

Texas Hold'em Experiment - slig
http://www.benjoffe.com/holdem

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lotharbot
Previous discussion on HN: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1132991>

At that time, he only had solutions for up to 5 players. I submitted the first
6-player solution [0], which is also the only constructed solution I have seen
(the others were found using brute force algorithms.)

[0] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1134906>

~~~
benjoffe
Thanks again for passing on that idea for the 6 player deck. The concept that
a repeating deck can be easily found was what helped find most of the higher
order decks.

edit: I'm not sure if brute force is the correct term (though I may be wrong),
it's kind of simulated annealing. The difference being I'm not checking all
possible decks, only the ones that appear promising.

~~~
lotharbot
I remember going back to the site a while after submitting my solution. I'd
been so happy that I'd given you the solution for the largest number of
players yet, feeling like I had made a real contribution, and was somewhat
disappointed to see that you'd surpassed it many times over. I am again
restored to happiness, knowing that my contribution played a part in those
solutions. Thanks for letting me know!

\---

Also, you are right; "brute force" appears to specifically refer to exhaustive
search methods. It was a poor word choice on my part.

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benjoffe
Hi I'm the author of that page. I also recently put up similar decks for
Omaha: <http://www.benjoffe.com/omaha> Feel free to ask questions.

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photon_off
Henceforth, these decks are called Joffe decks.

~~~
olegkikin
And it needs a wikipedia article.

~~~
patio11
No original research. We need to find a professor at Harvard or a NYT reporter
to bless it on dead tree first.

~~~
jholman
No Original Research means that Ben Joffe can't write the wikipedia article
about it.

The more general rule of Verifiability will be greatly aided by dead tree,
yes.

But even once that's accomplished, establishing Notability will be difficult,
I think. I guess if the Harvard professor writes it up, and then the NYT
reporter writes _that_ up, that might do it.

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jiganti
Interesting, but the practical use of such a deck is negligible. Winning hands
don't have an absolute value in poker, but are only worth the amount your
opponent values his own second-best hand.

I suppose the greatest benefit from this type of a rig would be the ability to
call off big bluffs, meaning that representing a weak hand in any circumstance
is optimal.

~~~
edanm
I wouldn't call this negligible. Sitting in an 8-player game where you _know
for sure_ you're going to win is a huge advantage. You can act meekly all the
way, which will almost surely drag at least one player in, and only bet
strongly at the end. In the hands of an experienced player, such a deck can
give a huge payoff.

It would be interesting to rerun the algorithm, looking for decks that give
_everyone_ a big hand, but a certain player the win. In other words, not just
look for any deck that matches the goals, but look for one which will cause a
lot more money to be bet.

~~~
stanleydrew
It is negligible. I am an experienced player, and I can't see how the limited
value of this in a real game compensates for the incredible downside of being
caught cheating.

Making money at (cash game, not tournament) poker doesn't have much to do with
your cards. To make money you have to convince another player with a second-
best hand to put money in the pot. In that sense it's all about the other
players' cards.

And in order to get a "huge payoff" your opponents must hold cards that
justify calling a huge bet. But almost none of the second-best hands in these
decks are anywhere near strong enough to justify committing any significant
amount of money to the pot.

Things get more interesting if in fact a deck can be found that gives multiple
players "big" hands. But that is a lot harder, and kind of subjective. For
instance, would you call a pot-sized raise on the river holding the 10 of
spades with four lower spades on the board? I know I wouldn't, even though a
flush is a "big" hand.

I guess ultimately it comes down to the fact that poker is a mostly
situational game. And one that is played out over the course of many hands.
Knowing that you will definitely win one hand during a session where you may
see 200 hands doesn't really do you much good.

That said, it is a cool party trick.

P.S. In a game with experienced players, acting meekly all the way and then
betting strongly at the end is a sure-fire way to get all but the top 5 or so
possible hands to fold.

~~~
mattmaroon
It is definitely not negligible. Slow playing is a valid strategy even against
great players. If all but the top 5 hands or so fold every time you slow play,
you're not playing against good players (experienced != good when it comes to
poker) and you should just start slow playing and stealing every pot. Then
when they figure it out, don't do it again until you get a monster. Most of
abusing amateurs is simply doing this, exploiting a weakness until they
realize it, then doing the opposite. By the time it stops working you're ready
to go.

Regardless, presumably you'd have to memorize this order of the deck in order
to stack it that way, thus you could look at your hand and determine the
opponent's hand and what the board would be. You could play accordingly. It's
easy to make a lot of money at poker when you know what all the cards are.

On the other hand, I've never seen a game for significant stakes where the
players were dealt, and I've sure never known anyone good enough to take a
deck and sort it into a specific 52 card pattern without being noticed.

~~~
stanleydrew
We can debate this all day probably, but slow-playing is not a valid strategy
if you actually want to make money. By not betting in early rounds you are
giving up a lot of value in the hand. And more importantly you are not setting
the appropriate price for other players to continue in the hand. Very few
hands that are best on the flop are unbeatable on the river. Unless you can
put your opponent on a very tight range of hands, it's not a good idea to
slow-play, and I rarely do it. I've had much better success just betting for
value.

~~~
mattmaroon
You're simply wrong. It's a valid strategy in the right context. Almost all
strategies are.

Don't get me wrong, you're generally correct, it's generally better not to
slowplay, but it's still a valuable tool in your arsenal.

~~~
stanleydrew
Yes you are correct that strategy depends on context. My contention is that
even when you think the context is appropriate for slow-playing, you are
probably wrong.

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yosho
kinda scary knowing this...

I guess people should start implementing dual cuts or something. Or maybe
another way to alter the deck by a 2nd player that makes it incredibly hard to
cheat.

~~~
hugh3
It's been a while since I played poker, but surely to do this you'd have to
shuffle an out-of-order deck into the correct order while in public view? That
sounds like enough to make it "incredibly hard to cheat".

~~~
slig
I think that it's called "cold deck" because the trick is to replace the
playing deck with another one, that was perviously "prepared" into some
specific permutation.

~~~
dstorrs
Exactly. The term comes from the way you spot the switch -- cards that have
been being handled a lot warm up in the players' hands. If you touch the deck
and it feels cool (i.e., it is room temperature), that means it just got
introduced to play.

~~~
jules
Or it's warm because somebody just took it out of his pocket ;)

