With the internet broken, there is always poker

My home internet has broken (thank you NBN co) and so have had to find other things that interest me. One of these things is watching the live coverage of the World Series of Poker on TV. As I type this it has been running for over 9 hours (400+ hands), and show no signs of finishing. Watching this makes me appreciate that chess uses clocks to control the session length. I have a recollection that they were thinking of doing a similar thing for poker, although with the system of increasing 'blinds' it may not be necessary (as eventually all the money ends up in the pot). However a system where a player has to 'buy' extra thinking time (either adding it to the pot, or just giving it to the opponent), may be something worth considering.

Another human activity taken down

While I was overseas I kept up with events outside the chess world, including the Human v AI Poker Match. The Libratus Poker bot, developed at Carnegie-Mellon played 4 poker pros in heads up no limit holdem, and beat all 4 of them. As with most AI v Human matches, this was a rematch after an earlier version of the program lost to human players a few years back.
Reading about the match, and the approach the bot used, there was one significant factor which I recognised from earlier Chess/Checkers/Go matches. While there was plenty of smarts built into each of these engines, it was the lack of emotional attachment to decisions that seems to be a big difference. Humans may decide that a certain move or choice is the 'smart play', but then decide not to play it due to other factors (tiredness, intuition, emotion). Bot's on the other hand will make a decision and then execute it. In chess this is often manifested by a change of plan depending on the previous move, which humans are slower to try. According to the authors of Libratus, in certain situations Libratus was 'fearless', which gave it an advantage.
While the win for the bot is significant I'll withhold judgement on whether it will change poker in the same way that engines changed chess. There may be a reassessment of how certain hands should be played, but overall I think the 'game space' is small enough that humans already have most of it covered.

Is chess illegal?

At some point in the past I had a post about chess tournaments for money probably being illegal in the Australian Capital Territory (although I cannot now find the post!). This is due to the wording of the legislation related to the Canberra Casino, and other gambling related activities.
It turns out that the ACT is not the only jurisdiction that has this issue, with Arizona in the US being another battleground. Well battleground is probably too strong a word, as it seems to be a one man campaign from a disgruntled poker player. John Schnaubelt wants the upcoming US Open (being held in Arizona) declared illegal, as it is a game that offers cash prizes. He contends this is exactly the same as poker games he wishes to host and yet the state gaming authority refuses to give him a permit.
The full details of his battle can be found in this article, including the usual contention that Poker is a game of skill (which I agree it is) and not a game of chance (which I also believe it is, just in small doses). I don't hold out much hope for Mr Schnaubelt, not so much because of the strength or weakness of his case, but simply because there probably is no energy to change a century old status quo (ie Poker = Luck, Chess = Skill)

I for one am not yet ready to greet our poker overlords

While there is little doubt that the Computers v Humans chess race has been run and done (although I have yet to see an official announcement), this means that game developers have moved onto other challenges. Go is still yet to be cracked, although it is starting to get close, while Poker seems to be another area that is gaining in popularity.
There is currently an ongoing match between an poker bot from Carnegie-Mellon and a group of poker professionals, at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburg. The poker game of choice is No-Limit Holdem, which is a more difficult game for computers to master, as a lot of the game involves stack management, rather than just odds calculation.
At the halfway point the computer program, Claudico, is quite a way behind, down around $160,000 against the professional. Each pro will play 20,000 hands against Claudico, and at the end of the tournament will share $100,000 in appearance money. However these seems not to concern the program developers as this exercise is both a competition and a learning experience for the bot. As with a lot of AI bots these days it is designed to evolve its strategy as it plays, so even while it is getting beaten it should be getting stronger.

Poker and Chess

While Poker and Chess are obviously different games, there has been plenty of 'cross fertilization' in recent years. A number of strong chess players are also reasonably successful poker players, while a number of strong poker players were strong junior players before being lured away by the big bucks.
Normally players will play one of the other, but an upcoming event on the Isle of Man has found a novel way of combining the two.  There is the usual poker tournament with a 200 pound buy in, but the initial chip stacks will be determined by a blitz tournament. Each player starts with 8,000 in chips and picks up an extra 1,000 per win in the blitz (I assume draws will net 500 each). So players can start with anywhere between 8,000 and 13,000 chips to begin with.
Despite the initial advantage to the chess players, most pundits (chess or poker) concede the advantage will still lie with the poker pros. While big stacks tend to push around little stacks, this can all change in a single hand, which is where the poker experience comes in handy. Nonetheless and number of strong chess players (including Michael Adams) are giving it a go.
If you are in a position to travel to the event it begins on October 3, and further details can be found here.

