Poker Bot piece

[KidPokerX]

To be honest, playing against a computer - or even multiple ones for that matter - is not that frightening.
Call me crazy, but with a fair amount of change-ups, strong pattern observation, and excellent game-play even a computer is beatable. I am no computer scientist, but I'm relatively sure there is nothing out there that truelly has artificial intelligence. Most of us know that humans cannot create anything that other humans cannot destroy - unless someone can prove me wrong, it has never been done and probably never will be. I am positive that a human player can always beat a machine (simply because a human created one).
Simply put, being scared of a bot will be more detrimental to your game than the bot itself.

[Pirc Defense]

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Call me crazy, but with a fair amount of change-ups, strong pattern observation, and excellent game-play even a computer is beatable.

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Change-ups? What does this mean? Are you saying that you are going to make strange plays that will confuse the bot? This just doesn't make any sense. If it's a strange play, then it's probably -EV. Secondly, as soon as the bot figures out that the strange play was made, then it merely notes that, on occasion, you make strange plays. All is fair in love and war, however, and the bot can make strange plays against you as well. Would you expect a bot to 3-bet on the river with a busted hand? What if you found out that it did? That you folded the best hand? You might tilt, the bot never will. Even so, to the bot it's just more data for it to chew on, which segues to...

...Strong pattern observation? Computers are superb at this. They can see patterns that we can't (and humans can see patterns that bots can't, as of now), and would be especially good at figuring out a pattern from a huge database like PokerTracker. We're at a decided disadvantage here.

Excellent game play? Well, obviously the better the human is, the more trouble the bot will have.

But your "excellent game play" point is one that is deeper than it seems. I feel that within the next five or so years, bots will exist that will be able to beat the average $20/$40 player at, say, Party Poker. On average, these are not the best players in the world. Even this achievement puts bots in the very high upper percentile of poker ability, and it would be hard to argue otherwise. Not too long after this milestone is achieved, then the best players in the world are aimed at, and I can't think of a good argument why they, too, will not eventually be bested by the best of the bots.

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I'm relatively sure there is nothing out there that truelly has artificial intelligence.

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This is very true, and we're not even really close. True artificial intelligence, though, is not needed for a bot to be successful at poker. It just takes good programming by somebody that understands poker.

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Simply put, being scared of a bot will be more detrimental to your game than the bot itself.

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That would definitely make things more difficult for you. The more I think about the problem, the more this makes sense. You're facing a machine, one that can't help but think logically and perfectly. When it raises on the turn, or the river, you've got to be thinking it doing so for a reason. But, wait, what if the programmer sets it up to bluff every so often (which he/she would, of course?) Is he bluffing? How bad would I look if a freakin' bot bluffed me off of a hand?!? Lots of psychology going on, and not at all unlike what Kasparov went through when he first played against Deep Blue. The guy was a wreck, and I can see definite parallels to poker.

[Jimbo]

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For the record, Pirc Defense has the credible side of this argument and clearly has the knowledge to form a credible opinion. Jimbo does not, and frankly should just shut his trap, because he doesn't know what he's talking about.

eastbay

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More flawed logic, I would expect no less from you. Simply because you happen to know Pirc and know next to nothing about me that makes him correct?

It is certainly possible that I will be proven wrong but right now since all in this thread seem to agree that there is not such bot as being described by Pirc working today I am most certainly more right than wrong at this time.

If one predicts enough different things that will happen in the nect 5 years some of them are bound to occur. How do you think psychics stay in business?

You really should brush up on your reasoning skills eastbay.

[Sniper]

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I am positive that a human player can always beat a machine (simply because a human created one).

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This is wrong!

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Simply put, being scared of a bot will be more detrimental to your game than the bot itself.

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On the other hand, this is correct! To a good poker player, a bot that plays well, is just another good opponent.

[Sniper]

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It is certainly possible that I will be proven wrong but right now since all in this thread seem to agree that there is not such bot as being described by Pirc working today I am most certainly more right than wrong at this time.

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The premise of the original article that started this thread is that programmers are tweaking bots to play better poker. This is definately true!

Whether poker bots currently or in the future can beat the top players in the game, is almost irrelevant. All a bot needs to do to be successful is beat a table of 10 random players (or not so random if the bot uses table selection algorithms) for minimally positive BB/100.

These bots exist today!

[Pirc Defense]

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More flawed logic, I would expect no less from you. Simply because you happen to know Pirc and know next to nothing about me that makes him correct?

