learn the true art of poker unless you can read the other players tells, and unless the computer also throws in virtual signs I doubt cyber players could ever climb the ranks.
How do you bluff a computer?
Poker in the front, Liquor in the rear.
Actually the game of poker is etremely interesting from a pure mathematics point of view as equations involved to play the optimum way (as governed by both game theory and match theory) reduce to a version of the travelling salesman problem.
One of the main problems with building a good form of artificial intelligence for games is the accounting facial expressions. Some of the processors used on the high end chess machines (such as deep blue) actually had some extra instructions on the processor to deal with this.
All that glitters has a high refractive index.
Now, he is able to play every night between 10 p.m. and 3 a.m. while his daughter sleeps in the next room.
If this was UT or Quake, this entire article would be about how he was destroying his life, and getting ready to go on a rampage.
But instead, its just a game of cards, and he's gambling with his family's money, but thats OK.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Of course, the bot doesn't cheat:
"""Q: Why are the bots such filthy rotten cheaters?!?!
A: Poki does not cheat. Poki connects to the online server just like any other player, and does not have access to any other player's private cards. The server's random number generator is sound (although not as sophisticated as most online servers). Any weird or suspicious outcomes are simply the result of luck . This is a normal part of poker. If you believe otherwise, you are more than welcome to play somewhere else.""" (from the FAQ)
I mean, come on - it's a normal part of poker :)
Thank you
knock hockey
curling
Since so much poker strategy is reading human expression/emotion to glean the quality of your opponents hand, wouldn't this require computers to have emotions to truly play poker in an effective manner?
I can see it now; HAL, R2-D2, that kid from AI and
the robot from Lost In Space gathered around the poker table in those silly costumes fromt the Dogs Playing Poker picture.
With an AI opponent you play so the opponent loses their clothes as fast as possible.
With a live opponent you play so you both lose your clothes at approximatly the same rate.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
Same here, but in my case I was shocked to find a dongle where I expected a socket.
If you register online to read a story, their spybots automatically pin down your location using an algorithm based on the well-know scientifical principal that YOUR COMPUTER IS TRANSMITTING AN IP ADDRESS! Using this "IP ADDRESS", they can scan MSN mapquest and find out where you live. Once they have that information, it is a simple matter to send a priority override to point the NSA mind-control satellites (when they're not otherwise busy zapping agriglyphs into English wheatfields) at your house to read your mind. Then they steal your precious intellectual property, which they license to SCO!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I didn't realize just how bad the problem was..
I have never been any good at poker... in high school, playing nickel-ante poker, I lost about $25 to just one of my friends. Typically, after about 15 minutes of play, everyone was playing with "my" money.
But recently, I spent some quality time with a hand-held poker game, and played the "hundreds or thousands" of games as described in the article. Not enough to become an expert, but I did come up with a technique to make my 100 credits last longer.
I hacked away as much complexity as I could. The heart of my method is to forget about the effect of getting two cards you need. The chances of getting two specific cards is something like 1/52 * 1/52 = 1/2704 -- too small to care about. So the entire method is about the next card.
Of course, I put it online: How To Lose Less At Video Poker. At the risk of slashdotting my own server, I'm curious if anyone can find any obvious flaws in the method.
I found this Java-based tutorial that purports to generate the "optimum payout" -- it often disagrees with me, presumably because it's trying for big payouts. My method doesn't promise profit, only smaller losses.
An important disclaimer: I've never used my method with any non-trivial amount of actual cash. Here in Texas, there are video poker machines in every Quickie Mart, but I just don't see the appeal. Now, if they would put in a Pac-Man machine...
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
"Artificial Intelligence" is common in home poker games-Its called BEER
The trick is to make sure your opponents are sufficiently fueled by "Artificial Inteligence" and you will come out way ahead
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Can Slashdot please do one of the following:
Okay, I know this is a lil' off topic, but as one of the (presumably) many slashdot readers who play poker...has anyone found an online poker room that you can play for real $$$ where I don't need to download some windowsware to play?
I've toyed around with the java-based yahoo rooms (which last I checked, didn't have a real $$$ option). All of the big name poker rooms that I've seen through friends require a windows based client. I've been dying to give it a try.
I'd also be interested in anything anyone wants to post under this thread about poker room security. Are there many malicous online poker room opponents out there? I've seen a few cases where someone was about to sweep in a hold'em hand, holding the nuts(*), only to be booted off the game at the last second...any thoughts?
