[HN Gopher] Professional poker players know the optimal strategy...
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Professional poker players know the optimal strategy but don't
       always use it
        
       Author : alexahn
       Score  : 120 points
       Date   : 2024-07-19 03:17 UTC (19 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.scientificamerican.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.scientificamerican.com)
        
       | mxwsn wrote:
       | Essentially all AI work I've seen in games aims for game theory
       | optimal play, but I think it could be really interesting to
       | consider AI for exploitative play. Does this exist? Poker with
       | imperfect information, human pressure and fallibility means that
       | players will inevitably stray from Nash equilibrium. The decision
       | on how to exploit without getting exploited back oneself seems
       | really fascinating to consider from an AI perspective. At a
       | glance it seems to require considering how others view you..
        
         | raincole wrote:
         | > Imperfect information, human pressure... inevitably stray
         | from Nash equilibrium
         | 
         | Human pressure yes. Imperfect information no.
         | 
         | When we talk about Nash equilibrium for a game like poker, it's
         | already based on imperfect information.
        
           | mxwsn wrote:
           | Ah right, thanks
        
         | waprin wrote:
         | Within solvers, you can do something called "node locking",
         | which means you "lock" a tree in the game node to play a fixed
         | strategy. You would typically lock it to play as you suspect
         | your opponent plays. This lets the solver calculate the optimal
         | exploitative solution against your specific oppoents.
         | 
         | Piosolver, the first public solver and the one mentioned in the
         | article, has this feature.
         | 
         | However, what often happens is if you lock one node, then
         | several other nodes in the game tree over-adjust in drastic
         | ways, forcing you to lock all of the, which may be infeasiable.
         | As a result, Piosolver recently introduced "incentives", which
         | gives a player in the game an additional incentive to take a
         | certain action . For example, you may suspect your opponent
         | calls too much and doesn't raise enough, so you can just set
         | that incentive and it will include that in its math equations
         | and give you something similar to an exploitative solution with
         | a much simpler UX.
         | 
         | This feature was literally just introduced a few months ago so
         | it's still very much an active area of research, both for game
         | theory nerds, and people trying to use the game theory nerd
         | research to make money !
        
           | Buttons840 wrote:
           | I want to see strong AI used in video games, especially
           | strategy games. People often retort that strong AI is not
           | fun; it's too challenging and that's not what players want.
           | But once we have a strong AI we can adjust its goal function
           | in fun ways. What you're describing is effectively the same,
           | and it's the first time I've seen this used in a strong AI.
        
             | currymj wrote:
             | GT Sophy is now a permanent feature in Gran Turismo and
             | basically does this!
        
             | dontlikeyoueith wrote:
             | In essence, you need strong (probably unbeatable) game AI
             | in order to make more interesting weak (beatable but
             | challenging and fun) game AI.
        
         | asdasdsddd wrote:
         | I think it'd be interesting to see if an AI with visual input
         | playing exploitatively can out perform AI playing GTO. In doing
         | so, we can measure the effect of visual tells.
        
           | tialaramex wrote:
           | You mean, can the exploitative strategy take money from fish
           | faster? Yes. But it doesn't need to care about visual tells.
           | 
           | The point of the optimal strategy is that it's unexploitable
           | so you can disregard the other player's actions (in the game
           | or outside it) entirely.
           | 
           | All exploitative strategies are in turn exploitable.
        
             | bubblyworld wrote:
             | I think you have to be careful with saying stuff like
             | "optimal strategies are unexploitable", because it usually
             | means "unexploitable in a particular game theory sense".
             | 
             | Whether the assumptions of the Nash equilibrium (or any of
             | the others) make sense for your situation in a game of
             | poker is an empirical question, right? It's not a given
             | that playing a NE means you'll be "perfect" in the human
             | sense of the word, or that you'll get the best possible
             | outcome.
             | 
             | The best superhuman poker AIs at the moment do not play
             | equilibriums either, for instance.
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | I agree that because of, for example rake or table fees
               | for cash games or competition structure for tournament in
               | practice a game theoretically optimal choice may not be
               | the right choice in practical play.
               | 
               | However the situation with an AI powered competitor which
               | uses exploitative play is identical to a human, the GTO
               | play will gradually take their chips at no risk.
               | 
               | It's not that they're optimal but that they've chosen
               | _not_ to be optimal and so that 's why they lose money
               | against GTO.
               | 
               | The AI is at least unemotional about this, humans with a
               | "system" easily get tilted by GTO play and throw
               | tantrums. How can it get there with KToff? What kind of
               | idiot bluffs here with no clubs? Well the answer will
               | usually be the one that's taking all your chips, be
               | better. Humans used to seeing exploitable patterns in the
               | play of other humans may mistake ordinary noise in the
               | game for exploitable play in a GTO strategy and then get
               | really angry when it's a mirage.
        
