Friday, November 1, 2013

Jungleman12 vs. PokerSnowie Heads Up Challenge

Dan Cates challenging PokerSnowie AI
The opportunity cost of making this short video is measured in the $1,000's.

I just saw this video on Pokerfuse.com and got really excited. My friend Bob seems to work this program into every conversation we have had the past four days, and even though my free trial bombed out several times a few months ago and caused me to move my attention elsewhere, I'm eager to try it again. Although I'm still unclear (although perhaps by reading the documentation I will understand more fully) how game theory optimal [GTO] ranges have been derived for a variety of different cash game formats, this new challenge that PokerSnowie is promoting shows an unprecedented amount of confidence in their program, which in my opinion is probably a -EV decision, but impressive nonetheless. 

As a quick aside, to show why I think this is -EV, a similar semi-public issue came up over a year ago in which a transcript of a chat box conversation between Daniel Negreanu and Matt Marafioti surfaced in which an obviously tilted or drunk Marafioti challenged Negreanu to a heads up $200/$400 match.  Rather than take the challenge, Negreanu just decided to needle him by saying stuff like "lol, you so baller!".  At the time i thought that Negreanu was just chickening out, but a day later I realized that this was a wise move on his part since the money he stood to gain was insignificant, but yet he would face an abundance of scrutiny for his decisions and face an undue amount of criticism for losing, which makes no sense because even if he had a 70/30 advantage on Marafioti (not possible IMO) he is still losing his fair share. The end result is that Marafioti was on a total freeroll- the masses expect him to lose so it's quickly forgotten, winning means an excess of unwarranted media attention.

Matt Marafioti shirtless with two black eyes
"Take your best shot, Negreanu...you have everything to lose."