Poker vs. Chess which game is more complex? - Page 6 - Poker Theory

pocketzeroes · 04-26-2012, 05:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobito

Also, who wants to write a program that beats people at poker? In the long term that's a money loser because it kills the game.

Actually, poker has gained quite a lot of traction academically. For example:
http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/publications.html

BigFish2010 · 04-26-2012, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RustyBrooks

No, these are not properties required for nash equilibriums. (Except that of course a NE for a given situation can be -EV.

It's vaguely true that NE doesn't care about "winning" strategies, in the sense that a NE is a strategy that can not be beaten, but is not necessarily one that will win. Some games have NEs that won't win against non-NE opponents, some do. All that's guaranteed is that it can't be beaten.

You are wrong, NE's can only exist when you have everything 'alike' and everyone participating in the game know what will follow from taking part in the game and playing it to maximize their return (or minimize their loses). Once you get any deviation from this the NE's begin to behave strange and you will see rents which can't exist in a NE since they destroy the games fundamentals.

Any argument that Poker in any way would be more complex of complicated then Chess is laughable. The only reason why poker hasn't been solved is that there is no real incentive to do so and even though you have a few kids playing around with scripts that lack all theoretical knowledge of what they are doing they manage to make winning bots while it took the time since computers were invented to reach a state in chess where you need a supercomputer that is designed against specific opponents to beat the game. There might have come a generic chess computer that can beat any opponent but I doubt this. Most chess computers like Deep Blue are designed to beat the world champ and not survive a chess tournament.

**RustyBrooks** · 04-26-2012, 09:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pocketzeroes

When I see the word "complexity", I think of something that can be objectively measured, and hence is not subjective, and hence is not related specifically to someone's personal judgment.

OK, what is the (single) objective measure of complexity? There has to be only one measure, otherwise choosing a measure from the available ones introduces subjectivity. There is only one measure of mass or distance for example (there are different units but they're all equivalent, 2 different units won't rank distances in different orders)

Montrealcorp · 04-26-2012, 12:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bobito

Chess is complicated combinatorially. On the other hand there exist formalizable heuristics for eliminating from consideration many of the moves possible at a given moment. Also at every moment each player has complete information about the opponent's possible future moves and past play. Computers can be made to play chess better than people because the combinatorial difficulties are surmountable and heuristic scoring of potential moves is quite viable. Chess has also been studied quite intensively in a formal way. A hundred years ago the chess champion Lasker was also a professional mathematician.

Poker is trivial combinatorially. At any given moment one can analyze the exact probabilities of the possible hands to come. The difficulty comes from the lack of information about what opponents hold, and about how they have played in the past and will play in the future (deceptive play has no analogue in chess). A Bayesian statistical approach is almost obligatory in assessing things like expected value, and plays cannot be considered in isolation (as they can be in chess), but rather must be considered in the context of thousands or millions of repetitions. Poker has not been studied intensively by serious academic professionals (e.g. mathematicians). From the point of view of a professional mathematician a book like Sklansky's is quite primitive (this is not meant as a criticism). For instance, there is not much explicit mention of variance and there is no attempt to formalize heuristics for guiding play. The literature on something like bluffing is surprisingly limited. There are related contexts in which a lot of useful formalism has been developed - the theory of auctions, for instance - but little serious effort to link them to gambling seems to have been made. The subjective nature of the assignment of probabilities in the presence of incomplete information is clearly an obstacle to programming poker. (Also, who wants to write a program that beats people at poker? In the long term that's a money loser because it kills the game.)

There is a big cultural difference between chess and poker. Chess is a socially acceptable thing, smart kids are guided towards it, Nabokov wrote a book of poems and chess problems, etc... It is part of "high" culture. Poker is gambling, occurs traditionally in casinos, cardrooms, and shadier places that children are shouted at for going near, etc... They attract different sorts of people. The sort of person who becomes a professional engineer, like the chess grandmaster working down the hall from me, is more likely to play chess than to play poker, and this may affect how they get studied, and who studies them. On the other hand, there is more money to be made in poker than in chess, and there may be more incentive to keep secret what one knows about how to play well.

