Programming Challenge

[Drakkon]

So boss was walking by my office, were kinda bored with nothing to do atm and he jokingly says "hey why don't ya make us a internal network texas hold em game". I was like hmmm interesting...and i said something to the effect of "ya know...I've never seen a single player version, or at least a version that doesn't have a set of hands already defined that you play against"
Thus my brain goes in about 20 different directions trying to figure out the logic behind telling a computer when to bet, when to go all in, when to bluff, when to fold, when to check, when to post SB, when to post BB, etc...poker itself is easy enough to program for a network game but when it has to be a computer player unless you want one that always bets based on the strength of hand is really a challenge...
So that being said is there any softwhere out there that has truely tackled this challenge or is texas hold em religated to the multiplayer game just for the human aspect?

 

[kamper]

Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

 

[Drakkon]

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I know about bots...the ones i have scene in rooms (there pretty easy to pick out) are the ones that are going on pretty crappy logic like they will only bet when their winning % is above 90%,no bluffing,and either are folding every hand for a good one or going all in on every hand just to grab pots. I don't consider that to be the true logic behind the game...I'd liek to see something like the old chessmaster where theres a DB of 1000's of games and based on what guys did in those games chips put in or folded and bluffing was invovled.

Job is a programmer, we're just kinda in-between projects right now so in down time we come up with funky little projects like these to work on to pass the time. He doesn't suggest it as something to get done with or even bring to fruition necessarily, more so it was jsut a joke that once we started talking about seemed like an interesting challenge...

 

[superkdogg]

Evidently you have seen some poor bots. This is an honest problem because some have written good ones and raked in cash while they slept.

I guess the answer to your question is an obvious yes, although I haven't the first clue on how to do it. Since he was talking internal network initially, are you sure he was asking for computer players and not just an interface to play against bored co-workers while you appear to be busily working away at your desk?

P.S. I'd love for my boss to come by and suggest I play poker. I don't know what Kamper's problem is

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I've never played online poker - are there any free sites? It'd be fun to build a bot with a NN and/or GA behind it and train it online against real players.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: superkdogg
P.S. I'd love for my boss to come by and suggest I play poker. I don't know what Kamper's problem is

Well, I guess I don't have any problem with a rest now and then I just like to work in a place where stuff gets done. I'm not suggesting you don't get anything done, Drakkon

 

[znaps]

Originally posted by: Armitage

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I've never played online poker - are there any free sites? It'd be fun to build a bot with a NN and/or GA behind it and train it online against real players.

One with a NN would be great, and possible too for sure...but it would take months if not years to train against real players.

 

[randumb]

Originally posted by: znaps

Originally posted by: Armitage

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I've never played online poker - are there any free sites? It'd be fun to build a bot with a NN and/or GA behind it and train it online against real players.

One with a NN would be great, and possible too for sure...but it would take months if not years to train against real players.

couldn't you just train it against a set of recorded games?

 

[Armitage]

Originally posted by: znaps

Originally posted by: Armitage

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I've never played online poker - are there any free sites? It'd be fun to build a bot with a NN and/or GA behind it and train it online against real players.

One with a NN would be great, and possible too for sure...but it would take months if not years to train against real players.

Maybe - although I suspect you could be running in several games simultaneously. Not saying it would be fast by any means.

 

[edmicman]

It would just have to know when to hold ?em, know when to fold ?em, know when to walk away and know when to run.

 

[torpid]

Didn't your boss just ask for a human-only version?

Bots are quite complicated. The easy party is getting them to read stat tables. The hard part is making them behave sensibly so that a human can't beat them easily.

 

[Bacardi151]

writing an AI for this is going to be very tricky, you'll most likely going to do a lot of deterministic programming, the complexity is pretty intricate, of course it's solvable, it's just a matter of how intelligent the AI is going to be, and i guess that'll depend on how you implement and what and how a bot should think.

 

[mdchesne]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
So boss was walking by my office, were kinda bored with nothing to do atm and he jokingly says "hey why don't ya make us a internal network texas hold em game". I was like hmmm interesting...and i said something to the effect of "ya know...I've never seen a single player version, or at least a version that doesn't have a set of hands already defined that you play against"
Thus my brain goes in about 20 different directions trying to figure out the logic behind telling a computer when to bet, when to go all in, when to bluff, when to fold, when to check, when to post SB, when to post BB, etc...poker itself is easy enough to program for a network game but when it has to be a computer player unless you want one that always bets based on the strength of hand is really a challenge...
So that being said is there any softwhere out there that has truely tackled this challenge or is texas hold em religated to the multiplayer game just for the human aspect?

statisitcs and probabilty. do lots of research to figure out the probability a hand is based on cards on the table and in hand (like the percentages on ESPN). single player would be boring though (tell your boss that, lol). compputer would win all the time

 

[mdchesne]

Originally posted by: Drakkon

Originally posted by: kamper
Yes. They're called bots and they are a serious problem for online poker services. I'm not joking.

On another note, what kind of job do you have? I'm not sure I'd like to work somewhere where the boss suggests such a thing because you don't have much to do

I know about bots...the ones i have scene in rooms (there pretty easy to pick out) are the ones that are going on pretty crappy logic like they will only bet when their winning % is above 90%,no bluffing,and either are folding every hand for a good one or going all in on every hand just to grab pots. I don't consider that to be the true logic behind the game...I'd liek to see something like the old chessmaster where theres a DB of 1000's of games and based on what guys did in those games chips put in or folded and bluffing was invovled.

Job is a programmer, we're just kinda in-between projects right now so in down time we come up with funky little projects like these to work on to pass the time. He doesn't suggest it as something to get done with or even bring to fruition necessarily, more so it was jsut a joke that once we started talking about seemed like an interesting challenge...

but unless chess, poker is based more on luck and catching pokerfaces than skill. You can smile and giggle all you want in chess because you know what's going to happen next, your opponent knows becuase he sees the board, and nothing he can do will stop it. So even if you had a database of 10,000,000 poker games, it'd be equivalent to having the results from 10,000,000 rolls of a die...meaning nothing to a logic computer
*sorry for the doublepost*