TopMath Workshop "Computational Game Theory and Poker Bots"

General Information ↑

The PhD excellence program TopMath is sponsoring a series of workshops on various topics in mathematics and related areas. This workshop is on applying game theory to the construction of poker bots. Poster (pdf) (in German) NEWS - (08.08.08) Added pictures - (05.08.08) Added recommended exercises for Monday - (04.08.08) Added lecture material for Tuesday - (04.08.08) Changed schedule for Tue and Wed (afternoon session starts one hour earlier) - (01.08.08) Added lecture material for Tuesday - (01.08.08) Added lecture material for Monday and Wednesday - (30.07.08) Added schedule - (17.07.08) Added link to lecture notes - (17.07.08) Added poster

Date and Schedule ↑

August 4-6, 2008

Schedule for Monday:

10.15 - 11.00		lecture
11.00 - 11.15		coffee break
11.15 - 12.00		lecture
12.00 - 14.00		lunch break
14.00 - 14.45		lecture
14.45 - 15.15		coffee break
15.15 - 16.00		lecture

Schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday:

10.15 - 11.00		lecture
11.00 - 11.15		coffee break
11.15 - 12.00		lecture
12.00 - 13.00		lunch break
13.00 - 13.45		lecture
13.45 - 14.15		coffee break
14.15 - 15.00		lecture

Venue ↑

Technische Universität München, Fakultätsgebäude Mathematik/Informatik (FMI), Boltzmannstrasse 3, 85748 Garching bei München, Germany

Room: FMI 00.07.011

Travel information

Speakers ↑

Peter Bro Miltersen  and Troels Bjerre Sørensen , University of Aarhus, Denmark

Description ↑

In a series of lectures we present recent bodies of work on applying game theory in general and computational game theory in particular to the construction of poker playing "bots". The lectures will cover:

• Basics of linear programming and its applications to solving matrix games and two-player zero-sum extensive-form games.
• Heuristic abstraction techniques for approximately solving very large games, such as poker.
• The current research frontier concerning solving infinite duration games and computing equilibrium refinements.

Lecture Material ↑

Monday ↑

Thomas S. Ferguson: Introduction to two-player zero-sum game theory
Available at: http://www.math.ucla.edu/~tom/Game_Theory/mat.pdf

Daphne Koller, Nimrod Megiddo, Bernhard von Stengel: Fast Algorithms for Finding Randomized Strategies in Game Trees
Available at: http://theory.stanford.edu/~megiddo/pdf/stoc94.pdf

Tuesday ↑

Andrew Gilpin and Tuomas Sandholm: Lossless abstraction of imperfect information games
Available at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gilpin/papers/extensive.JACM.pdf

Andrew Gilpin, Tuomas Sandholm and Troels Bjerre Sørensen: Potential-aware automated abstraction of sequential games, and holistic equilibrium analysis of Texas Hold'em poker
Available at: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~trold/papers/gs3.pdf

Andrew Gilpin and Tuomas Sandholm: Expectation-based versus potential-aware automated abstraction in imperfect information games: An experimental comparison using poker
Available at: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~gilpin/papers/abscomp.aaai08.pdf

Andrew Gilpin, Tuomas Sandholm and Troels Bjerre Sørensen: A heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em poker player: Discretized betting models and automatically generated equilibrium-finding programs
Available at: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~trold/papers/tartanian.pdf

NEW: Michael Johanson (M.Sc. thesis): Robust Strategies and Counter-Strategies: Building a Champion Level Computer Poker Player
Available at: http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/papers/Papers/johanson.msc.pdf

Wednesday ↑

Peter Bro Miltersen, Troels Bjerre Sørensen: Fast Algorithms for Finding Proper Strategies in Game Trees
Available at: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bromille/Papers/extpropersoda.pdf

Peter Bro Miltersen, Troels Bjerre Sørensen: A near-optimal Strategy for a heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'Em Poker Tournament
Avaiblable at: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bromille/Papers/aamaspoker.pdf

Anne Condon: On algorithms for Simple Stochastic Games
Available at: http://www.cs.ubc.ca/~condon/papers/random.pdf

Daniel Andersson, Kristoffer Arnsfelt Hansen, Peter Bro Miltersen, Troels Bjerre Sørensen: Deterministic Graphical Games Revisited
Available at: http://www.daimi.au.dk/~bromille/Papers/dgg.pdf

Recommended Exercises ↑

Ferguson 2.6.1, 2.6.2, 2.6.4, all exercises in 5.9