"Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Off-topic talk on music, art, literature, games and forum games.
Post Reply
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

"Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Post by Dream Sphere »

So, I had typed up quite a lot, but my browser crashed earlier, so I'll just leave this a lot shorter.

There's this poker bot which was at least in part developed by a university in Alberta, or has at least its computer system/network housed there. It's supposed to be unbeatable and win every 100 round match that it ever takes on in Texas-Hold 'Em Poker, and while I had lost to it about twenty times before, I've achieved what they had claimed to not be achievable, and beat the bot after 100 rounds, with a good amount of score to spare.

Here's the general Alberta University webpage for the poker bot, where you can find info about it and queue yourself up to play against it. I would be curious how others fare, since it's kinda funny that I finally achieved what I set out to do in beating it, because I never really thought I would, and they've claimed it to be unbeatable in every 100 round match that it plays. -- http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/

I've taken a screenshot of the page from after I had won and have uploaded it to my photobucket account, though I'll post this thread before I add it in here in case my browser crashes again, but I can guarantee that I will link to it here very soon.


Edit: I haven't linked from photobucket before, so I hope I'm doing this right. Here's the link. http://s725.photobucket.com/user/Myths_ ... g.html?o=0


Edit: So, I'm now thinking that what I did was not all that remarkable. Though, I think I might try to figure out what the chances were for me to have won this match, (an article later in this thread goes on more about this) after having played so many matches against it.
Last edited by Dream Sphere on Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Red
Supporter
Supporter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:59 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: To the Depths, in Degradation

Re: "Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Post by Red »

Are you the only one to accomplish this? I mean, from what you're saying, it's pretty remarkable, and even if you aren't the only one, it sounds impressive. I enjoy Texas Holdem, yet I never used any actual money. I'll give it a try and inevitably get demolished.

Facts:
11% of all Poker moves are checks.
Professional Poker players fold 50% of the time.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Re: "Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Post by Dream Sphere »

RedAppleGP wrote:Are you the only one to accomplish this? I mean, from what you're saying, it's pretty remarkable, and even if you aren't the only one, it sounds impressive. I enjoy Texas Holdem, yet I never used any actual money. I'll give it a try and inevitably get demolished.

Facts:
11% of all Poker moves are checks.
Professional Poker players fold 50% of the time.
Yeah, I've thought that if I've actually been able to accomplish it, that other people probably would have. I haven't heard of anyone else doing it, though I haven't checked for news of people doing it much either.

I'm curious if what they've meant by "essentially perfect" at playing poker, would be that it would win more whole games than it loses? The thing is that, from what I remember hearing on the radio, it was that Cepheus may lose some rounds of a game, but would never lose (as in being in a point/score deficit by the end of) a whole 100 round game, and that being what they mean by "essentially perfect." However, I did lose to it approximately two dozen times over the past months. So, it has bettered me in number of complete game wins. However, I think I have challenged the claim which they had seemed to make in it never losing a single 100 round match, but I'll need to look a bit more into what they're exactly saying to figure out whether what I happened to accomplish has any significant value.


Edit: so I should have looked into this more, but it sounds like that by chance (as how I almost undoubtedly won) that there's bound to be people who would beat the bot eventually. I quickly found this article of a person who beat it twice for the first couple times they played. (I've heard that this website is pretty bad in terms of journalistic integrity on more important topics, but it's relevant here, so I'm linking to it this one time.) -- http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... gence.html -- So, I would guess as I kinda had mentioned earlier, that for it to be meaningful, I would have to win a significantly larger amount of whole matches for it to mean much, and that for me, or anyone to win more matches overall, on a large scale/number of matches played would be supposedly impossible.
Last edited by Dream Sphere on Tue Nov 03, 2015 7:41 pm, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
Red
Supporter
Supporter
Posts: 3983
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 8:59 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: To the Depths, in Degradation

Re: "Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Post by Red »

I think by essentially perfect, I think they mean that the bot can play it's cards correctly (literally, pun intended), and knows the smart moves to make, such as folding when someone goes all in, even if they have a King High. Do you think that the bot knows your cards and knows the stack order? Those are some important pieces of information dawg.
Learning never exhausts the mind.
-Leonardo da Vinci
Dream Sphere
Senior Member
Posts: 356
Joined: Wed Aug 27, 2014 7:52 pm
Diet: Vegan
Location: Greater Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada

Re: "Unbeatable" Poker Bot: Cepheus

Post by Dream Sphere »

RedAppleGP wrote:I think by essentially perfect, I think they mean that the bot can play it's cards correctly (literally, pun intended), and knows the smart moves to make, such as folding when someone goes all in, even if they have a King High. Do you think that the bot knows your cards and knows the stack order? Those are some important pieces of information dawg.
I think you're right in that it's built to play as perfect a poker game as is possible, and that by chance it may lose sometimes, but in its nature it'll win more whole games than not it seems.

I'm pretty sure that it can't actually see my cards, but that it's fairly good at predicting the frequency of and when I will have good or bad hands probably, from its set of code it draws from.
Post Reply