Winner Determination: Total Bankroll
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- Category: Rules
- Published on Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:23
- Written by Super User
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The total bankroll winner determination rule encourages competitors to submit agents that can do one thing: maximize their total winnings across all opponents.
Under the total bankroll winner determination rule, we are trying to isolate which agents are capable of maximally exploiting other agents submitted to the competition. Thus, under this winner determination rule, agents will be ranked based on total number of chips won against all competitors. That is, the player with the highest total bankroll wins the competition.
Collusion
The biggest issue with determining the winner based on total bankroll is collusion. In particular, there is a concern that "anti-competitors", competitors that intentionally play poorly when they receive a particular signal, could be submitted. Or, multiple submissions may be made by the same group of people with one program having a model of the other program. All such behavior is considered to be against the rules. In previous years' competitions, measures were taken to prevent this kind of malicious agent from affecting the results. Recently the competition has taken an optimistic view that no such entries will be submitted. If an entry is suspected of violating the spirit of the competition, that entry will be subject to disqualification, as determined solely by the Arbiter.
Mucking
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- Category: Rules
- Published on Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:20
- Written by Super User
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In casino poker, players are often allowed to "muck" their cards. This means that, after a showdown, they are allowed to concede the pot without revealing their cards to the other players. Although technically players are allowed to view the mucked cards, humans will usually not look as a matter of courtesy.
If there is no mucking, then all players will reveal their cards at every showdown. But, if a player folds before the showdown, then their cards will not be revealed until after the match is over.
Bet and Blind Sizes
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- Category: Rules
- Published on Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:16
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Games of poker are often described in terms of the size of bets or blinds used during the game. For example, 10/20 Limit Texas Hold'em is a game of Limit Texas Hold'em where the small bet is $10 and the big bet is $20. This document examines the meaning of this notation for our different poker variants.
Blinds vs. Bets
Blinds are forced bets that players must make in certain games of poker during the first round of betting. Generally, the big blind is equal to the minimum opening bet and the small blind is half the big blind. In limit style games, the big blind is the same size as the small bet.
Limit Texas Hold'em
X/Y Limit Texas Hold'em is a game of Limit Texas Hold'em where the small bet is $X and the big bet is $Y. In Limit Texas Hold'em, since the bets are a fixed sized that depends on the current round, the value of the small and big bets fully describe the different bets that can be used. In this game, the small bet is the size of a bet or raise during the preflop betting round and the postflop (second) betting round. The big bet is the size of a bet or raise during the turn (third) betting round and the river (fourth) betting round.
No-limit Texas Hold'em
X/Y No-limit Texas Hold'em is a game of No-limit Texas Hold'em where the small blind is X chips and the big blind is Y chips. Note that this is different from Limit Texas Hold'em since bets are no longer a fixed size.
Reverse Blinds
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- Category: Rules
- Published on Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:18
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Reverse blinds implies that the second player (the dealer) puts in the small blind, and the first player puts in the big blind. Counterintuitively, this means that the second player has the first action on the preflop betting round (the first betting round). In later rounds, the first player bids first. Reverse blinds only applies to games with two players.
Duplicate Poker
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- Category: Rules
- Published on Thursday, 27 December 2012 18:15
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Duplicate poker is a mechanism that allows for lower variance evaluation of poker agents. Using this technique has allowed the competition to better evaluate the different agents that enter using limited computational resources. Some form of this mechanism has been used since the first competition in 2006.
Heads-up Duplicate Matches
A duplicate match consists of an ordinary heads-up match of k hands between two players. The cards played are recorded (or the seed used to shuffle is saved) and then the players' memories are reset, they switch positions and play a second k hands.
Multiplayer Duplicate Matches
Introduced in the 2009 competition, multiplayer duplicate generalizes the heads-up duplicate format for the 3 player matches. If we consider that there are 3 possible seats that each bot can sit in, and 2 different relative orderings of the other 2 bots given the position of one bot, then there are six total possible configurations of 3 players at a given table. If we choose to play N hands per match then the following system will assure all players rotate through all possible seats and relative orderings:
- Seat the players in some ordering, say bot 1 is the small blind, bot 2 the big blind and bot 3 the button
- Play N/6 hands using standard poker rules: after every hand the button and blinds rotate one seat to the left
- Reset the memory of the bots
- Rotate the seating of the players to the left, so in our example bot 1 is now on the button, bot 2 is SB, bot 3 is BB
- Play N/6 hands again, dealing the same cards as before to the same seats as before (bot 1's first hand is now bot 3's first hand from round 1)
- Reset the bots again
- Rotate once more
- Play the same N/6 hands again
- Reseat the players in the other relative ordering - bot 1 SB, bot 3 BB, bot 2 button
- Repeat the above process of dealing out the same N/6 hands to the same seats, reseting the memories and rotating the bots between rounds
Series of Duplicate Matches
In order to accurately evaluate how well an agent would fare against a given opponent (or set of opponents) in a match of a specified length, we would like to have repeated duplicate matches. To do this, the agents must remember nothing between each duplicate match. Therefore, in a series of duplicate matches, each agent's memory is reset after every duplicate match.