HU is going to be dead soon. There is still a lot of money to be won as some humans have a big ego as proved by the other popular NVG thread at the moment and someone may want to go after that easy money at some point but long term it's completely dead to computers.

Multiway/tourneys seem to be very hard for computers as equilibrium doesn't mean that much there even if someone is able to calculate it. There will be play as long as it's multiway and it's easy to tweak some rules to encourage more multiway pots (make PLO half-pot preflop for example or in NLHE only minbet preflop + ante and then NL postflop).

I think bigger danger is collusion, HUDs and predatory atmosphere. If someone manages to make a site which is focused on eliminating the most predatory behavior, making it more social and give recreational players a fair shot it may last in this form for quite a while. I am not super optimistic but I think it might be possible.

I wonder how long its going to take for their to be smaller dream machine phone apps to use while playing live poker. 10 years with stronger phones and better tech maybe?

Meh, Kaby, you're either misunderstanding my point or I'm doing a bad job of emphasizing and explaining it.

I don't begrudge anyone for using this stuff and it's in their best interest to stay quiet on it if they aren't selling it. But it's created a very unlevel playing field and you going on about how any pro 'could' do this is just completely irrelevant since most pro's as defined by simply being a full time player hardly knew it existed and among those that do, still didn't have equal access to the best software. When I say many of us shouldn't respect the top players now as much as before this software was so powerful, it's not because they are shameful individuals and you're more than free to be more blown away by those able to crunch numbers and get as close to GTO as possible now. They are doing what's in their interest and so long as it follows the rules, they are 100% entitled to it and acting rationally. But to be the best in the past you had to be presented with very similar info as your competitors and just be able to reason better than them and evolve from your talents and that is what the majority of people revere most. Doug was openly a struggling grinder in soft low stakes games. His talent likely lies in his ability to craft and/or utilize this powerful software more effectively than the few others that also have used similar programs. This is still something he can be proud of and not shameful at all. It's just a very different process to be the best at a poker variant using powerful and seldom accessed software tools when you struggled to even win in 100x easier games before you had access to it. There is zero shame in what Doug has done so long as it's within the TOS.

Say we all train for the 100m and you end up the fastest. People will be quite impressed by the gifted guy that took his potential and outran 9999 others. But if it starts to leak that of 10000 runners, 20 had the knowledge, money, and access to a legal drug that made them 20% faster, it would make the whole thing feel a lot less interesting and make the top runners less impressive as they are likely just the best among 20 and not 10000 even if they are now the 20 fastest runners of all time. Mediocre analogy but you get my point.

The other thing I was saying was that it's 100% inevitable given the technology that exists and while I think it's a bummer, in no way is anything 'wrong' occurring here and I never said otherwise. It's just killed the spirit of the game that the vast majority who were drawn to gamble on poker liked and craved. You might not be one of the masses but most people came to poker loving the mano e mano feeling of trying to out think your opponents on a level playing field rather than wanting to get into a war of who studied the most effectively and had access to the best software tools.

My chess analogies have always been because I try to understand why millions like to play and bet on poker and not chess and it isn't just because you can get short term lucky in poker but not chess. It's because millions of people believed they actually could potentially out think others and the more poker starts to feel like a solved GTO game, the less interesting it is for the average person to want to bet money on it. For the 10th time, however, this doesn't mean Doug, Ben, you, or anyone else should even be .1% ashamed for using the software but I don't have to be anywhere near as impressed by being the best among what is literally probably less than 100 people aware of and with access to this type of info as compared to even 2008 when someone like Phil Galfond was likely the best among thousands of people using the same software that almost all pro's used. But that was still the beginning of the end for online poker. As soon as it started aggressively trending away from the way someone like Ivey had to evolve to the top into something far more mechanical, the spirit of the game that most enjoyed started to fade.

You haven't and won't seen me saying this was anything but inevitable or that it's wrong. The only thing I have been saying is that sites should be trying their best to make the atmosphere conducive to what people were originally drawn to poker for to try and lessen the steepness of traffic declines but that isn't always easy or possible and the inevitable end is probably not that many years away.

Your intuitive guess is probably way off (too long), due to the exponential rate of change in tech. People were laughing at the Human Genome Project when it had been going for 5 of its projected 10 years and had mapped ~1% of the human genome. But the joke was on them because actually the project was on-pace and ended up finishing a little ahead of schedule; point being that many such things progress in closer to logarithmic than linear fashion.

