Games have been used to evaluate and advance techniques in the eld of Articial Intelligence since
before computers were invented. Many of these games have been deterministic perfect information
games (e.g. Chess and Checkers). A deterministic game has no chance element and in a perfect
information game, all information is visible to all players. However, many real-world scenarios
involving competing agents can be more accurately modeled as stochastic (non-deterministic), im-
perfect information games, and this dissertation investigates such games. Poker is one such game
played by millions of people around the world; it will be used as the testbed of the research presented
in this dissertation. For a specic set of games, two-player zero-sum perfect recall games, a recent
technique called Counterfactual Regret Minimization (CFR) computes strategies that are provably
convergent to an -Nash equilibrium. A Nash equilibrium strategy is very useful in two-player games
as it maximizes its utility against a worst-case opponent. However, once we move to multiplayer
games, we lose all theoretical guarantees for CFR. Furthermore, we have no theoretical guarantees
about the performance of a strategy from a multiplayer Nash equilibrium against two arbitrary op-
ponents. Despite the lack of theoretical guarantees, my thesis is that CFR-generated agents may
perform well in multiplayer games. I created several 3-player limit Texas Holdem Poker agents
and the results of the 2009 Computer Poker Competition demonstrate that these are the strongest
3-player computer Poker agents in the world. I also contend that a good strategy can be obtained by
grafting a set of two-player subgame strategies to a 3-player base strategy when one of the players
is eliminated.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:AEU.10048/751 |
| Date | 11 1900 |
| Creators | Abou Risk, Nicholas |
| Contributors | Szafron, Duane (Computing Science), Holte, Rob (Computing Science), Carbonaro, Mike (Educational Psychology) |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | 1555507 bytes, application/pdf |
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