ALGORITHMS FOR EVOLVING NO-LIMIT TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER PLAYING AGENTS

Garrett Nicolai, Robert Hilderman

2010

Abstract

Computers have difficulty learning how to play Texas Hold'em Poker. The game contains a high degree of stochasticity, hidden information, and opponents that are deliberately trying to mis-represent their current state. Poker has a much larger game space than classic parlour games such as Chess and Backgammon. Evolutionary methods have been shown to find relatively good results in large state spaces, and neural networks have been shown to be able to find solutions to non-linear search problems. In this paper, we present several algorithms for teaching agents how to play No-Limit Texas Hold'em Poker using a hybrid method known as evolving neural networks. Furthermore, we adapt heuristics such as halls of fame and co-evolution to be able to handle populations of Poker agents, which can sometimes contain several hundred opponents, instead of a single opponent. Our agents were evaluated against several benchmark agents. Experimental results show the overall best performance was obtained by an agent evolved from a single population (i.e., with no co-evolution) using a large hall of fame. These results demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithms in creating competitive No-Limit Texas Hold'em Poker agents.

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Paper Citation


in Harvard Style

Nicolai G. and Hilderman R. (2010). ALGORITHMS FOR EVOLVING NO-LIMIT TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER PLAYING AGENTS . In Proceedings of the International Conference on Evolutionary Computation - Volume 1: ICEC, (IJCCI 2010) ISBN 978-989-8425-31-7, pages 20-32. DOI: 10.5220/0003063000200032


in Bibtex Style

@conference{icec10,
author={Garrett Nicolai and Robert Hilderman},
title={ALGORITHMS FOR EVOLVING NO-LIMIT TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER PLAYING AGENTS},
booktitle={Proceedings of the International Conference on Evolutionary Computation - Volume 1: ICEC, (IJCCI 2010)},
year={2010},
pages={20-32},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0003063000200032},
isbn={978-989-8425-31-7},
}


in EndNote Style

TY - CONF
JO - Proceedings of the International Conference on Evolutionary Computation - Volume 1: ICEC, (IJCCI 2010)
TI - ALGORITHMS FOR EVOLVING NO-LIMIT TEXAS HOLD'EM POKER PLAYING AGENTS
SN - 978-989-8425-31-7
AU - Nicolai G.
AU - Hilderman R.
PY - 2010
SP - 20
EP - 32
DO - 10.5220/0003063000200032