               | bubblyworld wrote:
               | Right, I see what you're saying, but this is what I'm
               | disputing - in two player games, what you wrote is true,
               | but those properties of Nash equilibria don't generalise.
               | 
               | When there are more players, there can be multiple Nash
               | equilibria, and (unlike the two player case) combinations
               | of equilibrium strategies may no longer be an equilibrium
               | strategy. So it's no longer true that you cannot be
               | exploited, because that depends on other player's
               | strategies too, and you cannot control those.
               | 
               | (See this paper for instance: https://webdocs.cs.ualberta
               | .ca/~games/poker/publications/AAM...)
        
               | tialaramex wrote:
               | Yes, I agree that more players makes the theory at least
               | extremely difficult and perhaps imponderable. That paper
               | was interesting, thanks
        
         | bubblyworld wrote:
         | Yes, this exists! Look up models based on counterfactual regret
         | minimisation - they learn to exploit regularities in their
         | opponents play, and often stray from the GTO play when it makes
         | sense. I believe they have beaten poker professionals in
         | thousands-of-hands playoffs but I may be misremembering.
        
           | phreeza wrote:
           | The obvious follow up question: are there methods in use to
           | bait such models into suboptimal play and then switch play
           | style to exploit that?
        
           | codethief wrote:
           | > I believe they have beaten poker professionals in
           | thousands-of-hands playoffs
           | 
           | I really don't know anything about poker AIs but could it be
           | you are referring to Libratus and/or Pluribus[0]?
           | 
           | [0]: https://noambrown.github.io/
        
             | bubblyworld wrote:
             | To be honest I didn't have a specific AI in mind, more the
             | technique, but it sounds like these ones also use a variant
             | of CFRM.
        
             | energy123 wrote:
             | I do not believe these attempt to exploit regularities.
        
           | currymj wrote:
           | no, CFR is mainly just a way of computing Nash equilibria and
           | (although in some sense it is an online, iterative algorithm)
           | would typically be used to precompute Nash strategies, not
           | update them in real time. real poker playing systems augment
           | the CFR strategies with some real-time solving, but just to
           | get even closer to Nash at the end of a hand.
           | 
           | on top of this, you could think about augmenting these
           | systems to exploit weaknesses in opponent strategies. there
           | is some work on this, but I don't think it's done much. The
           | famous systems that played against professionals don't use
           | it, they just try to get as close to GTO as possible and wait
           | for opponents to screw up.
        
         | genewitch wrote:
         | it took me a while to track this down last month:
         | https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/king-of-...
         | there's also cops and robbers and at least one other "all AI
         | compete against eachother" with the submitter usually making
         | the first couple of "naive" bots.
        
         | ggjkvcxddd wrote:
         | An AI that plays a fixed exploitative strategy will end up
         | getting figured out relatively quickly and counter exploited
         | pretty hard. This actually happens in real life sometimes when
         | people attempt to deploy poker bots online.
         | 
         | Any exploitative AI also needs the ability to adjust in real
         | time to a different exploitative strategy, which also needs to
         | be not easily predictable, etc.
        
