If you’re truly smart, truly rational, and with the goal function you describe in your post, an obvious answer is to play poker on the internet. But beware: if it turns out you’re not actually as rational as most of us on Less Wrong think we are, it probably won’t work out.
Is poker really doable? I was under the impression that amateurs were being driven out and even professionals were having difficulty dealing with poker bots and collusion.
I hear that everywhere too. It’s a selection effect: most of the population aren’t smart and rational enough to be long-term winning players and it’s these people you hear complaining, while the good players go on quietly winning.
It’s definitely true that the games are getting tougher every year, because the community is learning to play better, so the threshold of ability you need to be a winning player is constantly increasing. But it’s not that high yet.
Now let’s talk about your two bugbears, bots and collusion.
1. Bots
You never ever have to worry about bots. The goal in poker is to seek out and play against bad players, while tolerating the presence of good players. It’s completely irrelevant whether these players are controlled by humans, machines, or some combination. (In practice, except possibly for heads-up limit hold’em, good players are still better than the best bots published in the academic literature anyway.)
2. Collusion
This is something you have to worry about, but in practice it’s not that big a deal, especially if you play at low limits, where it’s not going to be worth the bother for competent players to collude. There have been only a handful of times when I’ve suspected collusion online, in which case, the obvious response was to stop playing against those players. Sometimes collusion can be detected statistically, but if some collusion does go undetected, as long as you’re winning, what does it matter?
(In practice, except possibly for heads-up limit hold’em, good players are still better than the best bots published in the academic literature anyway.)
This is an interesting observation, but probably not that surprising: if you had a superior poker bot that was consistently profitable, why on earth would you publish it?
Generalizing, if someone working at a bank or hedge fund developed a superior theory of economics, and that theory could be used to make money through trading, why would they tell anyone else about it? Once the knowledge became public, it would no longer be profitable.
This made me think of a sports gambling database and strategy set that I read about in an ESPN magazine at a barber shop. I don’t remember the specifics but I recall that the database was shared by invitation only and had an intentional “barrier to entry” level buy in, which seemed high to me. The article claimed the database was in use by only 9 professional gamblers. I’d like to see some performance data on their bets.
If someone wants to do it, I btw could offer useful advice, including almost-finished algorithms on how the bot could play profitably.
Haven’t done it myself, but have looked into it. Stopped short of doing the boring stuff of coding some stuff up (I don’t really do programming), and of course there’s also the ethical question of whether I want to screw over pokersites. But it certainly can be done, and I think I’ve already done the parts that could be hard (mostly, coming up with a winning play style that is sufficiently algorithmic).
(BTW, even good bots currently don’t beat good or even mediocre players in most poker variations, but bots can make money playing against bad players, which are abundant.)
I think I’ve already done the parts that could be hard (mostly, coming up with a winning play style that is sufficiently algorithmic).
Have you checked with other people about what they think is hard? Why don’t you think it’s hard to evade detection, by the opponents, the resident software, and the server? (ETA: and were you looking into collusion? do you worry about the signature there?)
I have talked with people who are currently running bots. Most pokersites btw don’t actually really even bother much to detect bots, since driving them out isn’t in their interest unless human players start complaining.
I’m probably not going to publicly comment more than this on this topic.
Online poker has recently been getting tougher every year, but it’s not at all certain that this’ll continue.
There could actually be a significant softening period coming up. Especially because the U.S. is moving towards dropping certain legislation, leading to a renewed explosion of U.S. players. Asia could also see a poker boom in the near future.
In general, in recent years almost every bad thing that could conceivably happen to online poker has happened, and it still hasn’t actually been very bad, with the industry maintaining growth. It’s difficult for the amount of (non-difficult) difficulties to not drop.
There is some truth to the fact that online poker is getting tougher, but it is definitely exaggerated. I can assure you that it is still beatable and very profitable by competent players.
Also, don’t forget the option of playing live poker. With a little training and practice, I would bet that most readers of this blog (who aren’t prone to emotional instability, aka “tilt”) would easily dominate at least the low-stakes games.
I’d have to lie about my age, no? Also, doesn’t everyone just use software databases that tell them the odds for every hand? Or is that less common than I’d thought?
Gambling online for money is NOT illegal in most states. What’s explicitly illegal is for US banks/financial institutions to perform transactions with online gambling companies.
Most people use databases and heads-up displays, but to calculate and present statistics about your own and your opponents’ play, not to calculate odds (calculating odds is easy). I like Poker Tracker.
This is actually something I’ve considered—I like the game, and I feel like I have the right kind of gray matter to think about it statistically. But I know I’m not currently anywhere near a level where putting real money on it would be a good idea. Any suggestions of excellent learning resources?
