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3. How Humans Play Poker

There have been many books written on how to play poker. However, these are intended for the development of human players and must be reinterpreted to be applicable to computer play. The author typically presents a small number of rules for human players to follow. These rules are frequently based on experience and sometimes also have a mathematical foundation. For example, in his book, Norman Zadeh uses mathematical analysis to deduce a series of generalized rules for several poker variants [15]. His rules all basically follow the form of giving the reader a threshold hand type to take a certain action in a certain situation.

Two of the more useful books for the purposes of this thesis are [14] and [13]. The first book, Hold'em Poker for Advanced Players by David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth, presents a high-level strategy guide for the game of Texas Hold'em (which only recently has become the focus of poker literature), with a special treatise on playing the pre-flop. It presents a strong rule-based approach with an emphasis that knowledge of your opponent should always be taken into account. The second book, The Theory of Poker by David Sklansky, is described by Darse Billings as ``the first book to correctly identify many of the underlying strategic principles of poker" [2] and uses illustrated examples from several variants including Texas Hold'em. In this chapter, some of the more important concepts and strategies are described.




next up previous contents
Next: 3.1 Hand Strength and Up: Dealing with Imperfect Information Previous: 2.2 Texas Hold'em   Contents
Denis Papp
1998-11-30