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Re:DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence In Heads-U... by gdulli on Thursday March 16, 2017 @12:58PM (#13886629)
Heads-up is a contrivedly simple scenario compared to solving poker in general. There have been bots for a long time that have co-existed with real players, and we're likely not close to a scenario where bots can reliably beat real players in general for real world scenarios.

However, in theory even a break-even bot could be a gold mine because it can earn loyalty points. That's how it was the last time I was playing online, I don't know if loyalty programs still work the way they used to. Of those programs would just go away if abused enough.

Re:DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence In Heads-U... by Tenoke on Thursday March 16, 2017 @04:34PM (#13888918)
Loyalty points are paid out of (and lower than) the rake, so the bot still needs to be better than break even.
Re:DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence In Heads-U... by alasdair_ on Thursday March 16, 2017 @05:58PM (#13889583)
Online poker has the concept of "bonus whoring" where one takes advantage of various loss-leader promotions offered by different sites.

A typical promotion would be offering a 20% bonus on a $1000 deposit, with the caveat that you must play in, say, 1000 raked games before cashing out. It's possible to play in games where the total expected rake if the user breaks even is, say, $100, leaving $100 profit.

Re:DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence In Heads-U... by backpropaganda on Thursday March 16, 2017 @06:11PM (#13889670)
Why do you say we're not close to solving Poker in real-world scenarios? The multiplayer version is likely to be harder, but is it so hard, that it'll take decades more?
Re:DeepStack: Expert-Level Artificial Intelligence In Heads-U... by xapata on Friday March 17, 2017 @12:19AM (#13891461)
Depends what you're trying to achieve. If it's a bot that beats most humans, that probably already can be done. If it's a bot that earns more from a cash ring game than the world's best would against all levels of players...

It took many years for a computer to bridge the gap between better at chess than almost all humans and better than the best human.