AI, poker, and mind games, with Max Chiswick

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) is joined by Max Chiswick, a former professional poker player turned AI educator, to explore how poker intersects with decision making. They discuss how the online poker boom created unprecedented opportunities to study decision-making at scale and how computational advances have transformed both the game's theory and practice. They dig into how poker serves as a laboratory for studying decision-making under uncertainty, pattern recognition, and opponent modeling, while also examining the sometimes problematic incentives that emerge in both online gambling and AI development.–Full transcript available here: https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/ai-poker-max-chiswick/–Sponsor: CheckCheck is the leading payroll infrastructure provider and pioneer of embedded payroll. Check makes it easy for any SaaS platform to build a payroll business, and already powers 60+ popular platforms. Head to checkhq.com/complex and tell them patio11 sent you.–Links:Max's website: https://maxchiswick.com/Max's startup for AI and Game Strategy: https://overbet.ai/The Expected Value Foundation & poker camp course: https://expectedvalue.org/Patrick's Bits about Money: https://www.bitsaboutmoney.com/–Twitter:@chisness@patio11-Timestamps:(00:00) Intro(00:26) Max's background and journey into poker(03:45) The credit card rewards game tangent(06:12) Why poker matters: reasoning and decision-making(07:49) The problem areas in the poker AI space(09:38) Poker as an assistive technology for reasoning(10:59) Online poker history(16:14) Understanding multitabling(21:14) Casino economics and gambling regulation(22:55) Sponsor: Check(26:32) PokerStars VIP program and professional incentives(29:47) Playing a million hands in a month(37:26) AI poker history and counterfactual regret minimization(43:35) Poker complexity(45:01) The impact of solvers on modern poker(45:52) Understanding poker game theory and decision trees(49:26) Recent developments in poker AI education(50:27) Teaching programmers to build poker bots(53:05) Wrap –Complex Systems is part of the Turpentine podcast network, the network behind Econ 102 with Noah Smith, The Riff with Byrne Hobart, and Turpentine VC. Turpentine also has a social network for top tech founders: https://www.turpentinenetwork.com/