Quote:
Originally Posted by Cloven
That's a question in theoretical computer science. From the perspective of worst case analysis, 2 player nlhe is at least as difficult as the decision problem of solving polynomial equations of degree 4 or more. There was a proof of this a couple years ago. it belongs to the complexity class called "existential reals". This result is not surprising, because nlhe uses real numbers, whereas chess doesn't. So from this perspective it's uncountably infinitely more complex. Likely the game of nlhe (6max 100bb) would not be solved even if every atom in the universe was used to compute the answer. It is easy to get an approximate solution though.
People like the guy above are talking about this issue as if the simplicity of a game is equated with how hard it is to compete at the top level. They are two entirely separate issues.
They are separate issues to some degree, but they are not entirely separate issues.
You could teach, or they could learn themselves, someone with a relatively low aptitude how to be a winning poker player at the top level, as long as that person is good at learning, has a great work ethic and is determined as a person. The reason why you could/they could, is because learning how to play poker very well is learning systems, ranges, and pre determined strategies, many of which are quite generalised, e.g, "we check in flow the whole of our range in this spot", or we "C bet most of our range here", or "we have more 7s here in our range here than the pre flop raiser, so we can barrel here". In other words, it is a big volume of playing conventions and systems that you need to learn. If you can also memorise the fine details of these systems as well, then better still, and if you can then this would make you elite in NLHE, but even if you can't but can learn all of the systems then you will still be a top, winning player.
So learning how to play poker exceptionally well has similarities with learning how to speak a foreign language well. It is primarily a learning and memorising task, it is not a calculation task.
There are some calculations involved in poker, e.g. calculating pot odds and calculating how much you need to bet on the turn, so that you have an 80% to pot size bet left on the river to shove with for value or as a bluff, but these are not super complex calculations.
Whereas in chess, yes you can learn various openings and responses to opponent's openings, so are learning some chess GTO for certain passages of the game, and you can learn some GTO for some end game scenarios where there only a few pieces left on the board, but for most of the game in between you need to be able to make a lot of complex assessments, sometimes many moves ahead, assessments that involve large numbers of permutations.
Only a tiny percentage of the population have the natural ability to be able to do this, and it is not something you can easily acquire as a learned skill, like you can in poker.
As an analogy, a large percentage of the population are capable of learning how to play the guitar, and with hard work and dedication, to a high level.
But only a tiny percentage of the population are good singers.
Natural ability/aptitude counts way, way more in chess than it does in poker.