
Isildur1 and the week that changed online poker - jskopek
http://blogs.cardrunners.com/BLAG/an-unstoppable-force-meets-1258491260
======
messel
I don't play cards. Without a doubt, I loved this story and description.

"Durrrr can be dumb. Sometimes he makes mistakes, he tilts, he makes clearly
–EV calls and he sticks huge stacks in with rags against the nuts over and
over again. Durrrr is often reckless, sometimes emotional, and even at times
irrational. Durrrr is fallible. He is imperfect. And yet, somehow he wins. He
outplays, he outmaneuvers, and outthinks. He reached the top. He beat
everyone. He became the king. He symbolizes the human in all of us, and he
bears testament that one does not need to be perfect, unphaseable, untiltable
in order to become great"

------
ghshephard
Am I the only person who found that article so jargon rich to be almost
unreadable? I wonder if people who hear me blathering on about IPsec Transport
sessions and RFC 2893 tunnels have the same experience.

~~~
IsaacL
It was written for the poker community, not a general audience. As with any
complex field, you need a specialized vocabulary to communicate effectively.

Further to the other reply:

\- the rail/railbirds - observers to an online poker match

\- hyperaggro - a very aggressive player (bets and raises a lot), such as
Isildur

\- n-tabling - playing multiple online poker games simultaneously.

\- HU - heads-up, a two player poker game, such as the one between Isildur and
Tom "Durrr" Dwan

\- degen - dengenerate, someone who takes too many risks and plays at stakes
higher than they can afford

Rereading the article, I can see what you mean. From the outside it can look
like all the jargon is just to exclude outsiders, but it really is needed to
communicate effectively.

Ah, this article makes me want to go back to poker...

------
pbhjpbhj
It sounded to me like he was baiting them, hustling like a pool shark. He'd
make a win, then lose most of it to give the apparently superior player the
taste of success and make them risk the big money then he took them for it.
Rinse, repeat.

The bit where the writer said Isildur went "brb" and came back and won from
then made me _think_ he brought some other force into play, either a
companion, a hack or a bot.

~~~
aidanf
More likely he just took a break to calm himself and get his mind right.

Poker is intensely psychologically draining and the biggest enemy of winning
poker players is tilt. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilt_%28poker%29>

Most good players will constantly asses their play for signs of tilt and when
they spot it, stop and take steps to address it before continuing.

~~~
daeken
Learning to recognize when I'm going on tilt has been one of the most
important processes in my becoming a better poker player. I found that
underplays threw me off my game far more than anything else, so I've worked
hard to take my chances when I get them, and quickly move past it when I
don't. It wasn't until I lost about $10 (mind you, my bankroll was $20) after
getting nothing out of a straight flush that I realized how much such things
affected me, and took steps to address it.

Obviously there's a huge difference between $10 and a few hundred thousand
dollars, but the same core concepts apply. It's difficult for people who
haven't played a decent bit of poker (even at very low stakes) to understand
how psychologically draining it can be, and how much the player's frame of
mind affects the game.

------
rms
I was disappointed there wasn't a punchline about Isildur1 being a bot. Heads
up poker is much easier for a computer to play than bigger games. Have the top
poker players played against the top bots recently?

~~~
sanswork
Yes there is an annual tournament with the University of Alberta
group(<http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/>) who is recognized as pretty much the
leaders in the field. That said they only play limit I believe since their NL
bots aren't yet near good enough to be profitable against the top pros.

~~~
rms
I would think a million dollars worth of research would be enough to duplicate
what the University of Alberta group has achieved. Then you could hire some
low-wage people to sit and play limit-holdem online with your unbeatable bot.

I'd be kind of surprised if an elite poker player hasn't already done this.

