State translation in no-limit poker

• Author / Creator

  Schnizlein, David

• One way to create a champion level poker agent is to compute a Nash Equilibrium in an abstract
  version of the poker game. The resulting strategy is then used to play in the full game. With this
  approach, translation is required between the full and abstract games in order to use the abstract
  strategy. In limit poker this translation step is defined when the abstraction is chosen. However,
  when considering no-limit poker the translation process becomes more complicated. We formally
  describe the process of translation and investigate its consequences. We examine how the current
  method, hard translation, can result in exploitable agents and introduce a new probabilistic method,
  soft translation, that produces more robust players. We also investigate how switching between
  strategies with different underlying abstractions affects the performance of an agent.

• Subjects / Keywords

  • Translations
  • Poker
  • Game theory

• Graduation date

  Fall 2009

• Type of Item

  Thesis

• Degree

  Master of Science

• DOI

  https://doi.org/10.7939/R3J618

• License

  This thesis is made available by the University of Alberta Libraries with permission of the copyright owner solely for non-commercial purposes. This thesis, or any portion thereof, may not otherwise be copied or reproduced without the written consent of the copyright owner, except to the extent permitted by Canadian copyright law.