       | brigadier132 wrote:
       | "Game theory optimal" (as poker players like to call it) is not
       | really the optimal strategy. It's the nash equilibrium strategy
       | _assuming_ the other players are also playing a nash equilibrium
       | strategy. As soon as one player deviates from the nash
       | equilibrium it 's not optimal anymore :).
       | 
       | It's interesting how this affects play. If a player is bluffing
       | slightly less than they should be, the adjustment is drastic, you
       | should actually never call with hands that do not beat their
       | value hands. If they are bluffing optimally, you are supposed to
       | call using what is known as "minimum defense frequency". What's
       | interesting about this is the minimum defense frequency is based
       | on what the strongest hands you can possibly have in that
       | situation are and the opponents possible hands do not even factor
       | into it. It's required to prevent your opponent from bluffing
       | with any two cards profitably.
       | 
       | To do the math, if you are on the river and the opponent bets 100
       | into 100, for this to be profitable for them they need to win 50%
       | of the time or more. If your opponent is bluffing optimally, you
       | need to call with 50% of the strongest hands you have in that
       | specific situation (if you don't know what hands you have in a
       | specific situation that's a problem) and sometimes they can be
       | dogshit like King high.
       | 
       | But, very important to note, very few players actually bluff
       | enough and if they bluff less than they should you should only
       | ever call when your hand actually beats their range of possible
       | value hands. (value vs bluff is kind of a difficult thing to
       | communicate, generally it's value if you want your opponent to
       | call)
       | 
       | Most players don't bluff enough as a result of most players
       | calling too much! When they call too much you should obviously
       | not bluff! This leads to very boring games of poker.
        
         | waprin wrote:
         | > What's interesting about this is the minimum defense
         | frequency is based on what the strongest hands you can possibly
         | have in that situation are and the opponents possible hands do
         | not even factor into it.
         | 
         | This is actually not quite true. MDF is purely a formula based
         | on pot size and the bet size (pot size / pot size + bet size).
         | The fact that it doesn't consider various ranges is why it's
         | not really useful - it was a simplified formula used to try to
         | understand the game before solvers existed.
         | 
         | There are situations where your opponent can bet any two cards
         | profitably and you do have to fold - imagine they bet the size
         | of the pot, but have the better hand 99% of the time, you're
         | simply forced to let them bluff the 1% of the time they're
         | bluffing. MDF is a pre-solver concept and not an especially
         | useful concept in the modern game.
        
           | brigadier132 wrote:
           | I'm pretty sure mdf applies to rivers when you are last to
           | act. I'd be interested in being proven wrong however if you
           | have solver output that shows it. I remember studying solver
           | output and seeing it in action.
           | 
           | I know that before the river there are range advantages that
           | make defending mdf a losing play.
        
             | waprin wrote:
             | What's true is that equilibrium strategies typically
             | converge to solutions where the better makes the caller
             | indifferent between calling and folding. In the toy example
             | I've given where the betters range is so strong, the caller
             | should always fold, the better now has an incentive to add
             | more bluffs to the range to take advantage of the folds.
             | Then the caller will want to call more. This might converge
             | to the MDF which might be what you're suggesting, assuming
             | we started with ranges that could have enough bluffs given
             | the runouts.
             | 
             | If you open up the solver, and give one player only Ace-Ace
             | as their starting range, and the other player a pair of
             | twos, and the board Ace-Ace-Three-Three-Three, then the
             | pair of twos will fold 100% on river and will not call at
             | MDF.
        
               | brigadier132 wrote:
               | You are absolutely right! Haha damn back to the drawing
               | board
        
               | Raidion wrote:
               | I think another way to say this is that MDF works only if
               | you're in a spot where you have hands that are strong
               | enough to call. If you play every hand, and you see every
               | river in that 100into100 situation, you shouldn't call
               | with 50% of your hands because your hand range is too
               | wide for that to be profitable.
               | 
               | So you can't make a ton of mistakes say "MDF" and call
               | off, you have to have done the right things in previous
               | streets to end up with a range that can call at MDF. That
               | range (and those street actions) require an understanding
               | of GTO (and the adjustments needed when someone isn't
               | playing GTO).
        
         | Lordarminius wrote:
         | This is why I swear by chess. Bluffing has minimal value
         | against best play.
        
