Robotics Reference
In-Depth Information
The earliest research into computer Poker was conducted by Nicholas
Findler, using Five-Card Draw Poker
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as his model. This is the form of
Poker that was popular in the Wild West and played in many Western
movies, though its popularity has been severely diminished with the ad-
vent of the various forms of stud Poker such as Seven-Card Stud, Omaha
and Texas Hold'em.
Findler's Poker research spanned almost two decades and was in-
tended as a study into decision-making under circumstances of uncer-
tainty and risk, other examples of which are the formulation of economic
policies, business management, political campaigning and military strat-
egy. His approach was based on computer learning and employed a col-
lection of simple heuristics combined with the results of some Monte
Carlo simulation experiments. Although Findler was able to demon-
strate that delicate judgemental decisions can be automated, his program
was given only very limited opportunities for testing against experienced
human players.
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The University of Alberta Poker Project
Computer Poker made no serious progress until 1991, when Darse
Billings planned to write a Poker-playing program for his master's degree
at the University of Alberta. But although he wrote many of the compo-
nents he did not build a complete Poker-playing program. Instead, his
MSc dissertation was a review of the literature, with little information
about how to implement his own ideas.
On completing his degree Billings quit university life to become a
professional Poker player but, as time passed, Billings' interest in play-
ing Poker for a living day-in-day-out waned, while at the same time his
enthusiasm for building a real program grew. So in September 1999
Billings agreed to return to the university as a full-time PhD student,
enabling the games group to start upgrading a Poker project that had al-
ready started, with the ambitious goal of creating the world's best Poker
player. In addition to Billings and Jonathan Schaeffer, the Poker group
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In Draw Poker, following the deal of five cards to each player there is a round of betting, after
which all those players remaining in the pot may change any number of their cards, replacing them
with fresh cards drawn from the deck in an attempt to improve their hands. There is another round
of betting and then the player holding the best hand wins all the money in the pot.
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In the late 1970s “
Omni
magazine invited a few very good (excellent?) Poker players plus
celebrities like Isaac Asimov to New York City to play against some of our programs and against
otherhumanplayers.Guesswhichplayerwonmostofthetime?Oneofthelearningstrategies....”
(Nicholas Findler, personal communication.)
