Gambling Articles

September 28, 2011 - A listing of Las Vegas area sports books along with their affiliations and hours.

September 1, 2011 - Commentary on "Universal Statistical Properties of Poker Tournaments" - Published in the September 2011 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

I'm going in a different direction in this month's article. While I will still be discussing a research paper on the topic of poker published in a reputable journal, this time out we won't be looking at poker strategy. Instead, the paper under consideration will discuss the dynamics of poker tournaments.

July 4, 2011 - Commentary on "A Near-Optimal Strategy for a Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em Poker Tournament" - Published in the July 2011 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

In the previous article of this series, I discussed a paper that found an approximate solution to three-player jam/fold no-limit hold'em tournaments given a particular blind structure and total number of chips in play. The findings were an extension of the results of the paper that will be discussed this time out: ... .

May 1, 2011 - Commentary on "Computing an Approximate Jam/Fold Equilibrium for 3-player No-Limit Texas Hold'em Tournaments" - Published in the May 2011 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

The paper I'm discussing this month is titled "Computing an Approximate Jam/Fold Equilibrium for 3-player No-Limit Texas Hold'em Tournaments". It was written by Sam Ganzfried and Tuomas Sandholm from Carnegie Mellon University.

March 1, 2011 - Commentary on "Using Counterfactual Regret Minimization to Create Competitive Multiplayer Agents" - Published in the March 2011 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

In this article, I'm looking at research that's heading in a new direction from previous columns. All the research I've covered so far has been regarding algorithms for two-player poker. This time I'm discussing research that tackles three-player games.

January 1, 2011 - Commentary on "A Memory-Based Approach to Two-Player Texas Hold'em" - Published in the January 2011 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

The paper I'm discussing this time around is titled "A Memory-Based Approach to Two-Player Texas Hold'em". It was written by Jonathan Rubin and Ian Watson from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. The paper was published in the proceedings of AI 2009: Advances in Artificial Intelligence, ... .

November 1, 2010 - Investigating "Texas Hold'em Heads Up Poker" - Published in the November 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

Recently there was a discussion in the TwoPlusTwo "News, Views, and Gossip" forum, now closed, about a new video casino game that might be of interest to poker players. Called, "Texas Hold'em Heads Up Poker", it's a slot machine style console that contains a computer that plays regular old heads-up limit Texas hold 'em against players who care to put up their money.

October 2, 2010 - Commentary on "Pattern Classification in No-Limit Poker: a Head-Start Evolutionary Approach" - Published in the October 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

This month I'm discussing the paper titled, "Pattern Classification in No-Limit Poker: a Head-Start Evolutionary Approach". It was written by Brien Beattie, Garrett Nicolai, David Gerhard, and Robert J. Hilderman from the University of Regina in Canada,... .

August 4, 2010 - Commentary on "Bayesian Poker" - Published in the August 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

Kevin Korb, Ann Nicholson, and Nathalie Jitnah at Monash University in Australia wrote the paper, "Bayesian Poker". It was published in the "Proceedings of Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence" at Stockholm, Sweden in August 1999.

June 20, 2010 - From our Shameless Self-promotion Department, LV Revealed maintainer Nick Christenson appeared on Lou Krieger's Internet radio show Keep Flopping Aces on Thursday, June 17. Most of the hour is spent discussing the BARGE gambling event, but a little time is spent on book reviews and the Death Watch.

June 1, 2010 - Commentary on "On the Usefulness of Opponent Modeling: the Kuhn Poker case study" - Published in the June 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

Once again, I examine a paper that covers opponent modeling (OM). As I have explained previously in this series, opponent modeling is the art of reasoning out an opponent's strategy, such that we might develop an exploitive counter-strategy.

May 29, 2010 - To Serve (or Sever) Station A commentary on the ruling regarding Station Casinos' plan to emerge from bankruptcy.

April 1, 2010 - Another list of casino information, a partial list of the prices at which casinos have been sold.

April 1, 2010 - Commentary on "Optimal Heads-up Preflop Hold'em" - Published in the April 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

This article series has been about gleaning poker insight from academic research on the subject. So far, this research has been in the form of articles in prestigious journals or from highly regarded conferences, and most of these papers have been on the order of a dozen pages in length. This article is a little different. Here, I'll be looking at a Usenet news posting of a few hundred words from more than a decade ago. ...

March 27, 2010 - Ahead of the RJ's annual poll, we present our picks for The Best Restaurants in Las Vegas.

February 13, 2010 - Yet Another Las Vegas Casino Timeline is available.

February 1, 2010 - Commentary on "Bayes' Bluff: Opponent Modeling in Poker" - Published in the February 2010 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

Last time around I discussed a paper on optimal strategies for poker from the University of Alberta's Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG). This month I examine a paper from the same group on the issue of opponent modeling. It is titled, "Bayes' Bluff: Opponent Modeling in Poker". ...

January 22, 2010 - The updated list of the worst Las Vegas casino parking garages is available again. Enjoy.

December 27, 2009 - The Future of Binion's A commentary speculating on the future of Binion's after the closing of their hotel rooms.

December 1, 2009 - Commentary on "Approximating Game-Theoretic Optimal Strategies for Full-Scale Poker" - Published in the December 2009 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

Over the last decade or so, the research group that has pushed furthest the frontiers of computer poker is the Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG) at the University of Alberta. The most visible member of the group is the lead author of the paper I will discuss in this month's column, Darse Billings. ...

November 13, 2009 - Considering CityCenter A commentary by Nick Christenson on the effect on Las Vegas of CityCenter.

November 1, 2009 - Echelon: A Dream Deferred A commentary by Nick Christenson on the shutting down of the Las Vegas Echelon construction project.

October 3, 2009 - Commentary on "The Endgame in Poker" - Published in the October 2009 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

It's well known among those who follow tournament poker that Chris "Jesus" Ferguson won the main event at the World Series of Poker in 2000. What's not quite as well known is that in the previous year he was awarded his PhD in computer science from UCLA. Of course, it can't be a huge surprise that "Jesus" would obtain an advanced degree from UCLA, as his father, Thomas, teaches in the Mathematics department of the same school. Both have a professional interest in the branch of mathematics known as game theory, so it's not too surprising that they might collaborate on a paper titled The Endgame in Poker. ...

August 1, 2009 - Commentary on "Poker Superstars: Skill or Luck" - Originally published in the August issue of the August 2009 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

A poker player's results during a limited time interval, such as a cash game session or single tournament, will be partially due to skill and partially due to luck. Over short time intervals, we expect results to be dominated by luck. Over time intervals that are sufficiently long, we expect skill to dominate results. For tournament poker, how many results do we need before we can be confident in saying that the poker players who have had the best results are the best tournament players? ...

June 1, 2009 - Commentary on "Abstraction Methods for Game Theoretic Poker" - Originally published in the June 2009 issue of the TwoPlusTwo Online Magazine.

In recent years, researchers in the fields of mathematics and computer science have been investigating better strategies for playing poker. In fact, I will make the prediction that going forward a majority of new breakthroughs in poker strategy will be accomplished on the basis of a combination of advanced mathematics and computer simulation. ...