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Jimbo, eastbay does not know me. I'd wager that based on post count alone, he is more familar with you, than with me. Either way, his conclusion is the same that any casual observer of this thread would come to: Pirc's position is more sound than Jimbo's, and it's not even close.

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It is certainly possible that I will be proven wrong but right now since all in this thread seem to agree that there is not such bot as being described by Pirc working today I am most certainly more right than wrong at this time.

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You should start a new thread if you want to talk about an entirely new topic, and I'd thank you for not hijacking my thread. From the start this thread was about what will be happening in the near future, not what is happening now. Talk about flawed logic.

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If one predicts enough different things that will happen in the nect 5 years some of them are bound to occur. How do you think psychics stay in business?

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True, but then who in this thread has done that? Right, nobody. So this strawman of an argument only serves to further my belief that you've pinned yourself in a corner and now feel there's nothing for it but to widly throw accusations left and right, whether true or not, and hope that some stick. Ya' know, if one accuses enough people of doing things they haven't done, some of the accusations are bound to stick, right?

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You really should brush up on your reasoning skills eastbay.

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Sounds like a personal attack to me, and shouldn't be allowed to stand.

I'm a computer science student and my main focus is artificial intelligence, and I'm also a fairly seasoned poker player.

First of all a programmer would be more likely to write a bot for limit than no limit. It's more cut and dry in limit, and the limited number of options available is easier for the computer to work with. It's much simpler for a computer to make sense of a 1 bet raise or re-raise then someone raising any random amount, especially with only a small sampling of their play. In limit the computer can play the game based more on math rather than trying to make reads on the skill of it's opponents. Also it makes it easier for the computer to calculated implied odds in limit because of the structured betting. Most of this is assuming a bot playing against random players. Now were you to have a sizable poker tracker database on the players you were playing in NL the bot would fair better, but I still doubt it'd do as well as it could in limit.

The people who use these bots aren't expecting that the bot will crush opponents at the table, what's more likely is that they're using a bot which may consistently win 2-4bb/hr to clear bonuses at sites for them rather than doing the work themselves. It would be fairly trivial to make a bot capable of doing this at lower limits if you were to incorporate poker tracker statistics on players into its play, and with the general level of play at .50/1 or 1/2 on sites like party poker I'm fairly certain a bot would be able to make more than just a few BB/hr.

I had contemplated writing a program solely to play the freeroll tournaments on PP since I don't feel like sitting down to play them and...they're free so I'm not worried about the outcome, but I scrapped that idea when they did away with the completely free tournaments (didn't want to have to use party points). I think what would be more likely for a good programmer to do would be to write programs that help enhance their game. I'm thinking along the lines of buttons that overlay the insta-action buttons so that you can use those but it adds in a random amount of delay before you press them, something that records the time it takes players to bet, recording any strange plays by players (say raising UTG with A6 or something), something to move through tables and find the best tables using your poker tracker database, stuff like that.

As for computers beating humans it'll eventually happen, but I don't think it's as fair as computers playing humans in chess. In chess you don't have to have a read on your opponent, in hold'em being able to study your opponent is a crucial part of live play, staring at a computer that's making bets that could be based on thousands of hands you've played and probably has a good model of how you play only adds an advantage to the computer player. Granted a great hold'em player would be able switch up their play, but that still lends the initial advantage to the computer. Since hold'em is a gambling game and the top players are all going to be able to calculate the odds nearly as well as the computer so it would probably come down to the run of cards each player gets. Just my two cents.

[Pirc Defense]

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The people who use these bots aren't expecting that the bot will crush opponents at the table, what's more likely is that they're using a bot which may consistently win 2-4bb/hr to clear bonuses at sites for them rather than doing the work themselves.

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Winning 2-4bb/hr would be pretty sweet. Playing $5/$10 with three bots at three different tables nets you about $60k a year. Not lottery money, but wouldn't that be a nice little supplemental income?

I think setting a goal of $1bb/hr is more reasonable, more likely, and still pretty lucrative, as my math above shows.

Good post.

[Sniper]

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Winning 2-4bb/hr would be pretty sweet. Playing $5/$10 with three bots at three different tables nets you about $60k a year.

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Your math is a bit off...
1BB/Hr @ 5/10 x 24hrs/day x 365days/yr = $ 87,600
add in rakeback and bonuses and you are well over $100K+/yr/bot

[Gazzbut]

Have you heard of quantum computing? The amount of calculations per second a quantum computer can handle are so vast that it can perform calculations that would take standard computers something like one hundered years to perform. I would bet a computer like that could be programmed to be easily as good as any human player.