           | tucnak wrote:
           | Not in blitz it doesn't
        
           | jurassicfoxy wrote:
           | That being said, when Super GMs play a bad move against a
           | lower rated GM, they quite often gets a pass. They don't
           | capitalize, simply because they assume the move is excellent.
        
           | ajkjk wrote:
           | Chess manages in practice to be a game of imperfect
           | information, like poker. Obviously it is explicitly a game of
           | perfect information on the board, but the hidden information
           | is all psychological. For instance: "do they actually know
           | this opening/endgame? do they see a tactic? did they take a
           | long time because they calculated that it's a good move, or
           | are they bluffing by making it seem like they calculated
           | something? are they actually better than me or just acting
           | like they are?". etc.
           | 
           | It's true that "bluffing has minimal value against best
           | play", but no human is in that situation. Even super-GMs will
           | play "bluffs" if they are behind (or playing a lower-rated
           | player and sure they can recover later. or just for fun if
           | the stakes are low).
           | 
           | And that's not even mentioning optimal strategy under time
           | pressure. For instance some of the Lichess tournaments are
           | structured such that winning _fast_ is more valuable than
           | winning slowly because the resulting score comes from how
           | many wins you can get in (or in other cases, how big of a
           | streak you can get). So people will play in a way that
           | optimizes for winning quickly by taking big bets  / bluffing
           | / creating chaos with un-calculated gambits, especially if
           | they have a good reason to believe they're better than their
           | opponents.
        
           | hibikir wrote:
           | But every serious chess game is a matter of time allocation.
           | The best players in the world are unable to calculate as much
           | as they want in every position: Ultimately there is bluffing
           | and risk taking. See the last game of the last candidates,
           | where both Fabi and Ian have to win to get into a playoff,
           | and they get themselves into extremely complicated positions,
           | where accurate play just takes too long for a human. At an 8
           | hour time limit, the game is very different than at the time
           | the players actually had, as ultimately Fabi just couldn't
           | calculate to the end on every position he knew was key.
           | 
           | It wasn't the most accurate game of the tournament, but the
           | most instructive as far as the psychology of chess goes
        
         | tialaramex wrote:
         | In the narrow range of poker variants (all heads up, ie only
         | two players, not full ring like all but the last few hands of
         | the Main Event) where it's meaningful to talk about a truly
         | optimal game, any theoretical optimal play will still take
         | money from all humans it's just slower (but with zero risk)
         | compared to exploitative play.
         | 
         | In live cash games, speed matters, you want to take all the
         | available chips before the fish realise they're out-matched,
         | but to protect yourself the optimal play, if you could memorise
         | it, would be safer because it can't be exploited yet it does
         | take the opponent's chips.
         | 
         | Poker players are gamblers. So "safer" isn't really what they
         | were going for anyway.
        
           | brigadier132 wrote:
           | More important than speed is variance. If you really crush
           | your opponents you are less at risk of busting from bad
           | bankroll management.
        
         | jason-johnson wrote:
         | >"Game theory optimal" (as poker players like to call it) is
         | not really the optimal strategy. It's the nash equilibrium
         | strategy assuming the other players are also playing a nash
         | equilibrium strategy. As soon as one player deviates from the
         | nash equilibrium it's not optimal anymore :).
         | 
         | This is not really what most people mean when they say "optimal
         | strategy". It's true that exploitative play will make more
         | money _if_ you know exactly what your opponent is doing and
         | _if_ they keep doing it despite it not working. Neither of
         | these will generally hold in an actual game.
         | 
         | The reason it's called "optimal strategy" is because it works
         | no matter what your opponent is doing. It will not make as much
         | as a strategy tailored perfectly to your opponent but it will
         | never lose to anyone under any circumstances, assuming infinite
         | games (assuming infinite games just so we can ignore variance).
         | The worse case the strategy has is break even to anyone else
         | using it.
        
           | pfortuny wrote:
           | You are assuming there are no collusions among players
           | (agreements to play against another one). That perturbs the
           | Nash optimality.
        
             | im3w1l wrote:
             | I'm kind of curious how accidental collusion could work
             | out. Like imagine multiple players playing in such a way
             | that they help each other - but purely out of ignorance on
             | how best to play the game!
        
