At no point in the entire history of the Euro has €200 been $350. The Euro peaked in 2008 at around $1.60 and is today at $1.33. At that conversion rate, €200 equals about $266.
Sorry while the stock market as the appearance of gambling its not quite the same.
Here are differences:
1)
If I put down a dollar in a casino I either win or loose, its a binary. If I put down a dollar in the stock market I have the choice of getting my money back at a later point in time at a loss or gain. It is not binary.
2)
If I bet on red I have odds that red might win. If I buy a stock based on analysis X I have a probability that I can go home with a gain at my discretion.
3)
Casinos work on randomness Stock markets are not random. They appear random and to the layman seem random, but are not random.
If you had put your money in the stock market in the last 9 years you would have lost. Ok how about the last 20 years? You would have made money. If you had shorted you would have made money. If you had sold premium you would have made money. The list goes on...
People who say think that there is only one way to make money in the stock market. In fact there are many ways, you just have to know what to do and when.
1. Clearly you have never heard of a binary option. There are other derivatives that have very close analogies in the gambling world. 2. If I buy a sports betting ticket based on my analysis that team A will beat team B X% of the time, how is this any different than "investing" in an option based on similar analysis. 3. Not everything in a casino operates off of randomness and not everything in the stock market isn't random. Sports are not random, but to a laymen they can appear random. I can bet on sports in a similar fashion to the way that based on analysis I can bet on equities or commodities. Blackjack appears random, but past cards can help predict future cards and that is why the game is beatable. There are lots of ways to make money gambling -- it isn't as simple as betting red or black and praying to the gambling gods to shine on you.
An argument can be made that stock investing is not exactly like gambling due to the partial ownership of the company. However, derivatives ARE gambling. Plain and simple.
You're obviously a relatively new web developer. The alternative at the time to IE5 was Netscape 4.7 -- that bastard child browser that no web developer in their right mind would make any attempt to support unless they absolutely had to.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
This is where the machine learning comes into play. Each time the human bets half her stack right off the bat, the machine lowers its calling (and raising) standards.
While it is true that limit holdem is mostly computational, the way pros extract value (read: money) from the lesser pros is by adapting. Most reasonable pros essentially play perfectly when it comes to pot odds, game theory, card value, position, stack sizes, etc. However, what separates them from the top pros is their ability to factor in additional information from the previous hands with that person (or machine). Will the player (or machine) play more aggressively if it has been steamrolling the opposition? If a pro believes that to be true, she will respect aggressive players bets less.
Also from TFA, "It's possible, given enough computing power, for computers to play 'perfectly,' where over a long enough match, the program cannot lose money," While this is true, a "long enough match" would be VERY VERY long - hundreds of thousands if not millions of hands. For pros over a couple thousand hands of limit holdem against good opposition, winning or losing is primarily dictated by variance.
Chess, go, checkers, tic-tac-toe and poker is called games of no chance or it is said to have complete information. This is simply another word for a lack of your hidden state. It implies that the state of the game is always known in those games. Any player (or computer for that matter) can look at the game board and say who is theoretically ahead. In chess, the easiest way to do this is just to assign values to all the pieces and add them up (in general, a more favorable board position is generally worth less than a single pawn). This is exactly the way that chess programs work. They simply assign a value to the current game board, then assign values to all the possible game boards off of the starting board and so on. They then use a pruning algorithm and the minimax algorithm to choose the best decision. With more computational power, the computer can look further ahead. A casual player cannot beat a computer that looks more than about 4 moves ahead. With sufficient computational power, (more than is available now) all of these games including go can be solved and a computer would be unbeatable (or at least unbeatable if it went first).
Poker cannot be solved in this manner whatsoever. Poker is not classified as a game of no chance as there is incomplete information -- the cards in the opponents' hands. The computer needs to evaluate not only its own hand, but also the likely holdings of the opponent relative to the community cards. There are lots of other skills in poker and usually poker has lots of contradictory information. For example, one piece of "information" that a player believes they have may point toward folding and another piece of information points toward raising. A good player weighs all of this information which includes tells, hand strength, previous encounters with the player or players in question, pot odds, implied odds, likelihood of bluff success, bet sizing, absolute position, relative position, and more. The weights of all of these things can change on a hand to hand basis.
Currently, computers are not very strong at poker (despite the rumors about poker bots and such that circulate on the online poker circuit - they can beat some humans, but get slaughtered by top humans) especially at no limit holdem because of its increased complexity. In limit holdem, a computer potentially could become fairly proficient with a combination of game theory (especially useful in shorthanded and heads up holdem) and math (which dictates more in fuller games). Although, it is not clear that a computer would always have an advantage over a top human player.
Slashdot Mirror
At no point in the entire history of the Euro has €200 been $350. The Euro peaked in 2008 at around $1.60 and is today at $1.33. At that conversion rate, €200 equals about $266.
It's the Government of the United States
Where hackers go to die
The largest, and yet the least efficient, producer of computer software in the world.
