A Heads-up No-limit Texas Hold’em Poker Player: Discretized Betting Models and Automatically Generated Equilibrium-finding Programs

Abstract

We present Tartanian, a game theory-based player for headsup no-limit Texas Hold’em poker. Tartanian is built from three components. First, to deal with the virtually infinite strategy space of no-limit poker, we develop a discretized betting model designed to capture the most important strategic choices in the game. Second, we employ potential-aware automated abstraction algorithms for identifying strategically similar situations in order to decrease the size of the game tree. Third, we develop a new technique for automatically generating the source code of an equilibrium-finding algorithm from an XML-based description of a game. This automatically generated program is more efficient than what would be possible with a general-purpose equilibrium-finding program. Finally, we present results from the AAAI-07<br>Computer Poker Competition, in which Tartanian placed second out of ten entries.