               | 8note wrote:
               | Isn't it pretty standard, and how professional poker
               | players make money?
               | 
               | All of the good players identify the worst, riches player
               | at the table, and they all take that players money.
               | 
               | Once they're out, you leave the table too
        
         | Moon1024 wrote:
         | You're writing something that is at best accidentally
         | misleading and at worst confidentially incorrect.
         | 
         | What is your formal definition of "optimal strategy"? A Nash
         | equilibrium is considered optimal in the sense that it's a
         | state where no one can gain an advantage by deviating from the
         | equilibrium.
         | 
         | Sure, if your opponents don't play the Nash equilibrium, there
         | is room to exploit that deviation and potentially gain more
         | than what you would get from playing the Nash equilibrium.
         | However, you also make yourself exploitable in return, so I
         | don't think you're presenting the whole picture here.
        
           | brigadier132 wrote:
           | Poker players typically optimize for making the most money in
           | expectation per hand. Either way, I'm certain that the
           | exploits I've described for players that bluff too much or
           | call too much are correct so I'm not too worried about being
           | slightly off. Poker strategy is about heuristics.
        
           | PeterisP wrote:
           | For practical poker, I'd formally define "optimal strategy"
           | as the strategy that maximizes profit per time (or per game)
           | for a set of opponents, including also the actions needed to
           | "explore" and discover any bias before exploiting it.
           | 
           | Assuming at least one of opponents is not playing Nash
           | equilibrium (which is a very solid assumption), playing the
           | Nash equilibrium becomes suboptimal as it doesn't exploit the
           | exploitable as much.
        
         | 14 wrote:
         | Trying to understand what you are getting at made me realize
         | why I do not gamble I am just not smart enough or lucky enough.
         | I had a friend try and convince me he knew a sure fire way to
         | beat roulette but in the end the house always wins. He
         | eventually had to admit he had a gambling addiction and quit
         | doing it all together.
        
           | namanyayg wrote:
           | Like anything else, Poker is a skill that you can learn with
           | time and practice.
           | 
           | It is not really related to your smartness or luck (doesn't
           | apply to _everyone_ of course but I'd wager that the average
           | HN reader is already smart enough for poker)
        
           | tmiku wrote:
           | Of all the gambling games to insist you know a secret
           | solution too, roulette has to be one of the funniest.
        
         | mkatx wrote:
         | I love poker, and I'm solid on the math foundations, but I
         | still suck..
         | 
         | Any book/other resource recommendations for brushing up on this
         | stuff?
        
           | Raidion wrote:
           | Modern Poker Theory by Acevedo was the premier book on this,
           | but I've been out of the game a few years. Idk if I'd fully
           | trust his charts given modern sizing theory, but it's going
           | to improve your game if you understand the concepts. If
           | you're really serious, you want to get a solver: GTO+,
           | PIOSolver, or GTOWizard (online version).
        
         | dmurray wrote:
         | > When they call too much you should obviously not bluff! This
         | leads to very boring games of poker.
         | 
         | I don't know, poker theory is all about optimal ranges and Nash
         | equilibrium, but there's something satisfying (and very
         | practically important, since if all your opponents even
         | understand the phrase Nash equilibrium you should find a
         | different game) about trying to make the most money against an
         | opponent who calls or bluffs way too much.
        
         | gweinberg wrote:
         | Boring but profitable. It's super easy to take money from a
         | "calling machine": just bet big when you have a strong hand.
        
