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Comment by uptown | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised no poker site has launched a site that specifically geared towards algorithmic players. Seems like the kind of thing that might have a niche.

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It seems so. However, notice that the average poker bot programmer is a 20-something, highly intelligent hacker and that most of them don't have all that much money. Why do they write poker bots? (a) to make money. (b) to beat the system. (c) boredom.

(a) doesn't work when all the other players are also good poker bots. Botting lives from the simple fact that most poker players are shit. (b) also doesn't apply, for obvious reasons. So, now you are left with the (c)s. Those will leave when they find something more interesting.

Seemed to be a good idea. Well, it's probably not.

(PS: There are poker bot competitions. The bigger ones have university teams competing, the smaller ones (the ones I found via Google) usually don't get enough entrants.)

I guess the stock market is the natural alternative for applying similar skills in a much bigger game.

"Good" players, including bot writers want, and need, very bad players in the games. The games need players who either don't know or don't care that they're making sub-optimal plays. That's what makes the money flow in poker. If everyone played perfectly, then only the house would win.

Betfair allows (i.e has a pubic API) algo players for some of their games, not sure if it covers their Poker site though.

Huh. I'm reading over the docs right now, and while I don't see anything about actually playing the game, they expose an interface for betting on hands. That's pretty interesting.

http://www.computerpokercompetition.org/

> At its heart, the Annual Computer Poker Competition aims to benefit artificial intelligence by promoting, aiding, and evaluating research in the challenging problems presented by the wide variety of poker games.

i actually tried. i couldn't get enough interested parties and had a cofounder that wasn't very motivated.

it would take your game history logs, analyze them, and let you know where your most common mistakes were based on context (i.e., ICM for SNGs)

i still think its a good idea, for various reasons, i've just moved on.

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