~~~
swolchok
No way. The members page is currently broken, but
[http://web.archive.org/web/20080805024322/http://poker.cs.ua...](http://web.archive.org/web/20080805024322/http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/)
says they have four profs, two consultants, an adjunct researcher, 5 graduate
students, and 3 programmer analysts. I can only speak to the costs at the
University of Michigan, which I attend, but let's assume they're similar at
Alberta. Professors' salaries are around $100k and graduate students cost
~~$50k-$60k before candidacy and probably ~$25k-$30k after. That's at least a
half-million dollars per year for the professors and graduate students alone;
add the programmer analysts and the consultants and you'll be hard-pressed to
get much more than a year of work on the project for your million bucks.

~~~
rms
I guess I was thinking that because the research has already been done and
they have released the general ideas if not anything resembling an
implementation, someone else could duplicate the research faster and cheaper.

If not one million, the same order of magnitude. Conservatively $4MM to do it
in two years?

~~~
nas
Yeah, I think it's possible (although unlikely) for someone to be able to
privately build an AI that can compete at the pro level. As you say, they
would have access to all the papers published by AI researchers.

There is always a chance that someone has come up with a new approach. For
example, the introduction of Monte Carlo search trees
<http://senseis.xmp.net/?MonteCarlo> to computer was hugely successful. An AI
on a 9x9 board can now compete at the Dan level. Obviously that's a long way
from top-level 19x19 strength but it does show there is always room for a
completely new approach.

------
troymc
Because this story was linked-to from HN, I read the article expecting the
punch line would be that Isildur1 is software (or maybe a human+software
team). I know there's a group at the University of Alberta that's been working
on poker-playing software for some time, and no doubt there are other such
groups. I don't know enough about online poker to know if there are mechanisms
to prevent the use of software. It seems to me it would be hard to tell.

~~~
tom_b
My best guess is that most online players are now "augmented," using at least
PokerTracker (hands played databases) with HUDs (heads-up displays that
overlay the game window and provide some significant statistical info based on
mining hands and odds calculations without player input). I believe, based on
what I've read at 2+2 and other sites that even small limit games (say 25/50
cent limit hold'em) are mostly played by players with these tools.

I stopped playing at smaller games almost two years ago because I became
convinced I was playing more bots than people - in spite of the fact that I
was winning and continuing to build bankroll, I wasn't interested in entering
the arms race that I saw the software requiring.

The game sites have a strong incentive to not put in too many safeguards
against software automation - they take a small portion of each pot on each
hand at a table. The majority of players using software to augment their play
during a game are multi-tabling, thus more games/hands = more money for the
sites.

I had an interesting exchange with the support staff at one online site, where
I was arguing that the simplest thing they could do to discourage data mining
was to allow players to use another screen name during sessions as an option.
They shot me down pretty quickly.

Even though gathering statistically significant info about a specific opponent
requires a prohibitively large number of hands (more than 10K?), most people
on HN are highly aware of how we can build algorithms that classify data
pretty easily with limited info. By simply deciding that most players fall
into a relatively small set of classes, you can probably grab enough info to
be positive EV against a new opponent in a relatively small number of hands -
this is what you do as a player, but I really feel that adding a software tool
to do it tarnishes the game. It makes it a little like playing chess against
an opponent sitting there with a laptop with a chess playing program - really
the program is what you're playing The human opponent is really just a
complicated interface.

But I miss the game, it's a great way to stretch your brain differently than
hacking.

~~~
aidanf
Using statistical tracking software is pretty standard for any serious player.
It can help a lot playing full tables against 6 to 9 players as stats are used
to get an idea of how opponents play, what their ranges are etc.

However I think, these programs are less useful for HU play. When you have
only a single opponent and you are concentrating fully on their play your own
powers of observation will pick up reads more quickly and consistently than
the than the stat programs.