       | waprin wrote:
       | I'm working on a project aiming to help pro (or serious amateur)
       | poker players learn game theory, mostly via flashcards with
       | spaced-repetition.
       | 
       | https://www.livepokertheory.com
       | 
       | I do personally dislike that GTO became the nomenclature , as I
       | prefer "theory-based", since it causes this confusion, but trying
       | to fight it at this point is hopeless because GTO is the search
       | term people are using. And when people say they "play GTO" they
       | usually mean "equilibrium" rather than "optimal against my
       | specific opponents" which is "exploitative".
       | 
       | If you actually watch what the top players advocate for, everyone
       | suggests you want to play exploitatively. However, there's one
       | equilibrium solution and effectively infinite exploitative
       | solutions, so equilibrium is a reasonble starting point to
       | develop a baseline understanding of the mechanics of the game.
       | It's tough to know how much "too much" bluffing is unless you
       | know a baseline.
       | 
       | Furthermore, if you "exploit" people by definition you are
       | opening yourself up to being exploited so you need to be very
       | careful your assumptions are true.
       | 
       | Also, with solvers like piosolver, you can "node lock" (tell a
       | node in the game tree to play like your opponent, rather than an
       | equilibrium way plays), but there's many pitfalls, such as the
       | solver adjusting in very unnatural ways on other nodes to adjust,
       | and it being impractical to "lock" a strategy every node in the
       | tree. There's new ideas called "incentives" which gives the
       | solver an "incentive" to play more like a human would (e.g.
       | calling too much) but these are new ideas still being actively
       | explored.
       | 
       | Rock paper scissors is frequently used to explain GTO but it's
       | not the best example because equilibrium in rock paper scissors
       | will break even against all opponents, but equilibrium poker
       | strategy will actually beat most human poker players, albeit not
       | as much as a maximally exploitative one.
       | 
       | There's two other huge pieces this article glosses over:
       | 
       | 1) It's as impossible for a human to play like a computer in
       | poker as in chess - in fact far more impossible, because in poker
       | you need to implement mixed strategies. In chess there's usually
       | a best move, but in poker the optimal solution often involves
       | doing something 30% of the time and something else 70% of the
       | time. The problem is that, not only are there too many situations
       | to memorize all the solutions, but actually implementing the
       | correct frequencies is impossible for a human. Some players like
       | to use "randomizers" like dice at the table, or looking at a
       | clock, but I find that somewhat silly since it still so unlikely
       | you are anywhere near equilbrium.
       | 
       | 2) Reading someone's "tells" live is still a thing. While solvers
       | have led to online poker to decline due to widespread "real time
       | assistance", live poker is booming (the 2024 World Series of
       | Poker Main Event just broke the record yet again) , and in person
       | in live poker, people still give off various information about
       | their hand via body language. From the 70s to the early 2000s,
       | people were somewhat obsessed with "tells" as a way to win at
       | poker. Since computers have advanced so much, it's fallen out of
       | favor, but the truth is, both are useful. It's totally mistaken
       | to think that advancement in poker AI , GTO , and solvers have
       | rendered live reads obsolete. In fact, in 2023, Tom Dwan won the
       | biggest pot in televised poker history (3.1 million) and credited
       | a live read to his decision, in a spot where the solver would
       | randomize between a call and a fold.
        
         | isatty wrote:
         | Very nice! WC3/Dota inspired streaks on the demo flash cards?
        
           | waprin wrote:
           | Yes indeed glad you noticed! Been too addicted to that
           | godforsaken game at points so figured borrow some of its
           | qualities for my studying apps...in general I'm interested in
           | gamification + studying.
        
       | mckn1ght wrote:
       | It's funny they mentioned Magic: the Gathering, because the first
       | thing I thought of when reading the headline is all the
       | conversation I see in r/EDH, and less frequently in other related
       | subreddits, about a reluctance or even disdain for "optimal"
       | play, which would be trying to win as efficiently as possible. To
       | preserve the excitement and surprise of gameplay, people
       | discourage building decks out of "staple" cards that would
       | quickly homogenize play. "Broken" or "busted" cards that turn out
       | to be more powerful than anticipated by the game's designers wind
       | up banned in sanctioned tournament play.
        
         | ip26 wrote:
         | If you're going to play MTG as a simple game theory optimal
         | affair, might as well switch to poker... a Nash equilibrium
         | surely exists all the same, but charm of the game is in the
         | variety and checks & balances.
        
           | rcxdude wrote:
           | Well, from the perspective of optimal play the more complex
           | and changing nature of MTG means that optimal play is harder
           | to find and doesn't stay still, so there's a lot more
           | metagame of figuring out what that play is.
        
