In the good old days, top-level NLHE is only understood by only a very selected few players, mostly everybody didn’t know how to play it at a high level.
in the past For example, lets say a profession made a great play the discussion between two top professional goes like this,Player 1 says, " I made a good read and I bluffed him off with my 32 off suit, this is a play I had to make because it help me in the long wrong!" player 2 replay, “good job my friend, that was a really deep play you made, even if you had been caught it will pay off in the long run! very nice and very deep!”
Sadly nowadays if the same thing happens the conversation will go like this, player 1," I just made a bluff with 75 suited, I don’t know why I had to bluff, but I bluffed because GTO AKA piosolver says I just have to bluff, and this is the solution I got from my 10K computer which run GTO all day long." player 2 replay, “I don’t know why you had to bluff there either but my Piosolver agree with you, you just have to bluff there and my 20k computer agree with your inferior 10k computer!”
Now NLHE is all about who is willing to put up the money for a better computer, very soon they will come out with apple apps that can beat every top professional HLHE player!
Professional NLHE has changed over the past few years. Computers are a symptom of that change, not the cause.
@Ilovecat, you seem to be admiring the leveling wars of yesteryear. “If I know that you know that I know what you could have, then you know that I know that you know that I could be making this play, so I should think one level above what you know about what I know that you know that I know.” That type of thinking reached its logical conclusion with the development of “Game-Theory Optimal” (GTO) strategy. Screw the leveling wars, how do I play in such a way that no matter what level my opponent is on, I can’t be exploited? I may choose to deviate from that based on known flaws in your game that will give me a slight edge over GTO, but that will come at a risk of making myself exploitable.
The development of GTO strategy started outside the computer, but lends itself well to computation in order to find optimal equilibria. Sometimes the solvers (of which Piosolver is widely used, but far from the only one out there) will produce surprising results, but it’s rare that deeper analysis can’t discern the rationale behind the recommended actions. If player 1 in your example doesn’t understand why he should bluff in that spot, that’s likely a deficiency in his understanding of the deeper meaning behind the game, rather than a defect of the solver.
Chess is similar. Computers produce beautiful games with occasionally surprising and beautiful moves, requiring depth of understanding that occasionally surpasses human cognition. That said, there’s still value in holding live tournaments, even though the best chess computer programs are far superior to elite humans.
You’re right that it’s only a matter of time until free/cheap apps are developed that can crush even elite poker players. That’s not necessarily a problem, but a boon for those of us who appreciate learning and understanding the theory and statistics behind top-level play.
Well @Ilovecat,
Did you ever wonder who is funding and driving this change ???
Online Poker will surpass Casino’s unless 1 thing happens…
The can discredit online poker rooms , as just ppl using solvers
against each other , or endless parade of solver bots… not to
mention the endless accusations of bad RNGs / cheating.
Poker could revert to Casino only, due to the skeptacle nature
of most human beings in online poker rooms …
Then online poker rooms will revert to an all out war against
apps , where you give up privacy so they can continually scan
your setup while you play.
Most ppl dont even know just how computerized slot machines
are these days. AND the fact that they now have RNG issues of
thier own. This will also come to the shuffle’n machines in the
poker tables themselves.
Whats left for serious poker players ???
Manual Tables, with manual dealers, and manual players… ( no tek )
Sassy
well written, I do miss the leveling wars of yesteryears. I remember making crazy bluffs or outrageous hero calls because I out leveled my opponent! But nowadays nobody plays like that!
The day that a cheap APPLE app can beat every top player is coming! and probably in less than a year because now we have servers, so all a player has to do is pay 1 dollar and use a server to play poker for them!!!
GTO is basically using math to solve poker, look at what computers did to chess. Now, most grandmasters can’t even afford the food on their plates. In the good old days chess grandmaster would come to your home and teach your children how to play chess!!!
I feel the pain BOBBY FISCHER FEELS! he said chess is dead because the computer and I think the same for NLHE and poker in general!
Online poker needs to implement anti-cheating measures because with enough money such as 100k dollars someone can easily be using GTO solution for every hand they play!
I already wouldn’t consider playing for real $$$ online. I have literally caught players cheating via cell phone in FREE games (NOT at RP!!!). Other than to practice for “cash” games, why would anyone bother? If I play in a casino against a live player at a real table, with a human dealer, I “might” get cheated, but the management’s oversight minimizes that, and the penalties for being caught are high, unlike merely being banned from an online game. A live casino has strong incentives to treat every player fairly, and very strong incentives to avoid anything that would jeopardize their operating license.
Notice that some of the most senior RP people have backgrounds that include online poker security. And, they earn their money, I’m sure.
Is it really a boon? Once the profits are reduced to nothing because of cheating and/or the use of software, people will exit the game. Poker got a shot in the arm with Chris Moneymaker in the WSOP main and then again when they figured out how to show hole cards for television. People wanted to test their skills and their luck in this game and the population swelled. If it gets to the point where its bot-on-bot or the equivalent, people will stop playing and the game will die out (at least at the higher levels).
The counter-argument to that is people don’t even bother to study when there’s a ton of free material out there. Maybe enough people will continue to wing it? I guess you could wind up with only low-stakes games continuing to exist? So, we’d end up with a solved game that isn’t ever played. I don’t see how this is a great thing for poker, or people who love it.