This is the same type of rationale recreational players have been using for years about regulars with their PT/HEM, HUDs, training sites etc.

Only way to be ahead of the curve is to do stuff other people are too lazy to do.

Very curious to hear your thoughts as you have a pretty unique perspective - define 'dead' and 'soon'.

That's my point Toms. What you say is 100% true and doesn't conflict at all with my post. This software has just taken it to yet another level and is dramatically less readily available as the prior generation that was basically just a huge handout to 98% of pro's that had access to similar tools while 1% of recreational players used it. Now it's the 1% of pro's that are utilizing the most advanced software. It's all terrible for recreational players and the feeling in the game for them but I also think the software driven trend toward GTO is particularly awful since recreational players have been drawn to the feeling of being able to try to out think others and when the evolution went from exploitative to GTO that makes that feeling seem even further away. Anyway, I need to shut up now, done posting.

Is it worth to go through on this topic, or just gossip?

Goddamn Uber creating their special program and algorithms in private. Just so unfair to the regular, honest, hard working taxi drivers who have been doing it their way forever!

It has been mentioned in the thread but I think its worth pointing out that all of these GTO programs and "dream machines" are only good for heads up play. There is no GTO play in a full ring game with 4 donkeys left to act behind.

A lot of gossip and speculation but some interesting parts thrown in. Kaby had a really good post on the other page.

tldr online HS is a competition on who can hire the best programmer to make the best dream machine.

Ring game stud fixes everything for the next 50 years at least. Especially if there are a few weird rules (if your board cards are all red you can replace your sixes).

Couldn't agree more with some of you guys. I fully support all of the top winners using AI to transform their game into what it is. More people should do this and then we can make internet poker extinct. Maybe 10 years from now we can have actual robots sitting in live poker games analyzing breathing patterns, heart rates, and movements along with GTO solvers built in. Then, the once human skill game of poker can be completely extinct.

After that we'll support robots taking over every sport and competition involving skill known to humans. Then they can just take over society completely.

Insideman, I get your point but I disagree with it (our posts probably make it seems like we're further apart then we are though, it's not that I don't get where you're coming from)

You're making it out like these new solvers are in a different category compared to previous ways of studying poker, when I just consider them to be a thousand books.

How did Ivey get good? Presumably by finding the most advanced, most efficient way of studying the game and then working very hard at that. I remember reading something about some dude in the 80s running odds for different scenarios on primitive computers. Hell, before Super System was written you'd be trying to get coaching from Doyle. But how could you even tell Doyle was the best unless you are already a good poker player (relative to that time)? How is that situation qualitatively different from having to be a good poker player to identify in 2014 you had to focus on solvers? It's just that when Ivey came up that the best way to get better at poker was to think a lot, be able to talk about hands with other good players (an advantage unavailable to all but the very best ;-)) and play a lot.

Now it's solvers, but as someone that wasn't attracted to poker because of the backroom cigar mano a mano vibe but as an intellectual challenge, I see little difference between the way in which Ivey came up and the way you come up in 2016. Figuring out the best way to use books or solvers, figuring out the most productive way of thinking about hands, playing. I see a lot less difference there than you. I also think you overestimate how much a solver is worth on the hands of someone who doesn't have a great poker mind to begin with. You can't just memorize xx terabytes of data .

To me, figuring out the best way to get better at poker is one of the most basic, indispensable and important tasks for a poker pro. So to me, reading those academic papers is what being a poker pro in 2016 is all about. If you disagree with that, I get that, but I also kind of think you're wrong ;p

This is an American forum so cycling probably isn't the most well known sport, but there's a dislike towards professional cyclists who race based on what their cycling computer tells them (heartbeat, wattage etc) and a bias towards guys that just attack and play it by feel. Not unlike GTO vs feel players really. The thing is, whatever way you look at it, the computer cycling guys are just better cyclists. And the goal of a cyclist is to be the best cyclist, not to please some old school myth by playing it by feel. Just like the goal of a poker player should be to be the best poker player, not whine about how having to read papers and grinding excel/solvers takes away from the glory of the game (imo).

