I will use a very simple argument, which should end the thread immediately. I will use durrrr as an example, as he is considered to be the best young poker player around. He has been playing poker for what, 5 years at maximum? Maybe some more, I am not sure. Let's say 7 years. Do you think that if he had started playing/studying chess 7 years back he would be as good a chess player, as he is a poker player? I think you know the answer.

/thread.

I don't know about computers but for humans it seems like chess is a hell of a lot harder to learn by a large factor imo.

Jesus, what's your problem? Why are you such a dick?

Edit: Seriously, even if you think I'm often wrong and don't give up lost arguments, that's still better than personally attacking people or throwing huge temper tantrums.

Magnus Carlsen? Fischer when he first started? Any number of "best young players" who had been playing for fewer than ten years when they were considered the best of their age group? durrrr may be the best young poker player around, but he's not the best player around.

Not to mention the fact that most poker players don't get started until they're 21 because of legal restrictions. Who knows how dominant a player would be if he'd been grinding it out since he was 7?

I don't really buy your argument.

this doesn't prove anything

Arimaa, possibly? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arimaa

How does that not prove anything? It is way easier and faster to excel in the game of poker, than in a game of chess. You want to disagree with that?

Read my response to your post, YouKnowWho.

There is a certain difference between your examples and mine. Durrr didn't play for 7 years, let's face it. He was killing the games like 2-3 years ago already, so what does that make it, 3-4 years of playing at max? Carlsen started when he was 4 or 5, so that's like 14-15 years. After 4 years of playing Carlsen was of course amazingly talented, but he wasn't even an IM. I don't really understand how can you argue, that poker is more complex or harder to learn than chess based on some measly argument. Use your common sense man!

It's more complex computationally. That's how I've been using the word throughout this entire thread. It's more complex in the sense that recognizing a face is more complex than solving differential equations.

NERD FIGHT

lol

Hold on, let me start my Haskell compiler...

I beileve everyone in this thread is "right" to some degree.. If you are talking about solving poker as in "playing a game theory unexploitable strategy", than poker is definitely a simpler game than chess. If you are talking about "beating poker for the maximum amount by exploiting people's tendencies", than poker is more complex than chess..

Also for humans, one game could be "harder" for one person and "easier" for another person. Some people just don't have a good personality for poker and some people don't have a good personality for chess. A couple years ago Hikaru Nakamura was trying his luck at PLO.. He came on ICC and told me how he won like $1000 5 straight days. Then the next day he came on and told me how he's never playing poker again .. He definitely finds chess easier .

Well, I don't even think it's as simple as some of you guys think to find an unexploitable strategy in poker.

no one thinks it is simple. we all acknowledge that it has not been done.

you cant measure the complexity of a game in terms of maximal exploitation, because, in poker at least, there is no objective way to accurately quantify this. also when someone says something is a simple/ complex game, i respect that game does not have a clear, accepted definition, but it seems reasonable when trying to have a discussion about relative complexity that you would use the game theory definition. not least because if you dont settle on a definition of the word game, the argument can never be settled.

I think that everyone should stop arguing and fighting.

Everyone should just go and 20BB 6max because if you do so then you can play a tiltless poker-machine like game.

thread/

I think poker is more complex. The game in itself might not be... i.e you migth be able to create a computer that has unexploitable strategy blah blah blah or whatever. That is not important because thats not what the game is. You are playing against a bunch of other PEOPLE and base your desicions depending on opponents. This and the pyschology involved in poker is why its more complex.

Having said that, I enjoy playing chess better just because of the game itself. But in chess you can do what curtains does and blocks who he is even playing against and is just playing a board basically.

I think if Durrr played basketball for the last 7 years he would not be as good at it therefor basketball is more complicated than poker.

Discipline has been tilting the living daylights out of me since this forum got started. I suggest a discipline containment thread.

basketball is infinitely more complicated than poker or chess

oh god, dont start.

Poker is harder for computers to compute because it is an information incomplete game. Chess is considerably harder for humans because we are not able to calculate the (10^10)^50 possible chess games in 15 minutes.

So yes- for computers chess is a simpler game. Since this thread did not ask "which game is harder for computers to play?" we can safely surmise that for **** Sapiens Chess is the harder game.

Computers do not and have never determined the complexity of gaming as they are a relatively recent development in human history and game has existed since some Sumerian's discovered that you could make dice out of bones.

My argument that NLHE is more complex wasn't based on computers; it was based on computer science. NLHE is more complex in a real sense. Whether or not you choose to use this sense of the word "complex" is up to you, I suppose.

my point was that nlhe is less complex in any sense, and then i used the game theory specific sense for the sake of argument because it could in some sense be objectively quantified.

And I think the misunderstanding was that I was using the computability theory sense, not the game theory sense. I didn't even know there was a technical definition of complexity in game theory. What is the exact definition?