Sorry while the stock market as the appearance of gambling its not quite the same.
Here are differences:
1)
If I put down a dollar in a casino I either win or loose, its a binary.
If I put down a dollar in the stock market I have the choice of getting my money back at a later point in time at a loss or gain. It is not binary.
2)
If I bet on red I have odds that red might win.
If I buy a stock based on analysis X I have a probability that I can go home with a gain at my discretion.
3)
Casinos work on randomness
Stock markets are not random. They appear random and to the layman seem random, but are not random.
If you had put your money in the stock market in the last 9 years you would have lost. Ok how about the last 20 years? You would have made money. If you had shorted you would have made money. If you had sold premium you would have made money. The list goes on...
People who say think that there is only one way to make money in the stock market. In fact there are many ways, you just have to know what to do and when.
1. Clearly you have never heard of a binary option. There are other derivatives that have very close analogies in the gambling world.
2. If I buy a sports betting ticket based on my analysis that team A will beat team B X% of the time, how is this any different than "investing" in an option based on similar analysis.
3. Not everything in a casino operates off of randomness and not everything in the stock market isn't random. Sports are not random, but to a laymen they can appear random. I can bet on sports in a similar fashion to the way that based on analysis I can bet on equities or commodities. Blackjack appears random, but past cards can help predict future cards and that is why the game is beatable. There are lots of ways to make money gambling -- it isn't as simple as betting red or black and praying to the gambling gods to shine on you.
An argument can be made that stock investing is not exactly like gambling due to the partial ownership of the company. However, derivatives ARE gambling. Plain and simple.
Remember Amtrack anyone? The giant government boondoggle that loses money every year?
The word boondoggle has a well established conservative bias.
It's a good motivator when it's tempered with fear.
I fixed that for you.
In finance, they should just add very very severe clawback clauses.
You're obviously a relatively new web developer. The alternative at the time to IE5 was Netscape 4.7 -- that bastard child browser that no web developer in their right mind would make any attempt to support unless they absolutely had to.
I don't care how well such a program is coded... it will absolutely buckle under the pressure of a professional who constantly bets half his stack on nothing. The machine would turn into a professional folding station that only plays AA, KK, or AK. Guess what? That strategy isn't winning any games or any period of time in a no-limit or pot-limit world.
This is where the machine learning comes into play. Each time the human bets half her stack right off the bat, the machine lowers its calling (and raising) standards.
While it is true that limit holdem is mostly computational, the way pros extract value (read: money) from the lesser pros is by adapting. Most reasonable pros essentially play perfectly when it comes to pot odds, game theory, card value, position, stack sizes, etc. However, what separates them from the top pros is their ability to factor in additional information from the previous hands with that person (or machine). Will the player (or machine) play more aggressively if it has been steamrolling the opposition? If a pro believes that to be true, she will respect aggressive players bets less.
Also from TFA, "It's possible, given enough computing power, for computers to play 'perfectly,' where over a long enough match, the program cannot lose money,"
While this is true, a "long enough match" would be VERY VERY long - hundreds of thousands if not millions of hands. For pros over a couple thousand hands of limit holdem against good opposition, winning or losing is primarily dictated by variance.
Chess, go, checkers, tic-tac-toe and poker is called games of no chance or it is said to have complete information. This is simply another word for a lack of your hidden state. It implies that the state of the game is always known in those games. Any player (or computer for that matter) can look at the game board and say who is theoretically ahead. In chess, the easiest way to do this is just to assign values to all the pieces and add them up (in general, a more favorable board position is generally worth less than a single pawn). This is exactly the way that chess programs work. They simply assign a value to the current game board, then assign values to all the possible game boards off of the starting board and so on. They then use a pruning algorithm and the minimax algorithm to choose the best decision. With more computational power, the computer can look further ahead. A casual player cannot beat a computer that looks more than about 4 moves ahead. With sufficient computational power, (more than is available now) all of these games including go can be solved and a computer would be unbeatable (or at least unbeatable if it went first).
Poker cannot be solved in this manner whatsoever. Poker is not classified as a game of no chance as there is incomplete information -- the cards in the opponents' hands. The computer needs to evaluate not only its own hand, but also the likely holdings of the opponent relative to the community cards. There are lots of other skills in poker and usually poker has lots of contradictory information. For example, one piece of "information" that a player believes they have may point toward folding and another piece of information points toward raising. A good player weighs all of this information which includes tells, hand strength, previous encounters with the player or players in question, pot odds, implied odds, likelihood of bluff success, bet sizing, absolute position, relative position, and more. The weights of all of these things can change on a hand to hand basis.
Currently, computers are not very strong at poker (despite the rumors about poker bots and such that circulate on the online poker circuit - they can beat some humans, but get slaughtered by top humans) especially at no limit holdem because of its increased complexity. In limit holdem, a computer potentially could become fairly proficient with a combination of game theory (especially useful in shorthanded and heads up holdem) and math (which dictates more in fuller games). Although, it is not clear that a computer would always have an advantage over a top human player.