simulating poker? (math project)

So i have a friend who i'm helping on this project. He's trying to simulate a HU 5-card draw game to see the effects of variance in poker. I think it's a really interesting project.

Basically we laid out a design for a bot, writing out all the actions a player could go through in a limit HU 5-card draw game. By pitting 2 players who play exactly the same against eachother, we can see exactly how much variance there would be against two players of = skill level. Also we can tweak on players play to be better than the others (by a few simple adjustments) and find out how variance would work for a slight winner and a slight loser.

Thats all i really helped him with, but he called me up today saying that, although he thought he knew how to make a simulation of this, he actually could not. I told him i'd ask FTR about it.

So:

Do you guys know anyway to write a program to simulate this?

If there is, is it too complicated to do with a short time period?

any suggestions on other ways we might accomplish this?

im a computer science major and its not too complicated.

but theres already stuff to measure this, but i guess its cool if hes doing it for fun.

Everything in computer programming is done with i=0;i++;i<x. Thats all you need to know.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gabe

im a computer science major and its not too complicated.

but theres already stuff to measure this, but i guess its cool if hes doing it for fun.

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If you have any programming experience it would be pretty simple. I don't think there is a bot simulation program, not sure that would be a good thing if there was (or would it??).

FWIW, I don't think it would be too hard either.

here's some pseudocode for you...

X = {some range of hands before the draw}
Y = {some range of hands after the draw}

read cards
if hand is better than X
bet or call
else
fold

draw cards

if hand is better than Y
bet or call
else
fold

doomswitch code

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gabe

im a computer science major and its not too complicated.

but theres already stuff to measure this, but i guess its cool if hes doing it for fun.

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I musnt understand it right, it sounds pretty complicated to me.

I guess if you had all the rules they follow written out though it wouldn't be too difficult.

But making them actually play good would be hard. I guess you dont need them to play good though, just to play the same.

...Maybe i am just a really dumb comp sci major.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by shazbox

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gabe

im a computer science major and its not too complicated.

but theres already stuff to measure this, but i guess its cool if hes doing it for fun.

---

I musnt understand it right, it sounds pretty complicated to me.

I guess if you had all the rules they follow written out though it wouldn't be too difficult.

But making them actually play good would be hard. I guess you dont need them to play good though, just to play the same.

...Maybe i am just a really dumb comp sci major.

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The way I interpreted the comment (because then it lines up with what I was thinking, haha) is that it would be easy to write a program that allowed you to do a simulation.

I would have a difficult time coming up with an algorithm the modeled decent play, that would be much easier for gabe. In the end, if they're playing the same I don't think it would matter too much. I would expect the graphs to look like a random walk. The thing you wouldn't get by modeling a coin flip is the stdev in BB/hand.

I guess if you came up with a sample distribution of how often the final pot is 2bb, 3bb, 4bb, etc, you could assume 50% chance of winning with a variable weight and that would have to be pretty close.

/rambling

Ya it wouldn't be hard to just make a simulation.

Greenstein has some C++ libraries on his site that evaluate 5 and 7 card poker hands. I've done a bit of work in the past with them when I was working on some short-stacking stuff and it's not too hard to deal with.