http://www.smash-vegas.com Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:52:43 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en All poker variants share the same system of hand rankings.  But how are they decided? Quite simply it's down to the likelyhood of the hand occuring, with rarer hands worth more.  We can calculate the probability of being dealt a hand by looking at the number of ways five cards can ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/poker-hand-rankings/ Winning Low Limit Hold'em Lee Jones A great beginner's book on hold'em.  The emphasis is on solid fundamental play to beat loose, low limit games.  It is an easy read and is particularly successful in pointing out the big mistakes which can cost a new player dearly.  A perfect choice for newcomers ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/book-review-winning-low-limit-holdem/ Poker is a name given to any number of card games sharing some key characteristics. The players bet on the value of their hand which is the best 5 card combination they can make from those available to them.  Some games only allow players to use cards dealt to them while ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/poker-basics/ So you've tried coding your first bot along the lines of our previous post.  If you've gone to those lengths then you've probably also watched it do some stupid things.  So where can we improve upon our basic design? Preflop Probably the biggest single area for improvement is the preflop play.  If ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/anatomy-of-a-pokerbot-room-for-improvement/ A betting system is a method of bet sizing depending on predetermined factors.  The most common betting systems use a progression where you bet more or less depending on whether you have just won or lost.  There are also betting systems where you look for an event which is statistically ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/why-betting-systems-dont-work/ There isn't a gambling forum on the internet without hundreds of posts about "unbeatable" betting systems based on the martingale.  They are usually either fraudulent systems for sale or naive newcomers who have just discovered a foolproof betting system - and they can show it's mathematically sound! In fact the martingale ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/the-dangerous-martingale/ You've tossed a fair coin 9 times and it's come up heads every time.  The odds of a fair coin coming up heads 10 times in a row are 0.510 = 1/1024.  So if you were asked to bet on the outcome of the tenth toss the odds would favour ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/the-gamblers-fallacy/ Small Stakes Hold'em David Sklansky, Ed Miller, Mason Malmuth This book on small stakes should not be mistaken for a beginners book.  Although it focusses on the smaller stakes where beginners tend to dwell the concepts and analysis are applicable to any game with loose players - this makes it one of ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/book-review-small-stakes-holdem/ With all this talk about pokerbots I've mentioned monte carlo simulations quite a lot.  But what are they? They're a method of computation which use repeated random sampling to produce results.  A simpler way of putting it would be "you try the thing lots of times to see what happens". A simple ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/what-is-a-monte-carlo-simulation/ The move from wordpress.com is complete.  It was a good way to begin but was holding me back from what I really wanted to do with the site. I hope everyone likes the new design.  There are still a few bugs (the archives button is playing up for instance) but overall ... http://www.smash-vegas.com/2008/08/rip-smashvegaswordpresscom/