         | rcxdude wrote:
         | EDH is especially prone to it as a format, because it's a
         | format which allows almost every card ever printed (with a
         | pretty... inconsistent banlist). This makes for some pretty
         | wild variations in power levels, and the top end tends to be
         | both very samey and very expensive. It's very popular as a
         | format but it only really works because there's a culture of
         | trying to match power levels between decks (to be fair, there's
         | also the fact that 100 card singleton does tend to mean it's
         | hard to be completely consistent, so there's a lot more
         | 'bleedover' between power levels in terms of chance to win in a
         | given match, as well as the >2 player aspect levelling things
         | out as a player obviously in the lead will tend to be ganged up
         | on)
        
         | willcipriano wrote:
         | EDH is the variant of the game for people who aren't that
         | competitive. They spend a lot of time trying not to win too
         | hard. The format is fine but I don't like it beacuse of this
         | culture around it, it basically has this social metagame where
         | you can get better players removed out of play by complaining
         | about them.
         | 
         | Draft, Standard and Modern are for people who want a real game
         | without having to worry about playing too well.
        
           | thom wrote:
           | And yet overpowered Commander cards continue to mess up Cube
           | and eternal formats.
        
       | r34 wrote:
       | There is a huge difference between game theoretic optimal
       | strategy and actual profitable strategy due to the human nature
       | of the players. I imagine a professional poker player as someone
       | who certainly knows the odds (math of the poker game in general),
       | but is also very good in interpreting his opponents behavior
       | (which would minimize the information revealed by them, but could
       | they do it completely?). There are so many biases which even
       | professional players have to overcome, that in my opinion poker
       | is strongly psychological game. Also because of that I think that
       | online poker and live poker are slightly different games.
        
       | thih9 wrote:
       | As a person who enjoys poker recreationally, whenever I visit
       | these submissions I soon realize that this is a very different
       | game from the one I'm playing.
        
       | PaulRobinson wrote:
       | I'm a fan of the levels of Poker thinking:
       | https://www.blackrain79.com/2020/01/outsmart-your-opponents-...
       | 
       | Basically, play one level - exactly one level - beyond where you
       | peg your opponents at.
       | 
       | Poker is not about playing cards. It's about playing people.
       | Cards is just how we keep it civil and not too personal.
        
         | midiguy wrote:
         | It used to be about playing people back when no one knew
         | anything. Now that people study GTO, it's definitely more about
         | the cards.
        
       | kruhft wrote:
       | Is that not called 'bluffing' with strategic planning?
        
       | kkwteh wrote:
       | Watching Doug Polk discuss hands on YouTube really opened my eyes
       | as to how professional pokers think about hands.
        
       | leesec wrote:
       | Optimal in this case means least exploitable it doesn't mean most
       | profitable, which is the real point of poker
        
       | krukah wrote:
       | One thing I haven't seen anyone mention yet is that Nash
       | equilibria do not actually exist when you move beyond heads-up
       | into multi-way play. There's strong empirical evidence that
       | solving abstracted games using MCCFR and using real-time depth-
       | limited tree search dominates humans and outperforms all other AI
       | strategies, but these results aren't theoretically sound, unlike
       | in heads-up play.
       | 
       | I've actually been working slowly on
       | https://github.com/krukah/robopoker, an open-source Rust
       | implementation of Pluribus, the SOTA poker AI. What I've found
       | interesting is the difference in how I approach actually playing
       | poker versus how I approach building a solver. Playing the game
       | naturally consists of reasoning about narratives and
       | incorporating information like hand history, play style, live
       | tells. Whereas solving the game is about evaluating tradeoffs
       | between the guarantees of imperfect-information game theory and
       | the constraints of Texas Hold'em, finding a balance between
       | abstract and concrete reasoning.
        
         | waprin wrote:
         | Looks cool I'll keep an eye on it.
        
       | mcswell wrote:
       | Sort of related: I was at a restaurant last night where a sports
       | channel was playing a poker tournament. Paint drying would have
       | been more interesting; it was hard to tell if one of the players
       | was even alive.
        
         | cheeze wrote:
         | This can be said of so many things. Like a cycling race, or
         | NASCAR, or golf, or chess.
         | 
         | I love it. Love cycling as well.
        
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