I don't take too seriously any of what I just wrote, but they're some thoughts.

great post.

one thing that strike me has funny is when lot of people says poker and chess are opposite games, like u said a lot of mathematician like lasker,botvinik,etc did pretty well in chess cause their s a lot of geometrical concept AND with math,like in poker , u face a lot of problem in chess where u need to take an analatycal approach of the problems u see and try find a solution.

imo i see a lot of similarities in both games and its probably why math person can excel in both games since boht game require a lot of the same analatic,deduction qualities.

its just one use numbers and the other use chess pieces but the quality required in both game are the same, that is why math student usually are good in both games

RavingCatGurn · 04-26-2012, 12:35 PM

This is such an ambiguous question that will never have a definitive answer.

6471849653 · 05-13-2012, 08:18 AM

Analytical skill is not the word. Both games are as difficult on the aspect of making mistakes, both small and big, but chess is additionally more a game of luck as one can't see it all like one can in poker where the level of play one needs to achieve is also lower because of that and poker is super boring because of that.

dgiharris · 05-13-2012, 04:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RavingCatGurn

This is such an ambiguous question that will never have a definitive answer.

You know, I think there is a way we can scientifically answer this question while factoring in the ambiguity.

Here is what I would propose.

You do a simple survey. No bells or whistles.

You find 100 people who have at one time held a 1700+ rating in chess and these same 100 people are WINNING poker players and have the data to prove it (whether online or live). You ask these 100 people which game is more complex.

Being someone who fits both criteria above my vote is OVERWHELMING for Chess being more complex. Hands down AINEC.

This question is like asking someone which is the better place, Paris France or Tokyo Japan and the VAST majority of people answering the question have only been to one of the two places.

If you want an accurate answer, you need to really only ask people who have been to both places, and that applies to the Poker vs Chess argument imo.

buffyslayer1 · 05-13-2012, 04:29 PM

Chess is more complex. Not even sure how its a question as its so obvious.

Fwiw at my peak chess i was around 1950 elo (pretty average). I now play poker for a living and its nowhere near as difficult or as complex as chess

pocketzeroes · 05-13-2012, 09:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgiharris

You know, I think there is a way we can scientifically answer this question while factoring in the ambiguity.

Here is what I would propose.

You do a simple survey. No bells or whistles.

You find 100 people who have at one time held a 1700+ rating in chess and these same 100 people are WINNING poker players and have the data to prove it (whether online or live). You ask these 100 people which game is more complex.

Being someone who fits both criteria above my vote is OVERWHELMING for Chess being more complex. Hands down AINEC.

This question is like asking someone which is the better place, Paris France or Tokyo Japan and the VAST majority of people answering the question have only been to one of the two places.

If you want an accurate answer, you need to really only ask people who have been to both places, and that applies to the Poker vs Chess argument imo.

I am personally not a great chess player, but not horrible either. I have read some chess books and I played the game often growing up. If I happened to see a chessboard in a random friend's home and challenged them to a game, chances are I would win. But I would easily lose against most people who are serious about the game.

I enjoy chess, but never found that thinking about the game is very mentally stimulating. It's like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Once you learn how to solve a jigsaw puzzle, which happens at a very young age, all you can do to improve your skills is practice and get better at finding the correct piece more quickly. The same kind of thing goes for chess. Playing chess well is mostly a matter of learning some strategy tidbits (like evaluating piece values and knowing to "control the center" and "keep knights off the side"); and after that, memorizing a bunch of openings and learning all sorts of endgame scenarios. And that's about it - all that's left is practice; that is, getting good at chess is almost entirely about "finding the correct piece" quickly. Sure, maybe along the way you learn some new interesting opening variations or tactical maneuvers, but to me, the game just kind of lacks substance.

Poker on the other hand is extremely interesting to me. There is an endless amount of stuff to think about, though most of my thinking is when I'm *not* playing. I am constantly questioning and refining my strategies, trying to understand areas in which I am being exploited and ways in which I can better exploit other players. In addition, I'm very interested in much simplified versions of poker (like those discussed in "The Mathematics of Poker) and the solutions to these variants and how these solutions are applicable to real games when playing against exploitable opponents. In tournament play, we have to think about all sorts of lower-variance vs max-chip EV tradeoff spots. There really is an endless amount of stuff to think about. To me, poker is full of substance whereas chess just isn't. This alone makes me consider poker to be more complex than chess.

pocketzeroes · 05-13-2012, 09:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgiharris

You know, I think there is a way we can scientifically answer this question while factoring in the ambiguity.

