In this presentation we assess the hypothesis that a strategy
including information related to game-specific factors in a poker
tournament performs better than one founded on hand strength knowledge
alone. Specifically, we demonstrate that information pertaining to
opponents' prior actions, the stage of the tournament, one's chip stack
size and seating position all contribute towards a statistically
significant improvement in the number of tournaments won.
Additionally,
we test the hypothesis that a strategy which combines information from
all the aforementioned factors performs better than one which employs
only a single factor. We show that an evolutionary algorithm is
successfully able to resolve conflicting signals from the specified
factors, and that the resulting strategies are statistically stronger.