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Researchers "Solve" Texas Hold'Em, Create Perfect Robotic Player
Jason Koebler writes The best limit Texas Hold'Em poker player in the world is a robot. Given enough hands, it will never, ever lose, regardless of what its opponent does or which cards it is dealt. Researchers at the University of Alberta essentially "brute forced" the game of limit poker, in which there are roughly 3 x 10^14 possible decisions. Cepheus runs through a massive table of all of these possible permutations of the game—the table itself is 11 terabytes of data—and decides what the best move is, regardless of opponent.
The computer cannot win every hand, which means it must lose some hands. Since it cannot control how large the bet gets, and in real gambling there is no such thing as infinite reserves, then the computer is still subject to the same worries the pros have: whether you can weather the losses and not go bankrupt long enough for your skill to have you come out on top eventually.
Recently I noticed that Texas Hold'em is only half of the game. The betting is the real strategic part. Unless the bot can do this well, I don't it will ever really "beat" a human player.
Well, you would not want to brag here BEFORE getting banned by the 6241 online casinos, would you?
Wouldn't another robot which knows of all possible decisions of this particular robot be better that this "Perfect Robotic Player"?
There may still be ways to beat it. For instance, two or more opponents could collaborate. So someone with a poor hand could be running up the pot so his teammate can win. Just knowing the odds isn't enough, because all bets are not for the same amount*. If your opponent suddenly makes a big bet, what does that mean? He could have a hot hand, he could be bluffing, or he could just be trying to run up the pot. Without some knowledge of the guy's history, and his relationship with the other players, it is hard to say. I play very differently against my amateur coworkers on "poker night", than I would against a pro in Vegas. Amateurs are way more likely to bluff, or stay in the game with a mediocre hand.
*I just RTFA, and I now understand that the robot plays a limited game where only certain fixed amount bets were allowed ... but that really means they didn't solve it, because that is not how real poker is played. Also, it looks like it only plays one opponent, rather than at a table of four. So this is like solving "queens and pawns" and claiming you have "solved chess".
Maybe so, but a lot of online casinos have some reason to kiss their feet. You see, a lot of countries have laws against "gambling", which is usually defined as playing games for money where luck is the deciding factor.
And these people just proved that luck plays no role.
So playing poker is no longer gambling. Scientifically proven.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Uh, if you can't see my cards, how would you have any idea what my decision tree said?
You can better understand what is going on by considering the much simpler game Rock paper scissors. 'Perfect' here basically means the strategy gives you the best possible worst case.
For RPS, the perfect strategy (using the term in the same sense as it is used for the poker bot) is to play completely randomly. There is no way to gain an edge over this strategy, no counter-strategy which will give you more than 50% chance of winning, even if you know your opponent's strategy. (In this case, there is also no strategy which will give you less than 50% chance of winning against the 'perfect' strategy.)
For the poker bot, there is no strategy that will give you greater than 50% chance of winning against it in a two player game. If you know its strategy perfectly (but of course you don't know its cards) the best you can do is to equal that 50% chance (which is what happens if it plays itself.) Unlike RPS, you can can lose to the perfect poker bot by playing poorly. Also, as noted in the article, the perfect poker bot always plays as if it were playing against perfect opposition. A good human player will fleece you faster then the perfect bot, because the human player will notice your peculiar imperfections and exploit them, choosing to play in a way which would be suboptimal against a perfect opponent, but superior against you.
Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
To the average joe poker player, I'd say what's most important here is that the perfect solution is only for a two player game.
Things become much more complicated when players>2.
Casinos take a small amount of money out of each hand, the "rake". So if two perfectly matches robots play, the casino wins, as they slowly bleed all the money away from them both. These guys could have saved a lot of time. If you want a poker game where you always win, all you have to do was is the casino.
This doesn't prove it at all. You shouldn't have been modified +5 Insightful. Over the course of a game, luck is very important. Like you get dealt the card you already have, or you get dealt crap.
Blackjack also has a perfect strategy, and of course blackjack has a great amount of luck.
I guess if you planned on playing an infinite amount of games, luck wouldn't be a part of Texas Hold Em. For somebody playing a finite amount, luck is key.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
And YOU shouldn't be at +5 because you didn't point out the glaring issue with this entire post to /.!
This is for HEADS-UP Texas Hold'em , which is only 2 people! A Hold'em game greater than 2 is still unsolved!