(*) Attn Trolls: This is an actual poker term.
now we got Uniblab. Next we get the little jet cars that fold up into a briefcase? The nine hour work week, though - now that's science fiction.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
While poker is an interest game to tackle, I think I'd have to agree with others here that it is more of a people game and hard to a machine to understand the nuances of "bluffing" and other things that we silly humans do.
What I'd really like to see is computer AI able of playing the Japanese/Chinese board game called Go at advanced levels.
As it is right now, the best Go AI is only at intermediate levels it terms of skill. Here is a URL comparing Chess to Go...
http://www.villagenet.com/users/bradleym/Compare.h tml
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
Bad enough I have to play with newbies at the blackjack tables, now I have to play with HAL at the poker table...
"Fold Dave..."
Why worry? Each of us is wearing an unlicensed "nucular" accelerator on his back.
Sig changed for readability by G.W.
I Hardly know her.
War isn't about who's right. It's about who's left.
I'm a big fan of fair use. I hate the DMCA. But behavior like this just makes me wonder. The free registration at the NYT is not that much of a pain. Sheesh. The newspaper world is being very cool, at least compared to the music and movie business. Let them make a few bucks on the ads so they can pay me.
1. Decide on project
2. Design kick ass web site
3. ???
4. You know this one
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Not to say the blame is on the the game (see my other post responding to the the parent of yours), but if you're going there, understand what it is you're talking about.
Warning: Opinions known to be heavily biased.
Poker is primarily an odds game, that is to say it is all math. There are three places where a decision has to be made. The first decision is, "Should I pay to see the next card?" This is called Drawing. The second decision is, "I have a decent hand, but my opponent raised me. Is he bluffing?". The third decision is, "Should I try to bluff?".
Odds come into play everywhere. When you are Drawing, you must have the correct odds or else you will lose money in the long run. That is to say, if you have a 1 in 4 chance of hitting your straight on the next card, you must have at least 3:1 odds to Draw. (The pot must have $3 for every $1 you pay). There is also the concept of "implied odds" - predicting how much will be in the pot at the end of the hand and not just at the present.
When deciding whether or not to bluff, you must know the odds of your bluff succeeding, and add that to the odds of you hitting your out on the next card. At that point the calculation becomes the same pot-odds calculation described above. This involves some reading of your opponent; you have to know how often he will call, and how often the bluff will be sucessful. Luckily, computers can be pretty good at modeling and seeing patterns, probably much better than humans. It seems that Neural nets and other well-developed AI techniques would be very good at modeling these behaviors and predicting future ones. Calling bluffs will require the same type of knowledge.
Some have asked how it's possible to read patterns on the internet. Some people don't really have patterns in their game, they just call everything. These people will lose because they put too much money in the pot, they don't have the odds for the bets and calls they're making. Mostly, decent players have patterns in how they bet, for example they will bet when they only have 4 out of 5 flush cards. (A Semi-bluff). Computers have an advantage here because they can introduce a random element that humans cannot reproduce.
The recent winner of the World Series of Poker, Chris Moneymaker, had never played in a live game until the WSOP, he had only played internet games. This probably gave him good fundamentals in reading people based on their bets, and good math fundamentals.
Some have also questioned the wiseness of playing internet poker, since it is just "gambling". Well I'll tell you a little secret, poker isn't really gambling, poker is a skill game and especially with so many bad players out there who think it is just luck, hoping they'll get lucky, it's easy to win money. That's why the same players consistently win thousands of dollars online. For more information on poker strategy and reviews of online casinos, see this site: PokerTips.org
Markian Hlynka! That's not a REAL name. I call your bluff.
Some people I have spoken with few days ago about this research told me they are worried that if the intelligence is too high this AI could refuse to risk its money gambling... I am not quite sure if they were serious though.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
In "Poker playing computer will take on the best," the Edmonton Journal wrote last June (the article is no longer available for free) that there was a new poker player in town "that never sweats, never gets tired, never tips a hand and can still bluff with the best of them.
University of Alberta artificial intelligence researchers bet their new poker computer program will be the best player in the world, perhaps within a year." And why will it the best player? Because it bluffs.
"You have to bluff," says Jonathan Schaeffer, who heads up the university's Games Research Group and who already has a world-champion checkers computer program under his belt. "If you do not bluff, you're predictable. If you're predictable, you can be exploited."
This kind of program could be used whenever you have to deal with imperfect information, like buying a new car. You can find more details and references in this summary.
Start it with $50 bucks and let it play...
If the case is that you would always lose, even playing "perfectly" what are your chances playing imperfectly?
