Poker Bots: A Much More Sophisticated One

I don’t know if folks who follow this blog are aware but there’s a fascinating poker contest going on — live. It’s between four online specialists and an Artificial Intelligence (AI) developed at Carnegie Mellon University and this time (unlike the AI in Alberta described in an earlier posting) they’re playing no limit (though still heads-up). The human players are in two teams, each playing against the AI. The CMU team has named their AI (AIs always get names) Claudico which, amusingly, means “limp.”

A surprising feature of this poker bot is that it tends to limp into hands (i.e., just call — almost all pros favor raising when entering a pot). Limping has some things going for it but a player (digital or carbon-based) has to be highly skilled at playing after the flop. I can only assume that Claudico’s post-flop play is very strong.

They’re also using a variation on “duplicate” style of play for this contest. In duplicate each side plays the exact same hands. The first time through you play all the “A” hands against your opponent’s “B” hands while your teammate is playing the “B” hands against your opponent’s “A” hands. This way each team and the ‘bot play the same hands but from different sides.

Duplicate play was introduced in bridge and is the standard used in all tournaments precisely because it limits the luck factor. However, because it does, it basically ruins poker. The weaker players just go broke too quickly. One of the great allures of poker is the fun of the random turn of a card, that quirky luck element that keeps the weaker players in the game. Duplicate neutralizes that.

Here’s where the contest is, as of today:

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/brains-vs-ai

So far the humans are ahead some $166,000. The AI is beating one team but the other is stomping it. They haven’t played enough hands to get close to a Nash equilibrium point (the point where the number of iterations has grown large enough so the random components no longer have a statistically significant impact on the outcome) so the jury’s still out. If the Polk-Li team has found weaknesses in Claudico, that win should continue to grow.

The match will continue till May 8th. I’ll report on the final outcomes later.

If Claudico is using the “counterfactual regret-minimization” heuristic it should continue to learn as they play. That heuristic is an exceedingly clever one and is standard in efforts to solve complex games and other settings (like teaching an AI to do medical diagnostics or trading commodities). It’s also the one that the University of Alberta team used.

After each hand the AI quickly ascertains what the result would have been had it played it in any of the other myriad possible ways. It then adjusts its strategy bank by raising the value of the play that would have had maximum win (or minimal loss) and lowers the one it used. Slowly over time it can home in on the optimal strategy for that situation.

And, FWIW, I have no idea who these four “best poker players” in the world are. I suspect they’re online heads-up specialists. I’ve never heard of any of them — but that doesn’t mean much since I don’t play poker online and certainly not at these stakes.

FWIW, last night I made the final table of a local tournament. I’m not happy with how I played at the end. At my age, after some ten hours of play my brain starts to melt — a problem AIs don’t suffer from (no brain!).

Campaign Non-Reform, WA-Style

In my last blog entry I referred to my home state of Washington as “slightly more civilized” than some others. Well, today the legislators in Olympia showed just how uncivilized they can be. And, yeah, it’s another episode, another crazy moment where the really disgraceful folks in the Republican Party undid what just might have been a legit, bipartisan campaign reform act.

Earlier in the legislative session both parties had agreed on a bill that would require all non-profits that made contributions to any political campaign register with the State and disclose how much they gave and to whom. It flew through the Senate 49 - 0. Yup, unanimity. Wow. In this political climate that’s like the Mariners winning the World Series.

The House tweaked some of the wording and shipped it back. It had been endorsed by just about everyone on both sides of the aisle including important folks like the Attorney General (D), the Secretary of State (R). What could go wrong? Well, a lot.

Suddenly several lobbying groups got a little twitchy. The Association of General Contractors who’d been hiding in plain sight for years using several loopholes based on establishing shell companies raised concerns. And then the big “wink,” “wink” came from the brothers who rule the land, the Kochs.

And when the “tweaked” bill came back to the Republican controlled Senate, the support vanished. Why? “Well,” said the GOP leaders, “it’s the changed wording introduced by the House….”

The Democrats who had been working on this issue for years made a reasonable offer. They said they’d remove the tweaks and restore the bill to the form that the Senate had passed unanimously just a few days earlier.

I don’t need to finish this story do I?

As the spokesperson for the Washington State Democrats put it, “If you needed more proof that the powerful special interests run the GOP Senate caucus, well, now you got it.”

