Chris Ferguson interview

[PAULM03]

Thought this might be of interest to some, copy and paste job from the subscription section of new scientist.

You won the World Series of Poker behind dark glasses, using mathematics not mind games. Are the other players freaked by your robotic take on the game? I don't engage in mind games because it is not part of my personality. The sunglasses and Stetson were originally meant as just an image thing - it's a false image, by the way. No one's freaked by all this. They have their strengths and I have mine. We're all learning from each other. I certainly watch players: there's a lot to be gained by watching the way they play. Do good poker players need a mathematical brain? You need to be able to reason logically: that's what all professional poker players have in common. These guys are really smart too: I've always said that anyone who can make money playing poker can make a lot more doing something else. So the stereotype of them being hard-living, risk-taking mavericks is wrong? A lot of poker players are gamblers at heart, though it is not the case for me. But the image of the game has changed. Five years ago, if you said you were a professional poker player, people would look down on you as a degenerate who was wasting his life away, and probably his money too. Now people see poker for what it is: a game of skill. John von Neumann was one of the first to research the mathematics of poker in the 1920s. If you played him, who would win? He'd have no chance! I'm not saying I'm smarter than von Neumann: I don't think he played that much. We all stand on the shoulders of those who went before us. After all, who knows more about astronomy - me or Copernicus? OK, bad example: he probably knew more about astronomy than me! Why did it take so long for a game theorist to win the World Series? I think it is because there hasn't been much of a link between academic game theorists and serious poker players. You can know all the game theory in the world, but you need to be a good player too in order to put theories into practice. I couldn't just teach a guy to play poker in a couple of days and expect him go into a casino and play well. You have to put in the hours. It took you 13 years to get your doctorate. Does that have anything to do with too much time playing poker? Yes, it does. But I wouldn't characterise it as playing too much poker: I was playing the right amount of poker. Some might find it surprising that you can reduce poker strategy to a set of rules - it seems such a psychological game. Does game theory bypass the human element of poker? Game theory can be applied successfully to all elements of poker. It is true that if you know how your opponent plays it is easy to know how best to play against him, but game theory tends not to worry about that. In game theory there is something known as optimal strategy. That means, essentially, assuming your opponent is playing very well and will take advantage of every mistake you make. What kinds of tactics does game theory teach you? Guidelines about how often you should bluff, for example. It turns out the best hands to bet are your best and worst hands, but you need to bet them in the right ratio, betting your bad hands one-third of the time. “Game theory teaches you how often you should bluff†Will computers ever play poker better than humans? I believe computers will be able to play the game very well. Poker is probably more similar to backgammon than chess in that way - the best backgammon players in the world are computers. But poker has a big human element. A perfect strategy in game theory is all very well, but there are loopholes. If I make a mistake a computer might not take advantage of it. Computers also assume you don't know what cards other players hold, but that's not necessarily the case. Can they learn the way people play and adjust their strategy? For a lot of people it is very hard to pull off a convincing bluff: that's the main human element that computers aren't going to be able to take advantage of. And it is going to be hard to teach a computer to read tells. Do you have a tell - a behavioural clue that tells other players something about your cards? Everybody has tells. Even if I knew what mine were I wouldn't tell you. Are tells important? This side of poker is a bit overrated. It is important, but my decisions are not based solely on tells: they don't inform you how to play your hand. Even reading the cards doesn't tell you that. You still have to feel things out. There isn't a book that tells you exactly how you should play. Most of the time I respond to the way my opponent plays. Do you sit there behind the sunglasses furiously calculating the right strategy? I don't do that much mental gymnastics during a game: much of that has been done at home. I have played millions of hands and worked out how I want to play. My strategy is more like a chess player who knows all the opening moves, who knows what they're going to do. Sometimes I'll do a little bit, but there isn't really that much computation going on when I'm at the table. You are a strategy-games addict. Can you remember a time when you didn't play them? No. My father used to bring home games that we would play all the time. Playing games at a young age teaches you critical reasoning - a logical way of thinking that's very important in poker and lots of other things. Now you write academic research papers with your father. Is that a successful combination? Yes, it works very well. I think that is due to our different skills: we can do a lot of research other people can't because they don't have the background in mathematics as well as poker. Mathematics tells you what questions you want to ask and gives the numbers that fit into the formula. I can test the formula and prove it is indeed the best way to play. You don't think it is fair to keep taking someone's money once you have figured out how to beat them. Are you the only poker player with an ethical policy? With that ethical policy, possibly! There will always be people who keep on putting their money on the table, but I don't want to be the one that takes it. I don't think it's fair and I don't enjoy it. It is different at poker tournaments, where everyone has already paid their money to the casino before the game starts. I'm glad there are people playing poker for big money in the tournaments. Because it helps you clean them out? Exactly. It makes my living. I don't have to do anything else to earn money.