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Comment by hnedeotes

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Comment by hnedeotes

Hm, I don't really agree. I think that bluffing feels more important in poker because of the usual monetary value attached, and is more of a strategic hindrance when playing against bots, while it's very important between humans because (usually) of the money involved - even in this article there's a mentioning that the bots don't care about bluffing and that for humans that is part of the normal gameplay and mastery.

There's also the decision points, in poker it's way less. You're dealt cards, the table reveals cards, you bet/ante, move to the next, bet/ante. It's a very finite sequence of moves until disclosure. Plus it's 52 cards divided by the table players while on MtG it's 60 per players that you can't know (even lands can interact beyond being a resource and in competitive lists usually they do, specially in older formats) - although with enough/infinite time/memory you can probably generate a table for all possibilities, you still have to contend with the interactions other than the card types. A 9 Diamond is a 9 diamond. A Skull Clamp is a Skull Clamp but the way it interacts, its value/threat is highly dependent on context that can/might be hidden.

While I think that MtG is indeed "poker" like underneath the keywords, it's many more levels and I think bluffing can be way more "complex" but simply isn't because even at the pro-tour level prize pools are insignificant when compared to serious poker tables. Some MtG players are known to also dabble/play poker regularly.

I also think that the structure of poker game-play is more prone to be exploited by a competent bot - if you have a "budget" and you assign a bot to a table where the antes are "in-line" with the "budget" it has, it can mathematically (within a very high degree of probability) always turn a profit - ultimately humans fail in part because they enter "bluff" kingdom against a bot as the bots can just rely on mathematical probabilities. Made up numbers but the idea being, you have $200 to play. Choose a table where this allows you to play X games at least, say antes of cents, it should be able to make money most of the time at some point.

Yes, but as the other reply mentioned, the thing is you don't know if it's red deck wins, or a RDW with a tweak for the metagame and building the "he thinks that I think that he thinks" tables would probably require for practical terms what could amount to infinite storage and any of these chains, if followed through, can land the bot in a losing position hard to come back from. Now, to be honest, most MtG players aren't that good either, they play it more like a hobby/fun game, rather than approach it as poker/probabilities.

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