Mason,


You ask a really insightful question.


And I learned that this was an important question only after writing my poker playing program modelled after TTHE and playing it for many thousands of hands at U of Alberta. Before I answer, I want to say again that Wilson's playing encodings are really really amazing, they saved me a huge amount of work.


But your question, does TTHE do it? I do not know for sure but I can make an educated guess 'no'. I know that I cannot use his setup screens to set this up. Simulations I have run look like 'no'...I therefore assume it does not. But Wilson can tell you for sure. Wait, stop the presses, in rereading my answer, I see something: TTHE does pot-odds. He must know how many are in now, and how many might stay to do a proper calculation. Maybe he does take it into account for other things... hm....


What a program should do:


My program's win rate at the Alberta poker server, which is not an easy place to win, was going nowhere (early on) until I ran enough hands to realize a number of things you cannot encode in 'tables':


1. You must always take into account how many are left. In situations like this one you describe, in bluffs, in pot-odds (where you can calculate how many are left, so what you might win if you hit), you must know. But interestingly, especially in bluffs/semi-bluffs (encoded as X1 by Wilson), and calling with second pair, etc, you better better better better know.


2. You better bluff. (I mean a program better bluff). Wilson does this through encoding some bluffs, but it is not enough. My program bluffs randomly in certain other situations...nuff said, don't want to give too much away.


3. You must always play some situations very aggressively, tables be damned, and play other situations very very meekly. Someone above mentioned gutshots. I found a pattern -- which I know TTHE does not adhere to in its tables for its best players -- independent of tables, which describes how best to play low end str8s and gutshots -- which is almost never. Perhaps I misread the table encoding, so Wilson, if you are reading this, no disrespect is intended.


There is much more, but it is tough for Wilson, who is selling off-the-shelf software, something I know all too well about, to program certain things into his product in a very general way, for people to encode.


I would not want to play against Wilson's REAL program, believe me Mason, he knows how to write the real thing.


And I would not like to play against mine either, and work is not even half done. Yeah, it plays real well, but it is just a start.


Mark