I really wish this wouldn’t keep happening. I hate this. I really do. I get no pleasure from writing about how nefarious, stupid and underhanded the Republicans are. They leave me no choice.

Tesla and Politics

With which political party would you associate these slogans?

a. Anti-government

b. Anti-regulation

c. Free enterprise

d. Competitive markets

e. Innovation

f. Job creation

g. Made in America

Well, of course, it’d be the GOP. What more could a rock-ribbed Republican find more alluring than an American start-up company that, using clever and innovative advances, produces a high-end product, turns a solid profit, sees its stock jump several hundred percent, creates tens of thousands of new jobs, competes successfully in the open market and does it all without government intervention or subsidies.

The company? Tesla Motors.

The GOP position: Kill this company if possible or, at the very least, choke it, prevent it from selling its products, use big government regulations and laws to block sales and limit customers’ access to its products.

I know, it sounds weird. But it’s true. New Jersey just joined Michigan, Missouri, West Virginia, Maryland (the one Democratic state in the mix), Texas and Arizona to restrict or prevent the ordering of a Tesla at a Tesla showroom. The gimmick used is an antiquated code that exists in many states that limits the sale of automobiles to “franchise dealers.”

Strictly speaking, Tesla has no franchises. It uses a “direct to consumer” model. The car is purchased over the Internet. In these states the Tesla galleries cannot offer test drives, discuss price or help you order. You can look at a Tesla but that’s about it.

But the showrooms are important as we discovered when we recently ordered ours. Since we live in the (slightly) more civilized state of Washington we were given the royal treatment by the Tesla representatives in Seattle. We made two visits, took two test drives in different vehicles and spent several hours with our rep. We were led gently through the ordering process picking out the configuration of battery, interior and exterior colors and extras best for us. And there’s no haggling. The price is the price. That’s it. You submit the details, shell out the deposit and the folks in Fremont, CA start building your car.

BTW, Texas got its comeuppance. Tesla was considering two sites for its new Gigafactory where the lithium ion batteries that power their cars will be built, one in Texas and one in Nevada. Nevada won and will enjoy the six to seven thousand full time jobs and the huge boost to the state’s economy.

So why do all these legislators hate Tesla? Why do they suddenly favor big government putting regulations and road blocks on sales and distribution? Why are they not in favor of job creators? Why are ….? Well, you could go on for paragraphs asking these questions.

The answer, of course, is that they’re hypocrites. All those idealistic sounding buzz lines at the beginning of this rant are just for show. As noted in an earlier blog, there are three kinds of Republicans: the wealthy, those with enough clout for the wealthy to have bought their services and the duped. What we’re seeing here is that middle group, the bought and the guys who’ve bought them are the franchise automobile dealers who are running scared.

And you know what? They should be scared. Last year Tesla outsold every luxury automobile but one (Mercedes Benz S-Class) and did this without spending a dime on advertising. Why advertise when you can barely build cars fast enough to fill the orders?

The Tesla is an astonishing automobile. It’s top powered version does 0-60 in 3.1 secs! It handles like a sports car. There is no maintenance, none. There’s nothing to maintain. No engine, no engine oil. No transmission, no oil. No drive shaft, cam shaft, radiator, exhaust system, mufflers, etc. etc. etc. It’s two electric motors, a suspension system, a steering column and a whole lotta software.

It’s truly revolutionary and in the coming years, as Tesla begins being able to make enough batteries cheaply enough and develop their mid-sized, mid-priced new model, they will change forever the face of the automobile.

Today you can drive from San Diego to Boston (or New York City or Washington, DC) for free. Yup. For free. Tesla superchargers, which take a mere 20 minutes (have a cuppa while you wait) to get you another 150 miles worth of juice, are dotted across the continent. More are being installed every day. There is no charge for a Tesla at any of these and never will be.

Recycling Hillary

Glenn McCoy had a pretty good political cartoon mocking Hillary Clinton. Click and take a look. It shows a recycling paper bin with her shredded emails and another one marked “IDEAS.” Predictably, she’s in the latter box looking like either she fell or someone tossed her in. McCoy, whose occasionally sharp eye is tuned rightward, is echoing the line that the GOP has ginned up. There’s nothing new here, folks. All of HRC’s ideas, proposals, positions, political philosophies, you name it, are old and “recycled.”

