Anyone ever program one?
you could but everyones would be different based on risk tolerances. Hand values are rather certain, as are odds calculations, but you would have to decide what to make hte bot do in situations, how many outs you’re willing to chase etc.
Couldnt you theoretically program said bot to never lose?
nuppal Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Couldnt you theoretically program said bot to > never lose? The bot wouldn’t know what cards the other players have so to answer your question, no. It WOULD be able to make decisions based on the best odds as opposed to the other players that are making decisions based on their experience/gut feelings. Really the bot doesn’t need to win every hand, it just needs a slight statistical advantage over the majority of players and then you can just have it play thousands and thousands of hands at lower stakes and that statistical advantage leads to a positive expected value.
Didn’t Phil Laak play against some uber heads up bot?
Redox Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > nuppal Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > Couldnt you theoretically program said bot to > > never lose? > > > The bot wouldn’t know what cards the other players > have so to answer your question, no. It WOULD be > able to make decisions based on the best odds as > opposed to the other players that are making > decisions based on their experience/gut feelings. > Really the bot doesn’t need to win every hand, it > just needs a slight statistical advantage over the > majority of players and then you can just have it > play thousands and thousands of hands at lower > stakes and that statistical advantage leads to a > positive expected value. Yeah, thats what I was thinking. If it could win 1% more than the average mortal it would be a success.
CPAbeatsCFA Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > you could but everyones would be different based > on risk tolerances. Hand values are rather > certain, as are odds calculations, but you would > have to decide what to make hte bot do in > situations, how many outs you’re willing to chase > etc. Of course they would be different, that’s the fun! I am actually in the process of doing it, because I like poker and programming helps me to think really clearly about it. Anybody read the mathematics of poker? Any other good books that approach poker from more of a behavior finance, game theory and math perspective?
Writing the code to determine odds of winning is quite easy. What’s tricky is making decisions about how much to bet, and what to do in response to an opponent’s actions. If you have immutable rules about how to respond, a clever opponent will realize it quickly, and use those rules to punish you. If you’re going to have a slightly variable strategy, maybe you can write a really good agent, but its very hard to break that kind of intuition into logical instructions.
I should start a VBA help thread and just ask someone to code me a poker bot and let that run while I am at work. The trick is, how to link it up with pokerstars.
Supposedly some people at the University of Alberta did a pretty good job with switching strategies for different situations a while ago, I read. You can actually just buy a program that will calculate the odds of winning, the art and the interesting part, as dlpicket says, is in determining strategies for different situations and different signals from competitors. Another thought: if you intend on using in on any live poker sites (not that anyone would do that) and you have static rules the site will detect the bot and kick you off.
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > CPAbeatsCFA Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > you could but everyones would be different > based > > on risk tolerances. Hand values are rather > > certain, as are odds calculations, but you > would > > have to decide what to make hte bot do in > > situations, how many outs you’re willing to > chase > > etc. > > Of course they would be different, that’s the fun! > I am actually in the process of doing it, because > I like poker and programming helps me to think > really clearly about it. Anybody read the > mathematics of poker? Any other good books that > approach poker from more of a behavior finance, > game theory and math perspective? the problem with playing amateur games (1/2 NL or 2/5NL) is that A LOT of players use 0 math and they make calls when they’re way behind and hit and do a lot of things that math simply cant account for.
Here’s another thought, once you build the bot it would be pretty easy to build it to keep a history of all of the players’ actions. You could probably recognize patterns relatively quickly.
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > CPAbeatsCFA Wrote: > -------------------------------------------------- > ----- > > you could but everyones would be different > based > > on risk tolerances. Hand values are rather > > certain, as are odds calculations, but you > would > > have to decide what to make hte bot do in > > situations, how many outs you’re willing to > chase > > etc. > > Of course they would be different, that’s the fun! > I am actually in the process of doing it, because > I like poker and programming helps me to think > really clearly about it. Anybody read the > mathematics of poker? Any other good books that > approach poker from more of a behavior finance, > game theory and math perspective? I used to work with Bill Chen. His book is fantastic. Definitely pick it up.
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Here’s another thought, once you build the bot it > would be pretty easy to build it to keep a history > of all of the players’ actions. You could > probably recognize patterns relatively quickly. Google PokerTracker
do any *official* poker games/tournaments online or in casinos ever include a wild card version of the game? there are several pretty cool math articles out there which prove that the inclusion of wild cards messes up the ranking order of the hands. i was wondering if this breakdown of the rankings in wild-card poker can be exploited to realize excess profits?
The biggest problem with writing a poker bot is that you have to beat the other player and the rake in order to make money. At low-limit tables, the rake is pretty brutal.
justin88 Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > The biggest problem with writing a poker bot is > that you have to beat the other player and the > rake in order to make money. > > At low-limit tables, the rake is pretty brutal. Honestly, I’d settle for being able to beat other players, as I view that as the real challenge. Not really looking to do this to make a living, just to really think in a different way about a game I like, and learn some different implementations of C++ is the process. Yeah, I’m a nerd like that. Redox: thanks for the link, definitely good to have something pre-built with already thought out stats. It actually helps, I think, that it is used by so many since by using the same tool you might have a framework to understand the behavior of unsophisticated players using pokertracker. It looks like it basically a pre-built relational database. Should be interesting…
eureka Wrote: ------------------------------------------------------- > Supposedly some people at the University of > Alberta did a pretty good job with switching > strategies for different situations a while ago, I > read. You can actually just buy a program that > will calculate the odds of winning, the art and > the interesting part, as dlpicket says, is in > determining strategies for different situations > and different signals from competitors. > > > Another thought: if you intend on using in on any > live poker sites (not that anyone would do that) > and you have static rules the site will detect the > bot and kick you off. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polaris_(poker_bot) this is the one you’re referring to. Problem is, it’s only heads up poker. ps for disclosure I went to UofA.
You wouldn’t write poker bots in a C++, but rather in a rule based language. When i was taking grad cs class, one of the student’s thesis was a poker bot
There’s a series of technical articles on how someone actually made a poker bot with C++: http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-poker-bot http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-2 http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-3 http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-4 http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-5 http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-6 http://www.codingthewheel.com/archives/how-i-built-a-working-online-poker-bot-7 Are you a programmer eureka ?