Comments on: Poker Faced?

By: Derek Slater

Derek Slater — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 10:09:45 +0000

Entertaining indeed. Tangent on the subject of cheating: A couple of years back a hooded player named Eugene Varshavsky was accused of cheating at a (relatively) big-money chess tournament in Philadelphia. And guess who just tore through a Sudoku tournament in Philadelphia? http://numberwarrior.wordpress.com/2009/11/01/cheating-at-the-2009-sudoku-championship/

By: buy ugg

buy ugg — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 04:04:02 +0000

He’s apparently been winning big on several of the major US online poker sites, not just one, Ugg Bailey Button
[De-urlified]

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:26:12 +0000

The major arguments against collaboration with the servers is that:
1. He’s apparently been winning big on several of the major US online poker sites, not just one, and;
2. Some of the top poker players that he’s taken millions off are co-owners of those same poker sites.
Also, the reputation of a well-regarded poker site is worth far, far more than they could gain by cheating – they make a lot more money running straight games for years than they could running crooked games for a short while until they were found out (which is inevitable).

By: PHB

PHB — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 18:19:32 +0000

I doubt that Isildur is a full AI, but I would be surprised if most of the top players were not using AIs and statistical tools to assist their play.
It would be pretty easy to write a sidekick program that gives you the precise odd on your hand winning. It would only take a little more effort to write a program that monitors the other players and calculates odds that they are bluffing &ct.
The targeting assist came before the gun director.

By: Frank Hecker

Frank Hecker — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 15:51:32 +0000

I don’t think you necessarily need to suspect malicious behavior here. My take (as a non-poker player) was simply that Isildur was a talented player who honed his skills in one environment (European online poker sites) and came into another environment (US poker sites) where people were unfamiliar with his style of play and didn’t know how to counter it.
Another possibility is of course that Isildur is actually an AI, like that being developed by the Computer Poker Research Group at the University of Alberta. But per Occam’s Razor I’d say that was a lesser possibility without knowing anything else.