The interesting part of this is that they’re right. The really fun part of it is that this is actually good, very good.

Hillary’s position on social issues like abortion, gay rights, marriage equality, immigration, a progressive tax structure, women’s issues, income inequality, education and similar issues are pretty much straight progressive and liberal. Some are old (education) some are actually pretty new (gay rights).

Similarly with environmental and science-oriented issues like climate change, funding for basic research, protecting natural resources, preserving national parks and shorelines. Here we find her again siding with the left and, yes, virtually all these positions are “old.” None of them are bad.

She’s also pretty good on issues like holding fast on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, the ACA or Obamacare — I’ve decided I like calling it that. It immortalizes him for this accomplishment and turns the tables on the GOP toadies who started using it as a slur. Some of these programs are old, others very new. And, for those who’ve forgotten, Hillary was instrumental in passing CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program).

Where Hill (ever notice — the more familiar someone becomes, the more we tend to shorten their names) starts looking less appealing is her tendency to drift toward the use of force a bit sooner and with less provocation than would seem wise and her unfortunate cozy links with the big money goons on Wall Street. Alas, she shares these with Obama.

Now is all this stuff just a bunch of “recycled” ideas? Yup, a lot of it is. But so what; they may be old ideas but, mostly, they’re good ones.

What the Republicans fear the most is that she will actually get to put some of these old, dusty ideas into practice. They’ve been rather successful at pushing these kinds of programs out of the spotlight and managed to make many “old” and effective principles look bad (e.g., unions). What they really worry about is that if she gets to enact these recycled ideas, the economy will fully recover, the unconscionable gap between the 1% and the rest of us will start to close, the minimum wage will move toward a level where you can actually live on it, unions will recover their clout, solid research into basic science will blossom — you know, all that stuff the GOP hates.

Unless she gets hit by a meteorite, she’s going to be the Democratic nominee. You don’t need a Ouija board for this. She’s also going to win the presidency. The only question is by how much and how long will her coattails be.

Jeb is the most likely opponent but he has liabilities — the main one being that the Tea Party crazies hate him and might stay home. The other one is that unfortunate last name. I can’t wait till the Dems pull out that quote from Mama Barbara when Jeb’s name was first floated a year or so ago. It was something like “I don’t think so. This country’s had enough Bushes in the White House.”

All the others are shallow pretenders (Walker, Rubio) or demagogues (Cruz) and will become unmasked as such during the campaign. The best hope is that the Democratic margin in ‘16 will be great enough to pull both the House and Senate back into their hands. Then Hillary can recycle all those old ideas — effectively, because she’s seen what a train wreck Obama’s continued efforts at bipartisanship produced.

Down with the new; let the old return — Hey, isn’t that the Conservative chant?

Wild Rice, Mushroom Curry Soup

Enough grousing about politics, time for another recipe. Here’s one of our favorite soups. You can even make a vegetarian version of this by using veggie broth instead of chick broth. If you like your soups richer, replace the broth with a stock (oddly, I’ve always liked Swanson’s and it turns out others do too — both Consumer’s Reports and Cooks Illustrated rate their stocks and broths highly). Recipe serves four.

Curry Mushroom and Wild Rice Soup

2 T butter

1 T olive oil

1 lg. onion, chopped

1 c shitake mushrooms, sliced

1 c crimini (or white button) mushrooms, sliced

1/2 c celery, sliced

1/4 c flour

6 c chick broth

1/3 c dry sherry

parsley, scallion chopped for a garnish 

Rice

1/2 c wild rice

1/2 c regular rice

Seasoning mix

2 t curry

1/2 t powdered mustard

1/2 t thyme

1/4 t black pepper 

Cook rice. Start the wild rice (using a 3.5 to 1 water-to-rice ratio). Cook 25 minutes. Add regular rice and additional water (use a 2 to 1 ratio). Cook till just this side of al dente (another 15-18 minutes). While rice cooks prepare the soup.

In large pot, sauté onion in butter/olive oil till just beginning to brown, 7 - 8 min

Add mushrooms and celery and sauté another 7 - 8 minutes (add butter or oil if needed)

Add flour, incorporate

Add spice mix, incorporate

Add chicken broth, simmer 7 - 8 min

Add sherry, simmer 7 - 8 min

Add cooked rice, simmer 7 - 8 min

Serve with garnishes, crusty baguette and a salad.