Read some of the books published by Two Plus Two for solid beginner information that’s mostly a little out of date; then sign up at a video training site (I like Deuces Cracked) for up-to-date information; finally go, e.g., here and accept one of the offers where they give you free money to play with and then use their money to practice at 1 cent/2 cent games.
Also, maybe ask this question at the Two Plus Two forums for a better response.
Yeah, Two Plus Two is a good source of advice on everything poker-related. People can also email me if they wish, I make my money by playing poker.
And when choosing a rakeback site (you do need one), feel free to support a fellow LWer and SIAI-supporter by choosing mine :)
(It’s actually kind-of half-finished; I haven’t really started to promote it, and haven’t polished the content. But it does work.)
EDIT: One of the ways in which that site of mine is “unfinished”, is that it has a marketing attitude to a degree. I built it based on a template that has that attitude, and haven’t yet decided whether I’ll go along with that attitude or modify it to be fully trustworthy in the sense that marketing language isn’t.
So to a degree, take what you can currently read there with a grain of salt. (You can email me for fully honest answers without a marketing attitude, and as mentioned, Two Plus Two forums are good.)
Rakeback is when a poker site gives you back part of what they take as commission from most pots you play. So signing up to a poker site through a rakeback site is like signing up with a discount.
Creating your own rakeback site is perhaps the best option if you bother to do it. The cut that the rakeback sites receive isn’t very large, though, so it’s not particularly common to bother to do this.
I’m guessing it’s best to play hold ‘em ’cuz that’s where the stupidest people are at? Or will I find all this out by reading the material referenced in the thread? (I’ve read a few poker books but it sounds as if there’s internet-specific strategies I need to know about.)
You will find anything and everything out by asking at Two Plus Two forums (or browsing what beginner resources are already available there).
My guess is that no limit hold ’em is indeed still the best option, but some might make a case for pot-limit omaha. At least if one likes that variation more.
I agree, start with no limit hold’em because there’s an awful lot of good learning material about it and the games at low limits are pretty good, but at some point consider switching to pot limit omaha.
Hmm, thank you. At this moment I have neither as much money nor as much attention available as I think doing this right would require, but it’s good to have leads for when that changes.
If you’re truly smart, truly rational, and with the goal function you describe in your post, an obvious answer is to play poker on the internet. But beware: if it turns out you’re not actually as rational as most of us on Less Wrong think we are, it probably won’t work out.
Is poker really doable? I was under the impression that amateurs were being driven out and even professionals were having difficulty dealing with poker bots and collusion.
I hear that everywhere too. It’s a selection effect: most of the population aren’t smart and rational enough to be long-term winning players and it’s these people you hear complaining, while the good players go on quietly winning.
It’s definitely true that the games are getting tougher every year, because the community is learning to play better, so the threshold of ability you need to be a winning player is constantly increasing. But it’s not that high yet.
Now let’s talk about your two bugbears, bots and collusion.
1. Bots
You never ever have to worry about bots. The goal in poker is to seek out and play against bad players, while tolerating the presence of good players. It’s completely irrelevant whether these players are controlled by humans, machines, or some combination. (In practice, except possibly for heads-up limit hold’em, good players are still better than the best bots published in the academic literature anyway.)
2. Collusion
This is something you have to worry about, but in practice it’s not that big a deal, especially if you play at low limits, where it’s not going to be worth the bother for competent players to collude. There have been only a handful of times when I’ve suspected collusion online, in which case, the obvious response was to stop playing against those players. Sometimes collusion can be detected statistically, but if some collusion does go undetected, as long as you’re winning, what does it matter?
This is an interesting observation, but probably not that surprising: if you had a superior poker bot that was consistently profitable, why on earth would you publish it?
Generalizing, if someone working at a bank or hedge fund developed a superior theory of economics, and that theory could be used to make money through trading, why would they tell anyone else about it? Once the knowledge became public, it would no longer be profitable.
This is the evil corollary of the Efficient Markets Hypothesis (that all publicly available information is instantly incorporated into market prices).
This made me think of a sports gambling database and strategy set that I read about in an ESPN magazine at a barber shop. I don’t remember the specifics but I recall that the database was shared by invitation only and had an intentional “barrier to entry” level buy in, which seemed high to me. The article claimed the database was in use by only 9 professional gamblers. I’d like to see some performance data on their bets.
Isn’t the obvious strategy then to create a set of colluding bots, and try to avoid detection?
Go ahead! But it’s hard.
If someone wants to do it, I btw could offer useful advice, including almost-finished algorithms on how the bot could play profitably.