------
anigbrowl
Wow - that was really interesting, despite the jargon. After doing some
searches for background information I'm even more impressed. Not to mention
shocked by the fact that this top player who has just been knocked off his
throne is only 23. I feel poor now :)

------
bdr
One possibility is that Isildur analyzed the current standard of top-level
heads-up play and found out that the strategy was exploitable by, for example,
playing more aggressively in a lot of cases. If that's the case, standard play
will adapt.

~~~
vannevar
Or you could apply Occam's Razor and conclude that, in a game dominated by
chance he simply had a lucky run. There is always a lottery winner, it's just
that you can't predict who it will be. The early comments on Isildur's play
were that there was nothing special about him but that he was aggressive---
precisely the kind of player who would best leverage a run of luck.

------
maryrosecook
I've never played poker online, but I've played some with friends. For me, the
fun is in playing against people you can see because you can read their faces.
Could anyone explain how online poker is fun without this talking/visual
element?

~~~
jack7890
Poker is, at it's essence, a big math problem. You can win by by applying game
theory more effectively than your opponents.

Playing online lets you engage in a large, dynamic math game.

~~~
daeken
I agree in theory, but not so much in practice. You have people like Chris
Ferguson who approach it this way, and it _is_ what the game is at its core,
but it's not the way most players approach it.

While I understand the math (I got into playing poker seriously because of an
interest in botting -- I found the game more interesting than the
programming), I don't approach it from a game theory perspective whatsoever. I
run my outs and the pot odds in my head, think about how a win or a loss on a
hand will impact me, but I have to weigh that against my instincts and make a
decision. My instincts will typically win out.

Even online, you can get very successful reads on people, and you can control
the action by learning how the players respond. Because of the nature of
online poker -- many, many more hands than in real life, and many more players
-- I tend to believe you actually get more inside your opponents' heads
(compared to playing in real life), not less, as most people tend to assume.

To respond to the GP, I find online poker fun because it's challenging.
There's a constant stream of new opponents, each one with different
strategies. For me, it's fun in the same way reverse-engineering is; I have a
limited set of information and need to guess the next step before it's taken.
The quicker I can get inside the player's head, the quicker I can turn their
strategies around on them and either suck them out on my big hands or push
them off a small pot with a well-placed bluff.

~~~
jack7890
Fair enough, maybe I shouldn't have used the words "game theory" because, as
you point out, the challenge includes game theory but is broader than that.

I see poker as a giant optimization puzzle with a bunch of moving parts. I use
a number of math tools--and a few psychological tools--to beat that puzzle.

------
tarvaina
New development: Isildur loses most of the money he won on the previous four
weeks.

[http://www.highstakesdb.com/1343-isildur1-loses-
over-3m-to-a...](http://www.highstakesdb.com/1343-isildur1-loses-over-3m-to-
antonius-and-ivey.aspx)

Edit: See also [http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-
search/isil...](http://www.pokertableratings.com/fulltilt-player-
search/isildur1)

------
scotty79
Are there any means of knowing if your opponent is cheating in online poker
game?

How can you be sure if he is not supported by bot or if he hasn't some means
of influencing what cards are dealt or knowing what cards have been dealt to
you?

Is there some poker specific cryptographic tool for that or you must just
assume that system you are using to play is completely secure?

~~~
Devilboy
Unlike games like chess or backgammon there's currently no AI / bots that can
beat no limit holdem or omaha. The University of Alberta and others are
studying the game but it will be some years yet before we have a poker
equivalent of 'Deep Blue' beating the best players in the game.

The major poker sites are well know and trusted and have proved themselves
competent in preventing 'cheating' like what you describe. They're very good
at all things security, and you can even get a RSA keyfob to log into your
account much like some online banks.

~~~
scotty79
So basically you just trust that poker sites do not have backdoors? That's not
something I'd bet my money on.

~~~
hyperbovine
Congratulations, you win. In fact this has already happened as was the subject
of a 60 Minutes piece over a year ago:

[http://news.cnet.com/60-minutes-report-how-online-
gamblers-u...](http://news.cnet.com/60-minutes-report-how-online-gamblers-
unmasked-cheaters/)

I particularly enjoyed this quote:

    
    
      "This Grey Cat person was new. And at first, he seemed like a live one. He seemed terrible," Witteles remembers. "He seemed to play crazy. It seemed like he was giving his money away. Except the only thing was, he wasn't losing. He was playing in a style that was sure to lose, but he was killing the game day after day." 
    

Sound familiar anyone?

