

6.912 - MIT Pokerbot Competition - rottencupcakes
http://pokerbots.mit.edu/

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sajithw
I'm one of the guys behind this. I realize it's MIT students only right now
(we have a special 1-month term in January with no classes for competitions
like this) but if there's enough interest we would love to hold an open
tournament in the next few months.

We're also looking at opening our scrimmage server up to the public this month
if there are enough people who want the intellectual fulfillment of competing
:)

Edit: Created a small mailing list. Feel free to sign up if you want to be
updated when we decide to launch an open tournament (towards the end of the
month, most likely).

<http://mitpokerbots.com/interest>

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dtran
Thanks for setting this up - it sounds really awesome. Could you set up a
mailing list or something where we can subscribe to updates?

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sajithw
Yep, on it right now. Will post the link in a few minutes.

Edit: It's up, see my above comment.

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jaekwon
Will we get a chance to compete against MIT students?

That's mostly what I'm interested in; I'll either get schooled by MIT, or
school MIT. Yes this is a counterchallenge. ;)

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dtran
Really interested to hear more about the details, especially the format - will
it be a single tournament or a cash game with thousands of hands? Since it's
all bots playing, I assume they'll play through enough hands/tables to
diminish/negate the role of luck.

Will the bots adopt to patterns in the other bots' playing styles? Most
interestingly, will a bot come out of this that can go head-to-head with the
likes of Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey and other poker pros? Most bots I've heard of in
online poker just follow a set of rules for what to do with certain hands in
different positions and scenarios. A bot that can adapt/pick up on betting
patterns from the other player (over the course of thousands or tens of
thousands of hands) would be really cool.

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heyitsnick
I would expect most competitors will attempt to design a simplified
GTO/balanced (un-exploitable) strategy, with some base assumptions what's
considered as "good poker". The only way I can see teams approaching a more
exploitive strategy is if the tournament was filled with lots of very weak
'house bots' with highly exploitive strategies (like the previous rock-
sissors-paper bot competion that was filled with lots of non-GTO house bots
that could be predicted and exploited).

No known bots have come close to playing competitively heads up or ring in
big-bet games (such as no-limit or PLO) above the micro/lowstakes. However
bots already exist that are very strong at limit heads up.

~~~
jaekwon
With enough number of hands played and space for storage of history it should
be possible to exploit each other, or at least the opportunity is there.

~~~
heyitsnick
Certainly possible, and teams can utilise off-the-shelf analytics tools to aid
in the analysis (if that's allowed); however using this information beyond
very simple adjustments (such as preflop) is very difficult. Also any
deviation from a balanced strategy will open up the bot to counter-
exploitation.

As I say if dummy players are in there (playing easily exploitable passive or
maniacal strategy) then I think there's good reason to implement an exploitive
strat; otherwise the effort probably won't have the payoff amongst other
static-strategy players.

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dev_zero
Another, potentially more relevant to HN MIT IAP this year is the web app
security Capture the Flag: <http://mitctf2011.wikispaces.com/IAP+Announcement>