Is Poker a 'Mind Sport'?

Does Poker qualify as a 'Mind Sport'? If membership of the International Mind Sports Association (IMSA) is a qualification, then the answer is "Who knows?".
Earlier this year there had been rumours that the next World Mind Sports Games had secured a lucrative sponsorship deal from an internet poker site. Obviously part of this deal involved poker being part of the WMSG, although the poker format was described to me as 'Duplicate Poker'. This was to remove the luck element from the game, meaning it met the IMSA definition of a 'Mind Sport'.
It seems these rumours also reached the poker world, as there seemed to be quite some excitement that poker has been recognised as a game of skill. However, follow up reports suggested that this excitement might have been a little premature, as IMSA was yet to actually approve pokers application.
Now it turns out that the application may be held up for far longer. Apparently the statutes of IMSA require the unanimous consent of the existing members for a new member sport to be admitted. And in the case of poker, it is actually FIDE that is digging in its heels. The concern, as explained to me, is that no matter how you sugar coat it, poker is essentially a gambling activity. And it is this feature that makes poker unacceptable to a large number of FIDE member federations. So for now organised Poker does not have a seat at the IMSA table. As for the sponsorship deal for the next WMSG, I'm assuming that is on hold as well.

Poker Sharks

The rise in the popularity of Poker over the last decade has no doubt had an effect on the playing habits of some chess players. Indeed, when once Australian chess lost a number of future champions to Bridge, now they are more likely to be found on the felt.
At the Aussie Poker Millions tournament being held in Melbourne at the moment, there are a number of chess players playing for bigger stakes. Probably the most famous (or notorious) of these is James 'Andy McLeod' Obst, who began his career in online poker, although this career suffered a hiccup when it was discovered he was under the legal gambling age. He has since turned 18 and has been doing quite well ever since. Also spotted in action was Gary Benson, one of Australia's top Correspondence Chess players, and Kerry Stead, well known Sydney player and organiser.
However in the Limit Hold-em tournament it was another chess player, Jesse Maguire (a former Canberra junior) who did the best out of them all, scoring a third place finish, and picking up $17,500 in prize money.
But before you go running off to cash in on the big prize money at poker tournaments, I will warn you that along with the big prizes comes the big entry fees. $1100 to be precise. And given the chess communities ability to argue for hours over a $5 increase in club membership fees I'm guessing there won't be a mass exodus from our ranks any time soon.

**update: Kerry Stead has made it to the final (ie money) table of the HORSE event. Well done Kerry.

Games that are not Chess - Poker

Apart from chess there are other games I play. Bridge, Backgammon, Poker are the more serious of them, although I've even played an Othello tournament.
At the moment there is a real concern that Poker (specifically Texas Hold-em) is taking players away from the chess world. And it is probably a valid concern, but only in the short term. I think Chess and Poker (and Bridge, Backgammon, Pokemon etc) can all happily co-exist, and indeed provide a source of players for each other.
My recent experiences with Poker have not convinced me to give up chess. I don't believe I'm a good poker player (people keep stealing my blinds), but I thought I'd give the online tournament scene a go. The online site I used offered a series of "freeroll" qualifiers (free entry) to a money tournament. The qualifiers ran for a month, were restricted to Australian players only, and the tournament final was last night. The prize money was pretty generous compared to chess, $17,000+, especially as there was no entry fee. Each qualifier attracted about 1500 players, so I'm guessing there were 40,000+ entries in the series, although most of those would have been multiple entries. Over the month I probably played 7 to 10 qualifiers, which would have taken about 12 hours of my time. I made it to the final in the second last qualifier (top 50 finish required), and needed a top 250 placing (out of 1,320 players) in the final to earn some prize money.
Now this is not going to be some pathetic tale of how I caught a bad beat and missed out on a trip to Vegas. Instead I played very tight poker, folded most of my hands, and after two and a half hours went out when I played 55 v AQ offsuit and my opponent paired the ace. I finished 155th and earned some prize money.
How much? For 14.5-15 hours of play I earned $10. Thats about 75 cents an hour. For that I'm not giving up my day job. And indeed for that, I'm certainly not giving up chess, even if I earn $0.00 an hour for playing.
Nonetheless it was an interesting exercise to see how I would go in what is basically my first experience in tournament poker. The plus side was that I could play from home, usually lying on the lounge, and I got some free entertainment when players completely lost it after getting "backdoored" on the river.
But I guess like everything in life, if your not doing it for a living, then you're doing it for enjoyment. And if you enjoy chess more (as I do), why would you give that up.