Previous Computer Science Studies

In computer science, poker has been used as a testbed in different areas such as cognitive science, machine learning, search techniques and Bayesian networks. Since the founding of game theory by John Von Neumann [von Neumann and Morgensternvon Neumann and Morgenstern1953], poker has been the subject of mathematical and economics analyses. However, these studies have often used oversimplified versions of poker, making most of the work done in these areas not applicable to the development of strong poker-playing programs. During the 1950's most of the interest was in simplified poker models which imposed severe restrictions on the usefulness of the research. Many models consisted of only one betting action per round and did not include the drawing of cards. Strategies developed during the study of these models would have to be modified and adapted significantly to be of any usefulness for the successful play of ``real'' poker and would in most cases require an entirely new framework to start from.