The Poki Project (Computer program playing poker online) |
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Posted Wed Jan 05, 2005 7:11 am GMT by Verdi
http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~games/poker/
Their aim is to have a program able to beat any human player over the long run.
Do you think it's possible? They are quite serious about it. They even have the program bluffing every now and then to prevent it from being too easy to predict. Amazing!
For me as a software engineer this is really interesting.
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Posted Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:31 am GMT by fonzerelli_79
definately interesting
they did similar programs with chess - however chess is a game where you know exactly what is happening on the other site
i think they would find the bluffing aspect difficult to program
Posted Wed Jan 05, 2005 9:36 am GMT by darthsikle
while the computer can bluff, how would it react to a player bluffing. What about a raving lunatic playing??
Posted Wed Jan 05, 2005 11:29 am GMT by redd38
I've done a lot of programming in my day, and doing something like this is something I think about every now and then. I think the best players would be able to exploit it, especially if they knew they were playing a bot. But I think it would be a fairly easy task to beat many of the online players these days.
Posted Wed Jan 05, 2005 5:30 pm GMT by Iron Butt
Poki is a good place to see some hands, especially for beginners who might want to play more "serious" poker than you usually can at free tables.
One thing that's kinda cool is that instead of "busting" and then you just punch up some new money, it keeps a running total. So if you go down 1K, you have to win it all back if you want to have a positive total. You see a lot of players there down thousands.
IMO the bots play pretty well preflop, aggressive, lots of preflop raising. An EP raise usually sends the bots running though. The hand selection is a bit too loose I think, you'll see bots play AX, any suited, etc. Post flop play is a bit weaker I think, the aggression continues but the bots will chase with stuff like second pair or overcards. The bots will check raise and bluff, not very often though (as is correct), and can be bluffed. Using an extremely loose aggressive (maniac) style will give you results about like you'd expect, wide swings tending toward the negative.
The software is very basic and can be slow. Also one game only, 10/20 LHE.
Posted Thu Jan 06, 2005 2:37 pm GMT by QuietOne
The question here is why? Why create such a program? It's like playing poker for fun, it serves no point!
Poker is played for 2 reasons and 2 reason only. To beat the other guys and to win money. To beat a machine? Even if I thought I could, why would I waste my time? So I could go to my friends and say "Hey I beat a machine!" I doubt they'd be impressed.
This is a game where the human factor is more important than any other game. On the WPT, bad hands win just as much as good hands. Why. Because it's not about who has the best hand, but it's about who makes the other guy believe he (or she) has the best hand. It's mind games, reason, deduction, clues, tells, etc.
It's a free world and everyone is free to build what they want but anyone who would do something like this doesn't understand poker and doesn't understand why we play it. It seems to me, the geeks could find something a little more helpful or profitable to spend their time on.
Just my 2ยข/code
Posted Thu Jan 06, 2005 4:30 pm GMT by Scott1101
| QuietOne wrote: | | Poker is played for 2 reasons and 2 reason only. To beat the other guys and to win money. |
In general I agree with you. But I think you're talking about the pre-fad poker that only some of us know about. Nowadays, people are playing poker just because it's cool. For them the money is secondary.
For proof, just look at the number of posts on here about playing in micro-limit games and free-rolls. And go to any online site and you'll see 10x more games in the free section than in the pay section.
It's a colossal waste of time as far as I'm concerned but that's what people like nowadays.
Posted Thu Jan 06, 2005 6:50 pm GMT by Iron Butt
| Quote: | | The question here is why? Why create such a program? It's like playing poker for fun, it serves no point! |
It's a research project in artificial intelligence and game theory. When it starts whining about bad beats, they'll know it's achieved consciousness.
Posted Sat Jan 08, 2005 12:06 am GMT by JohnnyCache
Yeah, quietone, from a technical perspective, good poker play is a very hard thing to simulate, so for the programmers, it represents a test of their skills.
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