colonel@gloria.UUCP (George Sicherman) (10/06/84)
> One son, after getting his > statistics Ph.D. at 20 or so, claims to have draw poker figured out. > Bluffing is dealt with by simple probability theory. As I remember, > "Winning Poker Systems" is one of those "just-memorize-the-equivalent-of- > ten-phone-numbers-for-instant-riches" books. He worked his way through school > with funds won in Emeryville poker parlors. Not too shabby, but not too > fuzzy, either ... When I was working with the SUNY-Buffalo POKER GROUP, we managed to verify some of N. Zadeh's tables with hard statistics. Anybody who's interested can find some of our results in Bramer's anthology _Computer Game-Playing: Theory and Practice_ (1983). -- Col. G. L. Sicherman ...seismo!rochester!rocksanne!rocksvax!sunybcs!gloria!colonel
robison@eosp1.UUCP (Tobias D. Robison) (10/09/84)
I disagree that poker bluffing can be reduced to probability tables unless one of the following is true: - There are limits on the betting such that you can always decide before anteing whether you will have enough money to stay in the pot to the end. - OR, you have an infinite amount of money. In the more normal case that pots can get out of hand (especially when there is no limit), you cannot usefully reduce bluffing to an exercise in probability. To put it simply, you cannot guarantee that therer will be enough of the really large pots to get a statistically signifigant break from the exercise of random alternatives. If your probability edge gives you a consistent advantage of 5 cents on every $10 pot, but the evening also includes one $2,000 pot, your success for the evening will really depend upon how you do in that one pot. Under the circumstances, you will do better if you know how to read other players, and can sometimes vary from making random decisions. There are psychological advantages and disadvantages to be gained from persuading the other players that you are bluffing based strictly upon random probabilities. I think you could make more money in the long run if you didn't always convince people of this, but simply reserved the potential, and and the procedure, as strategical weapons. - Toby Robison (not Robinson!) allegra!eosp1!robison or: decvax!ittvax!eosp1!robison or (emergency): princeton!eosp1!robison