Uncertainty in poker stems from two key sources, the shuffled deck and an adversary whose strategy is unknown. One approach
to playing poker is to find a pessimistic game-theoretic solution (i.e., a Nash equilibrium), but human players have idiosyncratic
weaknesses that can be exploited if some model or counter-strategy can be learned by observing their play. However, games
against humans last for at most a few hundred hands, so learning must be very fast to be useful. We explore two approaches
to opponent modelling in the context of Kuhn poker, a small game for which game-theoretic solutions are known. Parameter estimation
and expert algorithms are both studied. Experiments demonstrate that, even in this small game, convergence to maximally exploitive
solutions in a small number of hands is impractical, but that good (e.g., better than Nash) performance can be achieved in
as few as 50 hands. Finally, we show that amongst a set of strategies with equal game-theoretic value, in particular the set
of Nash equilibrium strategies, some are preferable because they speed learning of the opponent’s strategy by exploring it
more effectively.
Keywords Game-playing - Opponent modelling - Experts - Bayesian - Poker