I haven't had to avoid the 9 to 5 since I retired. hahahaha?

He can't be tougher than Cepheus, tho. Maybe I'll play another 10 game match and post it no matter what. I'm supposed to get crushed and everybody knows it. What bothers me the most is that no adjustment I make 'works.' I expect to lose, ofc, but I'm trying to lose the least and what I'd really like to do is reach through the computer and punch the coders in the face.

Eh, the heck w/ it. I'm going to play another 10 match set and post the results no matter what. Prob take 2-3 days.

What was your best match so far? Just played 1st, plus 960.

My best was my first: Plus 700 or so and was not impressed. Now I'm DAMN impressed. An interesting exercise is to just c/c the entire 100 hands so that you can see what it does w/ every hand. Some of it is fantastical but it can't be beaten over any significant sample size. I've played about 5,000 hands in an effort to see if I could play more effectively against what I know is an unbeatable bot by making drastic adjustments and it hasn't gone well but I'll post this new block when it's done anyway.

I went to Foxwoods yesterday to play 4/8 limit holdem for 9 hours. I won a $1,000 high hand, and I also won $488 from playing. It was my best day playing live by a wide margin.

I have also been playing Cepheus and routinely get crushed by the bot. But I feel it has helped me to think better about how to play the game.

I'm a big fan of playing heads up limit holdem. It really tests your ability with a wide range of hand strengths. Uncapped games are particularly fun. However playing too much of this variant can lead to overvaluing hands in multiway games. I still have to fight this tendency particularly with bluffcatchers.

There's really only one way to play HU LHE in a poker room: Late at night when no one else is around. And considering that someone may have a 'Cepheus lite' bot I wouldn't dream of playing it online if it's even still available. But one of the NYC clubs let ppl play it since all they cared about was getting their $10/hr. The stakes were generally 10-20 at that club and I'd only agree to play a $500 freeze out. I do miss it, tbh.

I think the presence of bots is overestimated and that gamestarting is pretty safe in that regard. I gamestart almost exclusively online because I find it very fun and it's the only way to get a limit holdem game going on the site that I play. It's quite rare that someone sits with me and doesn't make many obvious mistakes. Here's an incomplete list of leaks that I've observed in just the past few years:

Playing 100% preflop both in and out of position.
Folding way too much preflop both in and out of position
3 betting awful hands preflop
starting raising wars on the flop with air but waiting until the turn hits to raise strong hands
not 3 betting enough preflop
too much pure bluffing on the turn vs my cbets
overvaluing overpairs in an uncapped game
missing obvious value bets which allows me to realize lots of equity with bluffcatchers and draws
giving up on the river with unshowdownable hands
cbetting too much on the flop
overvaluing bluffcatchers
undervaluing bluffcatchers
etc

Of course, I make my share of mistakes, but to avoid a particular format in fear of bots is a bit on the paranoid side imo. Once in a while I even run into a true maniac that just wants to raise and reraise ad nauseum with any hand for the fun of it. These sessions can make up for long breakeven or even losing stretches with just a few hands. I think it was Einstein who said something like this: "90% of life is showing up." Well you can't win if you don't play and you gotta be in it to win it.

Plus, gamboool!!!

my two cents.

ps you can always quit if you think your opponent turns out to be good at poker. We play em one hand at a time and cutting losses can be the difference between a winner and a loser in this game.

Wait, people lose to Cepheus?

Are people keeping track of total money won/lost vs Cepheus, or matches won/lost? I'm counting matches.

I played 2 matches against Cepheus last night. I won the first one by over $600 with lots of run-good. In the second one, I was down $10 with 3 hands to play but couldn't win another hand (and spewed quite a bit in the last 2 hands trying to catch up).

Which brings up a strategic point. I assume Cepheus is playing each hand as best as it can. But I'm trying to win a 100 hand match. If I get up over $150 with 10 hands to play and with the blinds being 5 and 10, I can just fold to a win. If you are down small with a few hands to play, you can keep raising hoping to build a pot big enough to win if you get lucky on the river. It seems Cepheus is optimizing on each hand, and you can optimize on a strategy to win each match.

That's not in the spirit of things, though. Also, that was a lot of typing there, Bob! I wouldn't play Cepheus for stakes higher than .01/.02 and that would only be if I were so bored - which I am and is one of the reasons I'm playing it for play money - that it was that or cleaning the refrigerator. Anyway, I'll be posting the screen shots tonight fwiw.

Where can you play Cepheus for money?

You can't. I was making a reference to Bob's assertion that the presence of bots is overestimated. Anyway, here's my lousy 1K hands. This actually hurts to post, lol:












I DO take some solace that I'm so old that the valet attendant thought I needed assistance getting mom's wheelchair in the trunk and looked doubtfully at me when I said no but I CAN do the internet at least a little bit.

If anyone wants to let me know and we can probably make it happen

Where can I play cepheus for fake money?

You're THAT lazy? btw, someone should email them. Player ab25 has been stuck in the lobby for a few days. I notice that he even created a new account: ab26.

http://poker-play.srv.ualberta.ca

Huh?

I'll crossbook

I'm pretty confused. I was just asking Howard where you could play Cepheus for real money because I was pretty sure that wasn't a thing. And you went from that to assuming I think I can beat the bot that's solved HU LHE?

I'll crossbook you vs. the human opponent of my choosing at HU LHE.

I wasn't talking to you specially, I was just saying in general if anyone wants to play to for real money I would gamble.

I think the real question is whether fake money can be traded in for epeen inches.

Cool. I'm with you then and will also crossbook anyone that wants to.

Good job posting the results, honestly that's not the worst. Did you feel any glaring mistakes/leaks were being made while playing through the matches?

Did you at any point reflect and say "**** I really need to stop checking/folding in this spot?" How did you run?

It's soothing to read that someone thinks it's not the worst bec I'm not happy about it. As far as play goes I don't think I did very much wrong unless calling down w/ middle pair so much is very wrong. I dislike mentioning what might sound like an excuse but there were times that Cepheus ran in God-mode and I never did. Esp calling c/r's w/ bottom pair and hitting. That happened a lot. But no excuses, that's the best that I could do, GL to everyone else.

Overall not bad results vs a perfect machine. Especially if you never got hit with the sun-run. Over small samples don't we need a little rungood to come out more than a few BBs ahead?

The last few matches I played (it's been at least 6 months) I was almost ALWAYS calling down or even raising with middle pair and it turned out to be a winning play (~60% of the time?).