If you win more often than not... let it play nightly and up it's bets.
What am I missing?
'He was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher... or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.' - Douglas Adams
This is not the full source code to Pokibot. Do not ask us for it. If it is not posted here, it is not open source.
Not open source? <saltyPirateVoice>Man yer battlestation maties! We'll slashdot'em into submission </saltyPirateVoice>
All your base are belong to us!
Invite several people over, buy a deck of cards and a pack of beer, and play. Just turn off the computer if you feel the need to code a quick AI in lisp. It will be there for you later, ready to greet you.
-Libertarian secular transhumanist
You're missing that the bot is playing against people (presumably). Don't think of poker as being like blackjack, think of it as being like chess. There is always a right play in blackjack. In poker, as with chess, there are plays that are better than others but not necessarily a right play. The randomness of the cards is not a significant factor (the poker bot would only make "good" bets (reward>risk)), but the randomness of the players is. A check-raise bluff might be a good move, but a bot can't predict whether the player who is on tilt is going to call, re-raise or fold. Nor can it force players to play rationally and therein lies the problem. Look at players like Gus Hansen and Dan Negreanu who are completely unpredictable but win money because they can bully the table around.
A bot could run disadvantaged blackjack (you can't count cards online, so the best you can do is play perfect basic strategy and eat the ~0.5% house advantage), but that's an inherently losing proposition (and the casinos have banned them now anyway).
Poker has had quite a resurgence as of late, both due to online play and media coverage. Chris Moneymaker was on Letterman one night and the World Poker Tour can be caught on the Travel Channel and sometimes older ones on ESPN or ESPN2. It's actually fairly enjoyable to watch. Nothing like seeing a guy go all in with for 800 grand on a stone cold bluff whilst his opponent has a pair (you see the hole cards on the tv broadcasts, at least on the Travel Channel). Some talk smack, some wear sunglasses, some play conservative, though most are fairly aggressive. I've learned quite a bit by watching them play. As others have mentioned and as the article alludes to, the game is more mathematical than reading your opponents, but that's not really what I've seen from watching the pros on the WPT. It's all about the people, the chips, the cards, and the math all seem secondary to your read on your opponent and your style and reputation. It's all very interesting, I suggest you catch a broadcast.
You're also missing a way to get a bot to interface with the online poker room. But this could be built.
Other than those two minor points, you have a good scam. It's simple enough that somebody has probably already done it. They just wouldn't want to share it, since it's quietly earning a living for them.
This reminds me of strategies for programming Ro-Sham-Bo (Rock, Scissors, Paper). The "safest" strategy would be to randomly choose rock, scissors, or paper every time. Your winning percentage would approach 50%, but so would your opponent's. Ah, but if you're competing against other pairs of players, and they're all following that strategy, then it's just dumb luck who will win. For there to be any point to the competition, you have to assume your opponent has some non-random strategy, such that you could beat it and get >50% wins if you could figure out what it was. Of course, your opponent is making the same assumptions about you. And so begins a world of strategies on how to make your opponent think you're being predictable, when you're really just fooling him into making a choice you can predict. Of course, if your opponent knows you're fooling him, he will then know you're intention and gain the advantage. And so on and so on (similarities to the Iocaine Powder sequence from the Princess Bride are more than coincidence).
I just wanted to point that out as a counter to the posts advocating a purely statistical approach in which the program folds anything not likely to win. In the optimal case (there is no house rake, no ante, and no bluffing) it is as interesting as flipping a coin to see who wins. And even a small amount of bluffing will cause it to lose.
Well, there are a few things to consider.
1) It's a violation of the rules to do this on any of the online poker sites. If you're busted, you'll lose ALL of the money you've paid in. (buy in, registration, etc.) They might even press charges.
2) Perfect poker strategy is only perfect in a vacuum. When playing against real players, you can make more money by playing imperfectly. In fact, if you always play perfectly, the game will change to conpensate for you, and leave you playing poorly.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
No, it's not a troll. :-)
But a few years ago, checkers was solved as a mathematical problem. There is a computer program that can play a perfect game of checkers, all the time. That project was headed by Jonathan Schaeffer, one of the people involved in this Poker AI project.
Just a footnote, to let you all know that this group has some serious history in gaming AI.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Since the guy would won the World Series of Poker, was strictly an internet player, wouldn't this be an advantage?
None of the other players would have had time to study him and know his habits, yet he would have alot of experience playing poker.
Then again I rarely play poker, so I could be missing something.
Thoughts?
