How A.I. Conquered Poker
(Former pro and high stakes player, occasional solver developer)<p>This is actually one of the best poker articles I&#x27;ve ever seen in generalist media.  Not too clickbaity, reasonable high level overview of game theory, a (very accurate IMO) quote from old pro Erik Seidel about the state of the game just 15 years ago, a discussion on variance vs. EV and results, and most importantly, an emphasis on math, randomization techniques and emotional control rather than the TV image of staring in someone&#x27;s eyes and reading their soul.  Probably the one biggest misconception people have is that pros have sick reading abilities since TV likes to emphasize staredowns, when the actual single biggest skill long term pros have is the ability to lose hand after hand for hours and still play their best game.<p>Incidentally, the anecdote at the top of the article is pretty intuitive game theoretically.  Basically on the river you need to bluff with some portion of your hands, or else nobody will ever call when you have a good hand.  The natural portion of your hands to bluff with is the absolute worst ones - you don&#x27;t want to bluff with your middling hands because you have some small chance of just winning a showdown when it checks around.  On a board of Kc4c5c2d2c, 7d6d is quite likely the absolute worst hand you can hold given the action that&#x27;s taken place, therefore it&#x27;s the one you bluff with.  (For some pot&#x2F;stack sizes it&#x27;s possible that you bluff so rarely that you have to choose between 7d6d&#x2F;7h6h&#x2F;7s6s, but that&#x27;s getting into details.)