Ben has a PLO dream machine - Doug has an NVG drama machine.
Ben has a machine gun. Doug would like a man bun.
Still unsure on horse situation.

More than likely but I'm sure some of the software out there is used in conjunction with mass datamined hands and in the high stakes on specific opponents to get an edge on their opponent. Only solution for the sites is to move to anonymity. All this stuff about banning HuDs and all software is nonsense but the sites can do a better job of protecting players from being targeted and game planned for off the tables by these players acting in this way. Mainly it help protect all the various common player types being targeted out there based on their datamined results and/or player profile stats from this predatory behavior which is bad for the health of the game.

There are many players that don't really care about learning GTO or solving poker and just want to sit down and play poker and could get a reasonable experience online if they could be anonymous but when their style is instantly mass exploited every time they sit down at a poker table because of this "off the table" data in conjunction with on the table software, sitting scripts, etc, it will not lead to a long life for them at the tables.

Anonymity might not solve the problem at high stakes and possibly kill off the action of high stakes online but it could help the system at the lower stakes. People will still probably find a way to mass datamine hands and use populational tendency exploits in their play but at least it's a reasonable step to making everything a bit harder for them and making the on the table "session" play much more relevant in game.

if you think top players like WCG have not used real time in game software in the past that gives them a massive advantage whether it being prohibited or not at the time then you should seriously think again.

it is impossible for poker sites to detect this from happening and it is a much bigger ethical 'problem' (depends on your definition of problem in this instance) than i think most people realise and has been for years.

one basic example of how it works is say a player he is playing 3bets 27% he can just put this figure into the 'dream machine' (partly microsoft excel) while playing and it will calculate the exact percentage and distribution/ratio of hands to proceed with and give the optimal GTO play/game tree model vs villain and so on and so forth.

if you are a human attempting to beat this proven systematic poker machine that can be adjusted to your stats instantly then you have absolutely 0% chance of ever winning.

to say they are flat out cheating is wrong but very unethical maybe. they have put lots of hours and work into creating these things but online poker is not about human vs human and has not been for a long time and if you think it is you are living in a dream world. these people, in particular many of the big winners from russia/ukraine/belarus are not here for the thrill of ****ing victory, they are here to take your money any way possible.

"solvers ruined poker"

yeah, if by ruined you mean crazy interesting to see how poker is supposed to be played. if you're in poker for the backroom-cigarsmoking-dickswinging thing, it sucks. if you're in it to make money, the benefits are mixed (short term they are a good thing for you if you study harder than your peers since they leverage study time). if you're in poker for the intellectual challenge and stimulation solvers are the best thing ever

that alix martin software is not a solver and pretty easy to program/reverse-engineer. once again, if you didn't pay some guy to program that for you, that's on you - the friggin video showing it was possible was on youtube (it cost me 1k back in 2013, and it basically just offers a more convenient way of doing HM filters)

it is baffling to me that all you guys focus on this being unfair or private. ALL the academic papers all solvers are based on are public. the knowledge that solvers are possible is public. there were interesting threads discussing this on two plus two back when it all happened. sauce and his dad had entries into the bot competition every year for years, this is publicly available information for anyone who bothered to look - not that much of a stretch to assume it's not just a father/son activity not influencing his poker career decisions. will tipton had a publicly available video series showing how to program your own solver over two years ago. it's really not that hard to make the jump from "hey this basic python code runs a river solver on my own laptop" to "hey better code and more computing power could run a multi street solver, i should go figure out how that works"

to any professional currently complaining, it is your fault you weren't following recent developments in your field, somehow insinuating the guys who did keep up with recent developments and who had the poker mind to see how important they would be are being unfair in any way.. incomprehensible to me


That poker player is such a boss and deserves everything he gets. He found out how to get access to the best learning resource/mentor in the world and then worked extremely hard. People like that are generally revered in our culture. Hell, it's basicly the plot of Kung Fu Panda

One thing you are missing is that Ben, or anyone else, didn't just get access to better software due to chance. Either he got asked to contribute because of his already existing great poker mind, or he gave the instruction to build something.. which he could only have done with his great poker mind and his awareness of recent evolution in the field

/tiltrant

kaby is right

Great post kaby.

+1 for really good post.

