That's wrong too. If you think there are fewer variables in limit hold'em to figure when making your decision, you don't understand the game.
If you went to a no-limit tournament and just pushed all of your chips into the middle at every single opportunity, it's been shown that you're only a slight loser. At the WSOP main event, you'd be a better player than at least 1/3 of the field.
This is not true if you were to play in a limit tournament and raise every time. You'd probably be the worst player in the field.
The fact that it's less complicated is why no-limit is the tournament game of choice, but high stakes live poker is generally limit.
Nope. NL is a much more complex game than limit. This is covered fairly well in the U-of-A literature. Also some of the two plus two NL books describe why NL is more complex.
Just because there is a simple strategy (shortstacking push/fold) that can be applied successfully against weak players, that doesn't mean that NL is a simpler game.
When you are trying to model the game there is a lot more to consider in NL. In Limit at each point in a hand and at each future point in a hand there are only limited actions that your opponent can take - raise, call, check, fold. In NL they can do any of these actions but also for any amount - push, raise pot, raise 1/2 pot etc. So the problem space for NL is much larger than for Limit. Bluffing is a much bigger part of NL and bluffing is hard to model.
Playing profitable limit poker is a fairly mechanical, mathematical process. You can't force people out of a hand with a big bet. It basically boils down to betting when you're probably ahead, folding when you're probably behind and drawing when the pot odds are favorable.
The U of A bots can play limit reasonably successfully against decent players. A decent player can easily beat their bots at NL.
Building a bot that can profit at the microstakes tables might be easier for NL than limit because you can employ a push/fold short stacking strategy like you describe. But building a bot that can survive against better players would be much harder for NL than Limit.
There are fewer variables when factoring in your opponent modeling. I'm sure being who you are you are very familiar with the UofA research and I'm pretty sure it backs up this statement.
Pushing every hand isn't right, it's pushing every hand with certain cards that Sklansky taught which admittedly is only a slight loser but a loser none the less.
I'm not saying limit holdem isn't a complex deep game, all I'm saying is that when it comes to bots no-limit bots are a lot harder to get right(in opponent modelling primarily which is a big part of bots these days).
I think no-limit is the tournament game of choice because it's seen by the general public as being the more exciting of the two(not that I agree but thats another discussion).
I still disagree and think that limit is, in general, a much more complex game. But even if it's not, I think you're thinking of building a bot that's a world class player. That may be harder at no-limit, I'm not really sure.
But if you're building from the standpoint of breaking even at low stakes, it's far easier to do for no-limit, especially sit and goes. It's literally a couple hundred lines of if/then statements.
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That's wrong too. If you think there are fewer variables in limit hold'em to figure when making your decision, you don't understand the game.
If you went to a no-limit tournament and just pushed all of your chips into the middle at every single opportunity, it's been shown that you're only a slight loser. At the WSOP main event, you'd be a better player than at least 1/3 of the field.
This is not true if you were to play in a limit tournament and raise every time. You'd probably be the worst player in the field.
The fact that it's less complicated is why no-limit is the tournament game of choice, but high stakes live poker is generally limit.
Nope. NL is a much more complex game than limit. This is covered fairly well in the U-of-A literature. Also some of the two plus two NL books describe why NL is more complex.
Just because there is a simple strategy (shortstacking push/fold) that can be applied successfully against weak players, that doesn't mean that NL is a simpler game.
When you are trying to model the game there is a lot more to consider in NL. In Limit at each point in a hand and at each future point in a hand there are only limited actions that your opponent can take - raise, call, check, fold. In NL they can do any of these actions but also for any amount - push, raise pot, raise 1/2 pot etc. So the problem space for NL is much larger than for Limit. Bluffing is a much bigger part of NL and bluffing is hard to model.
Playing profitable limit poker is a fairly mechanical, mathematical process. You can't force people out of a hand with a big bet. It basically boils down to betting when you're probably ahead, folding when you're probably behind and drawing when the pot odds are favorable.
The U of A bots can play limit reasonably successfully against decent players. A decent player can easily beat their bots at NL.
Building a bot that can profit at the microstakes tables might be easier for NL than limit because you can employ a push/fold short stacking strategy like you describe. But building a bot that can survive against better players would be much harder for NL than Limit.
There are fewer variables when factoring in your opponent modeling. I'm sure being who you are you are very familiar with the UofA research and I'm pretty sure it backs up this statement.
Pushing every hand isn't right, it's pushing every hand with certain cards that Sklansky taught which admittedly is only a slight loser but a loser none the less.
I'm not saying limit holdem isn't a complex deep game, all I'm saying is that when it comes to bots no-limit bots are a lot harder to get right(in opponent modelling primarily which is a big part of bots these days).
I think no-limit is the tournament game of choice because it's seen by the general public as being the more exciting of the two(not that I agree but thats another discussion).
I still disagree and think that limit is, in general, a much more complex game. But even if it's not, I think you're thinking of building a bot that's a world class player. That may be harder at no-limit, I'm not really sure.
But if you're building from the standpoint of breaking even at low stakes, it's far easier to do for no-limit, especially sit and goes. It's literally a couple hundred lines of if/then statements.