On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 12:49:40PM -0600, Dan Minette wrote: > Cards are well known.
Actually, no, poker is not well known. I chose my example somewhat carefully, although I did make the concession of talking about 5-card draw instead of the example I first thought of, no-limit Texas Hold'em, because I thought you would be more likely to be familiar with the former. But as far as writing a computer program to beat expert poker players at poker, that is much more difficult than writing a computer program to beat chessmasters at chess. So difficult, in fact, that no one has come close to doing it for poker. If there is more than one poker opponent, the game theory optimal solution is virtually impossible to calculate for most realistic situations, and besides, the OPTIMAL solution is very unlikely to be the MAXIMAL solution, i.e., the optimal may not be exploitable by your opponents, but unless your opponents are also playing optimally (highly unlikely) then your best strategy is not optimal but rather to maximally exploit their mistakes. Not easy to write a computer program, or even a book, to do that. > The inevitablity of history in hindsight is about as valid as the > inevitability of the stock market moving in a given direction in > hindsight. Yes, and the fact that the stock market has consistently gone up over thirty year periods in history is a good predictor that over the next 30 years you will be more likely to make money investing in, eg., Wilshire 5000, than you will be to lose money. (There are only approximately 3 independent 30 year periods available for comparison in the US, but there is also good data on Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK, and together the historical data make a strong case) > Was it inevitable that Lincoln was skilled in international affairs, > or was that lucky? If not Lincoln, then someone else with great ability would be more likely to come to power in a system like America's, as contrasted with a system like Russia's, China's, or Saudi Arabia's. > Statistical analysis from one case is not really that sound. Agreed. Of course, there is a lot more than one case. There are quite a few countries in the world. -- Erik Reuter http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
