Internet Poker
Continuing our series on "versions or formats of poker that I do not understand" let's have a look at internet poker. I understand that people play this on the internet. A lot of them are college students and it is a boon to the newspaper industry because they can write A) articles about how internet poker is corrupting our youth and B) articles about this internet poker prodigy who made a million dollars before he was twenty.
Like strip poker, this seems to be missing a lot of the essential elements of poker. I am assuming that someone who could program computers and had a half an hour to spare could write a little program that took all the data available to you (not much data) and told you how good your hand was, how many cards to draw etc. An even better program, which probably wouldn't take more than a month to work out, could tell you, based on your opponent's raising, calling, etc. how good his hand probably was, and what you should do, accordingly.
As I understand it, after all, poker is not a very complicated game. I am sure there are reasonably complex variants of it, but I am sure that there are none so complicated that they can't be solved (as much as a game of chance can be solved) by a savvy computer program.
So we can assume these programs exist, because there would be a huge advantage for whichever player owned a copy. But if every player has a copy, the game becomes trivial. Every player has a program advising him on the perfect strategy, and so the outcome of each hand depends solely on who gets dealt better cards. You might as well have an internet coin-flipping craze. What am I missing?
Like strip poker, this seems to be missing a lot of the essential elements of poker. I am assuming that someone who could program computers and had a half an hour to spare could write a little program that took all the data available to you (not much data) and told you how good your hand was, how many cards to draw etc. An even better program, which probably wouldn't take more than a month to work out, could tell you, based on your opponent's raising, calling, etc. how good his hand probably was, and what you should do, accordingly.
As I understand it, after all, poker is not a very complicated game. I am sure there are reasonably complex variants of it, but I am sure that there are none so complicated that they can't be solved (as much as a game of chance can be solved) by a savvy computer program.
So we can assume these programs exist, because there would be a huge advantage for whichever player owned a copy. But if every player has a copy, the game becomes trivial. Every player has a program advising him on the perfect strategy, and so the outcome of each hand depends solely on who gets dealt better cards. You might as well have an internet coin-flipping craze. What am I missing?
posted by apk01004 at 1:02 AM
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