Haven’t done it myself, but have looked into it. Stopped short of doing the boring stuff of coding some stuff up (I don’t really do programming), and of course there’s also the ethical question of whether I want to screw over pokersites. But it certainly can be done, and I think I’ve already done the parts that could be hard (mostly, coming up with a winning play style that is sufficiently algorithmic).
(BTW, even good bots currently don’t beat good or even mediocre players in most poker variations, but bots can make money playing against bad players, which are abundant.)
Have you checked with other people about what they think is hard?
Why don’t you think it’s hard to evade detection, by the opponents, the resident software, and the server? (ETA: and were you looking into collusion? do you worry about the signature there?)
I have talked with people who are currently running bots. Most pokersites btw don’t actually really even bother much to detect bots, since driving them out isn’t in their interest unless human players start complaining.
I’m probably not going to publicly comment more than this on this topic.
Online poker has recently been getting tougher every year, but it’s not at all certain that this’ll continue.
There could actually be a significant softening period coming up. Especially because the U.S. is moving towards dropping certain legislation, leading to a renewed explosion of U.S. players. Asia could also see a poker boom in the near future.
In general, in recent years almost every bad thing that could conceivably happen to online poker has happened, and it still hasn’t actually been very bad, with the industry maintaining growth. It’s difficult for the amount of (non-difficult) difficulties to not drop.
There is some truth to the fact that online poker is getting tougher, but it is definitely exaggerated. I can assure you that it is still beatable and very profitable by competent players.
Also, don’t forget the option of playing live poker. With a little training and practice, I would bet that most readers of this blog (who aren’t prone to emotional instability, aka “tilt”) would easily dominate at least the low-stakes games.
I’d have to lie about my age, no? Also, doesn’t everyone just use software databases that tell them the odds for every hand? Or is that less common than I’d thought?
Gambling online for money is illegal anyway in the US. Lying about your age isn’t such a stretch.
Gambling online for money is NOT illegal in most states. What’s explicitly illegal is for US banks/financial institutions to perform transactions with online gambling companies.
I think most online sites are 18+.
Most people use databases and heads-up displays, but to calculate and present statistics about your own and your opponents’ play, not to calculate odds (calculating odds is easy). I like Poker Tracker.
This is actually something I’ve considered—I like the game, and I feel like I have the right kind of gray matter to think about it statistically. But I know I’m not currently anywhere near a level where putting real money on it would be a good idea. Any suggestions of excellent learning resources?
Read some of the books published by Two Plus Two for solid beginner information that’s mostly a little out of date; then sign up at a video training site (I like Deuces Cracked) for up-to-date information; finally go, e.g., here and accept one of the offers where they give you free money to play with and then use their money to practice at 1 cent/2 cent games.
Also, maybe ask this question at the Two Plus Two forums for a better response.
Yeah, Two Plus Two is a good source of advice on everything poker-related. People can also email me if they wish, I make my money by playing poker.
And when choosing a rakeback site (you do need one), feel free to support a fellow LWer and SIAI-supporter by choosing mine :)
(It’s actually kind-of half-finished; I haven’t really started to promote it, and haven’t polished the content. But it does work.)
EDIT: One of the ways in which that site of mine is “unfinished”, is that it has a marketing attitude to a degree. I built it based on a template that has that attitude, and haven’t yet decided whether I’ll go along with that attitude or modify it to be fully trustworthy in the sense that marketing language isn’t.
So to a degree, take what you can currently read there with a grain of salt. (You can email me for fully honest answers without a marketing attitude, and as mentioned, Two Plus Two forums are good.)
What is a rakeback site? And if it involves money going to it why would I not just create my own?
Rakeback is when a poker site gives you back part of what they take as commission from most pots you play. So signing up to a poker site through a rakeback site is like signing up with a discount.
Creating your own rakeback site is perhaps the best option if you bother to do it. The cut that the rakeback sites receive isn’t very large, though, so it’s not particularly common to bother to do this.
I’m guessing it’s best to play hold ‘em ’cuz that’s where the stupidest people are at? Or will I find all this out by reading the material referenced in the thread? (I’ve read a few poker books but it sounds as if there’s internet-specific strategies I need to know about.)
You will find anything and everything out by asking at Two Plus Two forums (or browsing what beginner resources are already available there).
My guess is that no limit hold ’em is indeed still the best option, but some might make a case for pot-limit omaha. At least if one likes that variation more.
I agree, start with no limit hold’em because there’s an awful lot of good learning material about it and the games at low limits are pretty good, but at some point consider switching to pot limit omaha.
Hmm, thank you. At this moment I have neither as much money nor as much attention available as I think doing this right would require, but it’s good to have leads for when that changes.