Reply to thread

Message: [QUOTE="hipshot55, post: 1107763, member: 48031"] Here is an interesting and reasonably current (13 November, 2008)article from New Scientist regarding the Polaris "bot" specifically and bots in general, including thoughts from developers of the Polaris program. [URL]http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026826.000-poker-bots-raise-the-stakes-for-human-players.html[/URL] One excerpt regarding computational power stands out: "The larger the number of possible states in a game, the more memory a computer needs to run its calculations. In 2005 the Alberta group developed new algorithms capable of handling 10 billion game states, up from the previous best of 100 million. The latest algorithms can handle 1000 billion states. But even heads-up, limit hold 'em has around a billion billion (10 to the 18th power; i.e. 10 followed by [B]18[/B] zeroes) permutations." I would ask where the average bot user might access something with the kind of computational power of the IBM Roadrunner [URL]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Roadrunner[/URL] a one of a kind supercomputer located at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico which currently is the world's fastest computer AND access to the Polaris Program, which I assume the University of Alberta isn't selling on eBay, as it took them [B][U]16 years[/U][/B] to develop it. A Google search is maddening, as the term "poker bots" returns 483,000 hits and, of the first 30 (as far as I had the patience to go), the vast majority are either "reviews"; i.e. touts, outfits trying to sell you one, or, in at least one case, what appear to be programming instructions to build one (I have no idea, my programming "skills" are limited to one very dated class in BASIC; one elderly Pascal class; and one fairly recent class in Visual Basic), including the justification that "it will make you a better poker player".:eek: Are bots out there? Certainly. Are they as good as Crystal Blue insinuates without sources or references? I think not. Will they get there? Probably. But, to quote Michael Bowling, leader of the U of A Computer Poker Research Group, "It'll happen within my lifetime. It could be five years, or 50." I, for one, am not going to lose any sleep over it. :) [/QUOTE]

Verification

Search

Reply to thread

About CardsChat

Our Community

Our Site

Follow us