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Humans Dominating Poker Super Computer
New submitter IoTdude writes: The Claudico super computer uses an algorithm to account for gargantuan amounts of complexity by representing the number of possible Heads-Up No-limit Texas Hold'em decisions. Claudico also updates its strategy as it goes along, but its basic approach to the game involves getting into every hand by calling bets. And it's not working out so far. Halfway through the competition, the four human pros had a cumulative lead of 626,892 chips. Though much could change in the week remaining, a lead of around 600,000 chips is considered statistically significant.
Lt. Commander Data struggled with the intricacies of poker as well.
Gamertag: WyleType
I almost did a double-take with this story; a few months ago I read about computers having solved heads-up _limit_ Texas hold’em: http://arstechnica.com/science...
Well, it looks like the computer can win when there is a limit, but humans can still win when there is no limit.
I guess that's not too surprising: the limit really cuts down the number of choices, making a brute-force calculations more practical, and brute-force calculations are what computers do best. Without the restrictions of a limit, the AI needs to be a lot more clever. I wonder how long it'll be until computers win at this.
First of all, this is the link that the story should have included. It includes updates of the scoreboard, etc. On it you will see that even though the brains are collectively beating Claudico, the computer is actually over $100,000 ahead against Jason Les, a feat that almost no human could match. Yes, Claudico is down against the other three, but these are the top players in the world, and most human pros would get clobbered much worse by these guys. Are we really so hard to impress? This is the first time that something like this has been tried, and already, the computer is performing on a level that most poker pros would love to reach.
but poker is about much more than just the odds.. it's about emotions, reading players expressions and tells, intimidation, and taking advantage of all that. playing 'perfectly' based on percentages only gives you a chance at staying in the game, it's mastering the 'human factor' that gets you all the chips.
i don't see the point to training a computer solely based on odds and what happens 'on the table', and i don't see how you could possibly program a machine (with today's technology, anyway) to exhibit the same traits as people do when playing (down to facial expressions, body language, and tells and such) so that players and machines had the same 'tools' available.
cmdr data sucked at all that and he was a slightly more advanced computer than the guys at cmu are using. only when he got flung back in time to the 1890s did he truly excel at poker, and that was against human players who did not have centuries of analysis programmed into them and saw the odd looking and talking android as a possible easy mark and totally underestimated him.