To use another necessarily imperfect analogy, imagine two restaurant owners in 2008.
One is on top of this thing called the internet and has a custom made online reservation system almost no restaurant owner knows about that, and gets more clients that way.
The other is not on the lookout for how new technology might impact his business and thus has no clue.
In 2011, as online reservations systems become ubiquitous, the other guy is like "wait you had a custom reservation system since 2008? that's not what restaurants should be about, it should be about cooking and building a relationship with clients, i know respect your less for your success than i did before"

Whereas the first guy is like "well ok bro, to me restaurants are also about figuring out how new technological developments can make your restaurant more succesful. ofcourse, you won't get anywhere without that cooking and client relationship thing"

Like those restaurant owners, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree

Holdem: 2 red cards and left of button acts first post floo.... 2 black cards and right of button acts first. Would take a while to he used to but would make seat positions far less important and really cut down on live seat changing.

well its gonna happen eventually.

Following on from Kaby's post - Doyle Brunson is said to have spent hours dealing out hands and boards to get a feel for the odds and get an edge over people who hadn't done it. Even in the 1979 WSOP coverage Bobby Baldwin talks about mysterious "scientific" stuff the younger players like him are using.

kaby so it's not enough to have just a great poker mind anymore but to also either be a great programmer yourself or have a great programmer buddy or be able to cash out who knows how much money to a great programmer to do it for you.
Most people don't have access to this which makes it unfair imo.
It would be another thing if software was available to anyone and the efficiency of the software correlated with the person's raw poker skill...

this is the part I don't get. most people don't have access to talking poker with ike, but nobody views that as unfair. being able to talk poker with ike (or someone similar) is something you earn by being able to keep up your end of the conversation. finding a programmer where you can help him out with your poker mind is not so different from that. do you think it's just having the money available that mattered in who got a private solver or who didn't? there's tons of midstakes pros who could've group up with four and drop 10k each. that this didn't happen has to do with them not being aware enough of the importance of publicly available information (or not even being aware of that information in the first place), and nothing with a lack of money

naturally you could also pay ike for coaching, but that would be even more expensive than a solver

actually, i'm really starting to feel like this has nothing to do with having access to or not, but more with people not wanting to put in the necessary effort to learn stuff they view as boring or non-poker like. how is paying a programmer 20k to do what you tell him to any different from paying ike 20k for coaching? yes, having at least notions of how some algorithms work is essential to being a poker player in 2016. if you dislike that, time to get out.

there are 2 commercially available solvers around now that seem fine, just fyi

that it does, once again, you can't just memorize terabytes of data so how to use your study time for max efficiency is a hard question to answer, just like it always has been


once again, I get that the barrier of entry, both money wise and skill wise, increases. my point is just that that has been the case since the beginning of poker and there's nothing particularly different about solvers. you guys are acting like it's a watershed (imo because OH NO CODE)

But it is available to anyone, those who use them are not some chosen ones.
These players have put in a lot of work in order to find the best ways of improving their game (also being successful players which got them so far in their carreer that they are able to find/afford these ways of improving) You can't expect to find these concepts under a christmas tree, same thing with every other thing in life.
Sure i am not a big fan of poker moving towards these trends either, but this is the reality, so either accept it and adjust or continue wasting your time bitching about it.

E: Was talking about the "dream machines" not the ones you can find 5 sec googling.

awesome posts by kaby, I agree with every word (even though im one of the lazy/feel regs and am now facing decision to start working with solvers or quit)

why does doug always say piosolver is garbage?

I suggest you go back and read what kabby and others were implying. Kabby was trying to slant it that these guys were doing it for the game/ theory and not for the money. It's pretty clear after their constant lies / dodging / hiding they don't give a **** about the "community". They did it for money and recognition nothing else (not saying I blame them but let's just all stfu and call a spade a spade).

You are totally clueless about 200nl and plo. There are absolutely without a doubt advanced, private, real time software out there playing small mid stakes. See the bottling ring threads. They pulled a couple million+ of the player pool.

What others like myself are implying is that these guys who use these kinds of software aren't geniuses. If this software somehow found its way in the hands of any mid stakes online pro even a couple years ago and I bet they would have shot up to the top no problem.

Bad comparison but if anyone really wanted to get ripped out of their minds/ get hulked... Have a really solid base and take roids. In the poker case the roids is the software.

It is def crossing the line of "fair" if this software just spits out answers/ spots that only need to be memorized. Anyone can memorize.

You can insert "Investing", "Advertising", "Manufacturing" or any field that can be quantified and they're all building "Dream Machines". It's inevitable. It's evolutionary.
Someone let me know when there's an app I can take to Commerce.