Here is what I would propose.

You do a simple survey. No bells or whistles.

You find 100 people who have at one time held a 1700+ rating in chess and these same 100 people are WINNING poker players and have the data to prove it (whether online or live). You ask these 100 people which game is more complex.

Being someone who fits both criteria above my vote is OVERWHELMING for Chess being more complex. Hands down AINEC.

This question is like asking someone which is the better place, Paris France or Tokyo Japan and the VAST majority of people answering the question have only been to one of the two places.

If you want an accurate answer, you need to really only ask people who have been to both places, and that applies to the Poker vs Chess argument imo.

Back to what you've said... The problem with it is that, against the player pools at large, it is relatively easy to be a winning poker player as compared to chess. This isn't because poker is "less difficult" or "less complex" than chess; it's because many poker players have motivations that aren't strictly based on winning. Poker is both a complex thinking game and a gambling game. I could easily teach any half-intelligent person how to beat a "gambling" poker player (i.e., a "fish"). And because of this fact, I could easily teach any half-intelligent person how to beat pretty much any live low-stakes casino game, which always happen to be filled with fish.

Furthermore, poker is a game of risk. Very few poker players ever attempt to play anywhere near optimally, because even if they are strictly motivated to win, they will still naturally try to limit their own monetary risk.

It's easy to teach someone how to beat a live low stakes poker game. But can I easily teach an intelligent person how to maximally exploit those same games? Absolutely not; this takes a huge amount of experience to begin to get really good at... And to truly maximally exploit a poker game means to disregard risk. Pretty much nobody does this. Therefore, what happens, is good poker players often find the game to be both easy and dull. They don't think very much because they don't have to think much if they are simply concerned with beating the game rather than really maxing out their winrate. Good players seek easy games, the more mindless their decisions, the better. They generally play for monetary reward, not for the prestige of "being the best" as chess players do.

But when we think of poker in the same way as chess -- when we are thinking about optimal play rather than how to mindlessly beat bad opponents, then poker suddenly becomes an enormously complex, intricate, and interesting game.

Karganeth · 05-14-2012, 03:38 AM

Poker is undoubtedly the most complex of the two. Chess AIs can beat the top players easily. The same cannot be said for poker AIs. There's a lot more money to be made in making a good poker AI than a good chess AI too - chess isn't played for money online.

Karganeth · 05-14-2012, 03:48 AM

Chess has actually been partially solved for a common opening. King's Gambit has essentially been solved. It will be a very long time before anything poker related becomes solved.

WheelDraw1020 · 05-14-2012, 04:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karganeth

Chess has actually been partially solved for a common opening. King's Gambit has essentially been solved. It will be a very long time before anything poker related becomes solved.

I'm pretty sure there are some things that should probably be called at least poker related that have already been solved (I think Rhode Island Hold Em was solved for one). Depending on how much liberty you're taking with the word essentially here there's a decent chance you could say the say thing for HUHU or even just LHE.

MangoPort · 05-14-2012, 04:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karganeth

Poker is undoubtedly the most complex of the two. Chess AIs can beat the top players easily. The same cannot be said for poker AIs. There's a lot more money to be made in making a good poker AI than a good chess AI too - chess isn't played for money online.

That's because Poker has a HUGE random factor to it. Your argument works the opposite way.

WSOP Main Event is a perfect example. The quality of players obviously goes up as the final table approaches, but no one would argue the final table is composed of the 9 best players in poker.

A massive chess tournament would have the final match between two legends of the game without a doubt. No Moneymaker 'equivalent' would survive the first round (maybe second round).

ganstaman · 05-14-2012, 05:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karganeth

Poker is undoubtedly the most complex of the two. Chess AIs can beat the top players easily. The same cannot be said for poker AIs. There's a lot more money to be made in making a good poker AI than a good chess AI too - chess isn't played for money online.

Can a computer beat me in Tic-Tac-Toe or Rock-Paper-Scissors?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Karganeth

Chess has actually been partially solved for a common opening. King's Gambit has essentially been solved. It will be a very long time before anything poker related becomes solved.

That article is not real.