Networks

Introduction

Former poker player turned programmer.

What's your primary background? The basic options are poker, statistics, and computer science. Feel free to add.

I played online poker for a living for about a year and a half after graduating from college, where I studied physics. I'm now an engineer at a New York startup.

Do you think it's possible to create a completely objective method for measuring skill in poker? If not, why not? Totally cool if you haven't thought about it.

I'm not really sure what "completely objective" means in this context. For example, how would you rate a highly exploitive player's skill? Or the skill of highly balanced poker bot? My naive definition of poker skill would be something like "average ability to maximize expectation weighted across a range of opponent strategies". A balanced bot would have a fairly uniform expectation vs a spectrum of strategies, whereas an exploitive player might do well vs some strategies but poorly vs others. Another question: part of poker skill is certainly being able to *perceive* what your opponent's strategy is. How will you measure that component?