COTM - Comment Of The Month

Solvers in of themselves are not that big of a problem since no human will ever be able to implement a solver strategy perfectly.

The problem is when someone has access to enough computing power to solve in real time and use it while playing at the tables.

Ofc Kaby is right, in general people will always find someone/thing to blame other than themselves (working harder, doing research, etc). Whether that's the extreme side of online poker being rigged, or training sites/stables/coaches making the games tougher etc. Not just poker, everyday life too..

lol it's not Taylor caby.

+1


Lol

+1

Given that querying Cepheus involves remotely accessing a large server array, and it's pretty slow, and that's just limit poker, this seems unlikely. But then again, no doubt very smart people have cooked up very ingenious shortcut methods, so hmm.

not only that, but most ppl also ignore, that this was bound to happen. the goal is to improve and the consequences are slimmer and slimmer edges. i think the biggest problem is, that the line between 'helper software' and cheating tool blurs, so that everybody (or more precisely the mob) tries to draw the line as it would be a matter of fact.

tl;dr: as long as no one knows, what the program does and what it can't do, it's stupid to argue about it

Lol the private software they have is not being used for academic purposes. If it were then they would openly admit it and share it with everyone (just like any other open source/ community based learning project for the most part).

It was done to make money. It was kept in hiding. It was kept a secret. For years. There are guys who have publicly said it does not exist who are the same ones being scrutinized for lying about it etc.

Considering how small and tight the group using this software/ knowing of its existence combined with them saying it doesn't exist/ laughing it off while they continued to make millions under the pretense that it was brain vs brain makes this look shady as hell.

If it looks dirty, if it feels dirty, then it's probably dirty.

Tldr

An elite group of poker players have been using advanced private software to make millions of dollars while simultaneously denying its existence.

Elite poker players have no obligation to be open or truthful about their study methods towards random NVG guys ldo. In the main thread info like that got valued at 20k/hour ;-)

Glad you agree this isn't dirty.

Cepheus solves to a very small Nash distance. In practice you can get away with less accurate results that are still good enough to crush most games.

THE SKY IS FALLING

Cepheus is slow to query because if it wasnt people would create a gto bot from it. The guys who made it could make an unbeatable bot out of it easily and print every available hulhe $ there is. The game tree is already mapped and could probably run off any modern computer. It's the creation of it that required extraordinary computation power. If I understand the situation correctly.

Nah, I'm pretty sure it's the sheer size of the solution that makes it off-limits to home PCs. You're not 'running a sim' when you query it, just dipping into the vastness of the solution-space. And it's still slow, though seems to have got a bit quicker lately (may depend on how many ppl are accessing it at a given time, idk). Which to my mind accentuates the point that real-time poker solving is crazy hard.

When these programs find their way into public, poker will be pretty well ****ed. It's in everyone's best interest that these things cost 10's (maybe 100's?) of thousands of dollars to create and are kept super-private.

So unless you want to have to put in thousands of hours of rigorous study to win 4bb/100 at 1/2 PLO, I'd stop complaining that the nosebleed guys have tools that you don't.

You can:

1)keep strategies with low accuracy (say xx.x% so 10 bits)
2)compress it
3)keep only flop and turn
4)recalc river on the fly

it will easily fit on a home computer this way and 4) is going to introduce only very small delay (less than 100 miliseconds if you optimize a bit)
It's not much of a technical challenge to make it very fast to query, it's more a choice/lack of incentives to make it very fast from their part.

I'm not sure if it's you or me that don't know enough about Cepheus (I'm serious here). Quering Cepheus (for outsiders) is slow because it's made to be slow so people can't datamine Cepheus's gametable. It's made so to be kept away from prying hands but still be able to be demonstrated.

When you ask Cepheus to solve a spot it's just reaching into its (very finite (apparently 12TB)) database and grabbing the solution.

It's the coding and computer power that made that library that is extraordinary. Not the library itself.

Well that's kind of depressing. I've seen you make some posts advocating for the possibility of a healthy poker economy going forward for at least several more years, punter, which surprises me as I might have expected you to be one of the gloomier prognosticators. Can you expand to us a bit on why you think poker may not be dead?

Really? I hadn't heard that but maybe you're right I have no idea. It does seem to have got quicker recently which seems slightly at odds with you are saying but w/e I don't know.