It's about low stakes Texas Hold'em. As I'm preaching to people who don't follow links, I'll explain that in hold'em, your hand is drawn from the best five out of your two personal ("pocket") cards, plus five common ("board") cards that everyone can see and use. You can even just play the five common cards if they're better than that 8 in your pocket. You tend to get strong hands, but then again so does everyone else. Hold'em is generally played with big tables, so chances are that someone has a strong hand each round. You don't get extended rounds of raising, and there are no huge wins to be made. Coming out on top of a night of hold'em involves long term risk management, not a single guts-or-glory Hollywood dramatic climax.
As for bluffing, go ahead and try. There are only four rounds of betting on each hand. Experienced players will fold early, so you won't get much of their money anyway, and excitable noobs will tend to stick it out and call you out with their regular full houses and flushes, making it expensive for you to try to bluff. You'll quickly find yourself playing to your hand, not to the other players, and you won't (indeed, can't) get yourself into a steely eyes, car-keys-in-the-pot ego clash.
I wish, I wish, oh how I wish people wouldn't predicate their discussions based on what they've learned from Mel Gibson movies.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
A better feature would be a tutorial on how to count cards. If you don't know how to count cards or use decent strategy, the old crappy poker AI has a pretty good shot at winning.
The first ever complex program I wrote was, in fact, an attempt to make an intelligent poker player. It was written in BASIC for an IBM with an 8086 processor and about 7-feet long when printed out. It made ASCII representations of the cards and I had my own random number generator that used the time the program started as the "seed" value. It had an independent routine for "bluffing" and made it's more rational decisions based upon what I was to eventually learn was a pretty decent implementation of "fuzzy logic". ...problem is, it played lousy poker...and I could never figure out why. At least it followed the rules though.
A goal is a dream with a deadline
To create a poker AI you just have to figure out what the odds are of getting something after your first hand. Then based on odds the computer will decide which cards to get rid of and which to go for ... It is able to calculate the odds of winning and is therefore able to make the best choice possible.
Except, often the best strategy is not to play in a determinsistic way, but to have a probability distribution of different hands. In Poker this is essential, because if you play deterministically (i.e., always play the same way for the same hand) you are too predictable - you never bluff when you have a poor hand and when you have a good hand everyone else will know this so you don't get any action.
Tor
I had to say it: A computer would have a helluva poker face. No really, I am not going to bother reading the article now (maybe later), but is this article about probability factoring on a card deck, or are we talking about a computer that plays poker? Knowing what cards your opponents hold is half reading the cards, half reading the opponents.
TallGreen CMS hosting
The moderator that modded your post insightful LIKEWISE FAILS IT!
The article's about a cyber player that rocketed up the ranks and burned the ladder behind him on the pathetic non-cyber players.
He didn't climb. He fucking owned.
And this is me, owning you. You ignorant ass.
realpoker is a pretty nice little online poker game. They don't tell you what hand you got, so you've gotta analyze things yourself... and you see when the other players are checking their cards so there's still some body language going on.. wish they had more avatars tho but still... good place to get some practice before going to the real thang! i've only played play money tho.. so players probably play more aggressively than they would in a real money situation..
Your sig is stupid.
There was a large push made by some great mathematicians in coordination with poker proffesional to make a poker "robot" they called Loki. What they found was over a large period of time it could be profitable at low limit tables, playing limit hold'em. However, once the game changed to no-limit, there was simply no way for it to deal with the fluctuating betting amounts. It could pick up on patterns and beat many online limit players. I would be willing to bet that they could design a sophisticated enough program to beat even higher-limit limit hold'em games, but I'm guessing right now they weren't quite confident enough to trust it with a serious bankroll! A poker bot which could play in no-limit tournaments would be almost impossible to program, as anyone who has played in no-limit tourneys know, its very different from cash games. Sorry if anyone allready posted about this, I didnt have time to read everything...
I'm sorta new here, so this may have been discussed before...
There seems to be a lot of "RTFA" traffic not only about this article, but also on this site as a whole.
Would it be too much of a burden on the article submitters to submit with their writeups a list of 3-5 multiple choice questions on the salient points of the topic? Would it be too hard to block posters who haven't "passed the test"? Sure, people could get around it by guessing or reading just parts of the article, but at least some wouldn't. I think most wouldn't, but I don't have real proof of that.
This could be used to prevent people from posting AND (just as important) moderating ignorantly.
People could read the article and the postings, but they couldn't make it harder for me to enjoy an informed discussion without being informed themselves.
