actually imo chess is more complex, i said so in the earlier pages
the 0-1 $ was simply to put it more simpler that their is infinity between 0-1, just showing in 100 BB stack its worst.

I'm not sure if this has been mentioned, but what is our definition of "complex"? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think complexity is a well-defined concept in mathematics.

I have no idea what you're implying here.
There is no infinity of options between 0-1$.

We could be boring and go by Game tree size and conclude that poker is infinitely complex and so infinitely more complex than chess.

Is it possible to play a perfect game of chess?

Is it possible to play a perfect game of poker?

Are we excluding tournament poker?

Comparing tournament poker to chess I would say that chess is the more complex game by far.

I don't think you have to be an expert at either game to answer this question either.

Yes to both.
Chess: has a finite amount of different possible games, so it must have a solution. A forced win, or a forced non-loss (if forced win is impossible) is the perfect game since that's the best result hero can force.
Poker: 1.1bb deep NLHE HU, both go all-in until it ends and both have played every hand of a poker game perfectly.

Then to really answer this question we need to narrow the possibe game types on the poker side.

Maybe we should ask if a never ending game of HU poker is more complex then chess.

My conclusion is that poker is the more complex game AINEC.

I never claimed it was a perfect metric. To prove me wrong you'll need to do more than show one counterexample. I maintain that it's a good way to show which games are most complex. It doesn't work for the games you showed because they are solved games - there would be no different between AI and human decisions.

The reason poker is more complicated is due to the lack of complete information. If No-Limit hold'em was a game where all hole cards were visible to all players, the game would be trivial. The hidden information makes it a complex game.

In chess there is no equivalent to a bluff. This is an important aspect to the strategy of poker.

The reason poker is much more psychological than chess is because our strategies are usually much further away from the optimal strategy. In chess you can always just make the move which you think is closest to optimal. In poker you need to worry about the tendency of your opponent because your strategy is often extremely exploitable - you can't just keep making what you think is the optimal decision.

It depends.

I think you're confusing variance with complexity. There might not be a right answer in poker because your opponent might fold TPTK or somebody else is never folding said hand no matter what. This difference is also never quantifiable. It's not because the question is complex though. In chess, each possible move can be ranked as to what is better, but this is never knowable in poker. The lack of complete information does not create complexity.

[QUOTE=Aruj Reis;] In chess, each possible move can be ranked as to what is betterQUOTE]

actually no, u cant.

lot of sacrifice in opening and midgame are unclear because the activity some pieces get (for the pawn u gave for example), cant be quantify unless u can calculate any possibilty of every move after that position wich willl never probably happen, the number of possibility is simply too large.

In chess, ultimately there are only 6 types of moves. They are:
Moving from a forced win to a forced win
Moving from a forced win to a forced draw
Moving from a forced win to a forced loss
Moving from a forced draw to a forced draw
Moving from a forced draw to a forced loss
Moving from a forced loss to a forced loss.

There can be no other move than these. Each move must fall into one of those categories. All moves in the same category have the same value because chess has only three possible outcomes: win, draw and loss.

Poker has an infinite number of possible outcomes. Playing $1/$2 with 100bb stacks heads up may result with you winning any number between -$100 and $100 and there is an uncountably infinite number of numbers between those two numbers. Of course this isn't true in reality as most sites only allow numbers divisible by $0.01 but in principle it could be an infinite number. It's still a total of roughly 40,000 different outcomes assuming a minimum of $0.01.

I'm in the middle of reading Mathematics of Poker again. It really makes you appreciate the complexity of the game. I strongly recommend the book to anyone who thinks poker is less complex than chess.

Mmm poker obv , there's a lot more
Adjusting

I love playing poker, I hate playing chess sorry chess players!

Along the same lines, there are only the same 6 moves in poker.

Saying that every distinct amount won in a hand makes the game more or less complex is like saying it's better to win a game of chess in 30 moves rather than 60.

For the most part, I really believe this is an apples to oranges comparison without a clear mapping of complexity from one to another. That said, chess is just a much more interesting question that has been pondered and written about for centuries. Poker is just not that interesting relatively.

Chess is EXPTIME complete.

I think headsup poker is probably EXPTIME complete. However, I'm not sure.

But, then if you add in six more players, then I would say poker is more complex.

A normal chess bot would destroy someone playing chess for five years. Yet the same can't be said about a poker bot.

Go is probably more complex than poker through.

No offense intended, but the linked to articles are not very impressive.

Where is this infinite coming from?

Are you comparing a perfect game of chess to a non-perfect game of poker? If your opponents are playing optimally in poker, is the game then less complex than a non-optimal game of chess?

This seems like a ridiculously weird way to judge complexity. Is roulette really more complex than chess?

Also, It's 20,000 outcomes, not 40,000.

I'll give this a try as I have had real experience in these areas:

- Class A USCF Player (max rating 1939)
- Winning low stakes poker player (not a pro, probably equilvalent to class A in chess, top 10%)
- Wrote chess programs as a hobby in the 80's and 90's.
- Wrote poker bot software in the past five years
- I am an expert/master in software (not in poker or chess)

Poker (multiplayer NLHE) is much harder to program to a "top" player level than chess. Alternatively, chess is much harder to play to a "top" level then poker. If you don't have the "chess" gene I don't care how high your IQ is and how much you play or study you will not reach much more than a class A level. (e.g. me!) In poker, you really don't need to have any special analytical talent to be a top player. Here intuition is more important. Since humans are intuitive creatures this comes relatively easy. Intuition is very hard to program into a computer especially when you can't define it well.

Is it possible for a chess-bot to outplay another chess bot, or if constantly switching who starts will it for sure end in a tie?

While you do not need a the same level of analytical talent as you do for chess (although you clearly need some) to be a top poker player, you need to have a significantly higher level of emotional stability. I have 2400+ (FIDE) friends who have exceptional analytic ability and play decent poker in a vacuum, but get off their 'A' game extremely easily after taking a bad beat or just running card dead for a couple hours. The ability to just sit there (particularly in a live game) and calmly accept bad stretches without it affecting your game is an integral component of success in poker.

Different chess computers at the top level, yes. For instance, here are 2 computer tournaments: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=71785 and http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=68454

It's not just the top computers drawing each other while beating up on the less programs, either.

I agree on the emotional stability. On the other hand, I'm good enough at chess to know how obscenely better a 2400+ (FIDE) chess player is than me. I really feel like the spread in skills is much narrower in poker. Top chess players feel like super aliens to me while top poker players feel only like extraordinary humans. Another aspect of the argument is that is far easier to make money in poker. (money metric)

Stack sizes are unlimited.

Assume you have a finite list of all different possible NLHE hands. You can still play a hand that's not included in the list by increasing $1 to every stack size, so the finite list didn't include every possible hand. Therefore the amount of different possible poker hands is infinite.

Also a non-raked game or a tournament can take forever, again making the game tree size infinite even if you could list every possible hand (for fixed limit or if stack sizes are limited by for example the memory of the poker software or the actual wealth of players).

Ah, so infinite stack sizes. Seems realistic. If you analyze 'poker' as a specific game (say NLHE, for example) with a specific stack size, does it then become less complex than chess? If so, then I think it's unfair to claim poker is more complex just because you could choose from an infinite number of starting stacks even though you never can actually play from them.