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Comment by product50 | Hacker News Reader

Honestly, this doesn't look to be a true test of who is better at poker. Poker is not like chess - a lot of emotions are involved in reading another players' cues (if he is touching his face, whether he is talking nervously, how quickly does he call all in etc.). Making all this computerized seems to take the spirit of poker away. It is like playing online poker which is an entirely different ball game vs. real poker.

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I'm not a great poker player, but I read a lot about them. And most great poker players say reading peoples emotions/cues/or tells isn't reliable or a big deal.

So in that sense , online poker is very similar to live poker, the strategy doesn't change very much

i'm very into poker. you're right about the tells but what is important is knowing the other players. you can tell what type of players and how aggressive or "soft" they tend to be. you know if they would tend to call or raise a weak hand in certain situations.. etc. it definitely matters

Well a human would know those players by playing against them or watching replays of their games, I am pretty sure AI can do the same and will have a better memory of what are the habits of each individual player it played against or saw their game replays.

Acting is a good strategy against weak opponents. I would never try to "Hollywood" against a good opponent, but then I'd never get involved in a big hand against one either.

Against a fish, yeah, I'll ham it up and they eat that stuff. If they're on the edge of a decision, some good acting can push them the direction you want.

I guess I'm agreeing with you -- a pro would never pay attention to my "tells".

Physical tells are almost entirely Hollywood nonsense. When a professional player talks about getting a read on someone, they are talking about probabilities combined with the opponent's position at the table and a history (even a short history) of that player's betting/play patterns.

This is not true at all. If you play online vs live then yes. But physical tells are absolutely still thing, and Im not talking the way you crack an oreo.

Not a poker expert, but I've seen videos of pro-poker players demonstrating their reading ability with random people picking cards.

> Physical tells are almost entirely Hollywood nonsense

That's true for most any level of serious player, but I see it often in casual games in peoples kitchens with casual players who don't play often or are just starting. Even I can't control myself sometimes when the adrenaline starts pumping. I'd rather say lack of self control is just one of the most amateur things you can do in poker, and what's nonsense is the idea that it's a meaningful aspect of any kind of serious poker game.

Those physical cues are such a small small part of poker. There's a reason the top players are all online players. Poker is a game of math first and foremost.

Why is it unfair? Both the human and computer players are unable to make reads on the other based on physical cues.

If it's unfair in any regard (and I disagree with GP that it's unfair on the merit of physical reads), it's that humans get fatigued and computers do not. Having played poker for stretches of 16+ hours I know that the number of mistakes I make late in the day drastically outnumber the ones I make when I am fresh. And breaks only do so much to counter this fatigue.

I'd have to say that playing poker for long stretches of time is at least as, and possibly more so, than grinding for 12-16 hours writing code.

Even still, it's a stretch to call it unfair. It is brains vs. AI, after all, and that will always be true of brains no matter the task - fatigue is a factor, and this is where AI will have important advantages in the future.

is at least as what?

At least as tiring (physically, mentally). Like my brain obviously was when I wrote that post :)

It's not that it's unfair, it's just a considerably different game than human vs. human poker. It would, however, be very interesting to see if the software can reveal exploitable tendencies in the players' behavior that even other top players would be unlikely to discover.

> It's not that it's unfair, it's just a considerably different game than human vs. human poker.

absolutely not, these players play online, there are no tells online

> It is like playing online poker which is an entirely different ball game vs. real poker.

These are online players. They're playing the game they are best at.

> Making all this computerized seems to take the spirit of poker away. It is like playing online poker which is an entirely different ball game vs. real poker.

Maybe, but it seems like impressive performance nonetheless.

Only bad players have readable tells.

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