~~~
scotty79
It seems that discovery of this cheat was mostly due to the newbness of the
cheater.

If skilled player possessed backdoor access to poker system and used it
wisely, peeking in only from time to time when it's necessary and might go
unnoticed he'd be rather undetectable.

------
joblessjunkie
"He has cemented his name in the annals of online poker as one of the
strongest players of all time."

Really? After just one week of running good?

"Since the time I began writing this article, Isildur has lost 2.5M to Patrik
Antonius in PLO, cutting his winnings on FTP in half."

What a surprise. Cemented, indeed.

~~~
Devilboy
Up to last week Tom Dwan (durrrr) offered anyone a million dollars if they
could beat him over 50,000 hands of poker multi-table heads-up. The best in
the world lined up to play but durrrr seemed unbeatable. And in one week
Isildur1 destroyed him to the tune of $6 million. Even if Isildur goes broke
next week he'll always be the one to break the icon that was durrrr.

~~~
basugasubaku
This isn't very accurate. Antonius accepted durrrr's challenge in early 2009
and the 50K hands are just a little over halfway complete.

<http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/durrrr-vs-antonius>

The others lining up are still waiting.

I don't follow online hs poker that much, but I think durrrr is far from the
unbeatable icon the article portrays. He gets plenty of action online outside
of his challenge which suggests many do consider him beatable. Looking at the
highstakespokerdb.com stats, it appears he finished up around 6 million in
2008 and is now down nearly 6 million in 2009 (not all to Isildur,
presumably).

In turn, Isildur is down nearly 3 million in the past 24 hours alone (after
this article was published, which listed his total winnings as "well over
5M"). With variance like that it is way too early to tell how lasting the
effects of his successes this week will be.

~~~
Devilboy
The $6m is almost all to Isildur1.

~~~
basugasubaku
Does this mean before Isildur1 arrived he was just about breaking even for
2009?

In any case, my primary objection is that defeating durrr over two weeks does
not mean "He has cemented his name in the annals of online poker as one of the
strongest players of all time."

------
sailormoon
Absolutely fascinating.

Tell me - when they casually mention being down 250K or up 1.5M .. is that
actual money? Because if so, shit, I need to start playing poker ..

~~~
daeken
Yes, it is. However, this article only talks about some of the top players in
the game. The only millionaires from poker are the top tier, whereas 99%
(actually, significantly more) of players are _nowhere_ near that level.

Poker's a whole hell of a lot of fun, and it is possible to make money fairly
easily if you play smart, but making large sums of money takes time, patience,
and a whole lot of skill.

~~~
electromagnetic
Agreed, IMHO if you break even you're doing a hell of a lot better than 90% of
poker players out there.

Most poker players are doing it because they like the game, and they don't
intend to get any money back out of it. Just like the majority of people
walking onto the golf course on a weekend has no intention of getting back
their greens fee or the cost of their clubs.

As a poker player, golfer, or anyone with any hobby, the ability to regain
your investment is normally all it takes. The occasional win taking you above-
even is usually all it takes to put you in a great mood. I'm sure having $1M
sat on the table, the game is no longer fun as it sounds like extremely hard
work.

------
zackattack
I play a bit of poker casually, for fun and profit (PokerStars). Mostly $6
SNGs. What software do I need to get? I had no idea add-ons & tracking were so
prevalent ..

~~~
sanswork
Get something like tourny manager to manage your money and to watch overall
how your playing and stats.

Get something like SNGEGT, SNGWIZ, or SNGPT to run through hands after a
tournament to help you determine if your plays were really +EV. This will help
you make better decisions in the future when at the tables.