Go is so much better than Chess. Wouldn't you prefer a nice game of Go?!
And to thinkI wasted 30 seconds of my life calling you out on your ignorance. You're not going to bother reading the article, but you're going to ask others to summarize it for you? What, your wrist is too tired from beating off that you can't be bothered with another click?
that's a good one! :-)
This has already been done on blackjack. Online casinos check a player against so-called "perfect play." At some point they say they can tell if a person is playing with the assistance of a computer and will ban the account.
I mean, it uses a single deck, reshuffled after each hand, doesn't it?
I gather card "counting" in blackjack etc involves monitoring the cards coming out of the shoe over many hands and trying to figure the statisical likelihood of certain cards appearing at a certain time?
All your aces are belong to us...
when this is released to consumers, i will use the poker AI to beat c64's 'samantha fox strip poker'!
class he-man extends man!
How's the site going to know that someone is not using one of those cards that has the statistically appropriate play for each possible blackjack hand? Or do you mean that it will somehow detect if a program is making the perfect plays based on counting cards...which again wouldn't happen because presumably the blackjack site is playing with a computer-generated pseudorandom shuffle where every hand is a new deck.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
You're playing against other people. If you did play "perfectly" you would never lose at poker, but it's impossible to play perfectly, because perfectly means that you would have to know whether other players that are after you would bet/call/fold/raise (thus you would always know the exact pot odds), which means that already with this perfect play you must analyze the individual player. With this, actually, the computer can do fairly well if it can see a huge amount of the previous hands that a person has played and thus they will be able to know the person's general strategy. But, then again, part of the game is changing how you play. If the computer, or another person, has you pegged with a specific playing style, and either the evaluation is inaccurate for whatever reason (players do get incomplete information) or the player varies his playing strategy, which good players do. But what I mean by all this is that, in order to play "perfectly", the computer would have to have an algorithm that defines the perfect play at each point in the game. Statistically, there can exist a perfect way of playing particular hands so that you will win money in the long-run. However, you probably have to integrate a certain amount of randomness into your own play so that you're not predictable (because, otherwise you're only playing hands where you have a good hand already or a good draw, thus everyone knows what you have by what you bet and will fold when you have a hand, and bet when you do not bet, thus causing you to lose money or at least not make money) and human behavior analysis of other people so that you can look at a person's behavior and their betting, correlate it with the person's past behavior, and use that to help you to decide what to do. This is a big task, with a lot of human so-called "intuition" and mathematical analysis based on a person's past performance.
The other part of this is that even if you're playing in a statistically perfect manner and it's working (probably because you're against bad players, or you switch tables enough), it's not necessarily the best way to play against you're opponents. Because it's statistically perfect, you might be making money from your opponents. However, with another strategy, one that's tailored to your opponents rather than tailored to the statistics of the card, you could devise a strategy that can net you a lot more money than the statistically perfect strategy. And, of course, you're also not varying your strategy, so someone can pick up on it totally and play so as to not give you any money, or someone might pick up on little things that lower the amount of money you make off of hands.
You can't play "perfectly" because you're playing against people, and you're playing against them in a game with, literally, gazillions of combinations, both in card possibilities, in the betting of a particular hand, and in how your opponents act.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
This is not to say that this strategy wouldn't make you money online because there's so many players, and there's so many bad players. However, it wouldn't be difficult to lose big because an opponent figures your "perfect strategy" out, and it's not going to work against good players. You put your computer program at the final table of any tournament and it would probably fail miserably.
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
One of the things I noticed wastching these tournaments on TV is that a good number of the players, especially the younger ones, have strong backgrounds in math. Several of the bio's that they have done were of players with degree's in math from places like MIT or CalTech. There is definitely a human angle that involves reading your opponent but that kicks in after you have done the math. You have to know what the "rational" play is before you can make a judgement based on the human element to do the "irrational" play. Reading the other player only helps so much if you don't really know what the odds are and how big a risk you really are taking. There are a few dramatic stone cold bluffs in the televised WPT games but mostly there are a lot more semi-bluffs, playing aggresive with a not so strong but not hopless hand - you have to know the math before you even know whether or not you are bluffing. Most people are probably just intuiting this and only really *know* when it is painfully obvious. The pro's, especially the more mathematically astute ones, are calculating the odds with much more precision.
Give the thing 10 grand US and send it to Binion's for the World Poker Championship...
THEN we'll see how intelligent it is.
(Of course, the computer will probably show up late, hung over and broke, it being his first time in Vegas, after all....)
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.