Insight into the Theory of completeness of information – TCI – in live poker

From the definition of the TCI in poker of last week, this article offers an insight into the application of the same theory to a poker spot. It will also be an opportunity to introduce the concept of informative influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955) in poker.

TCI applied to a single spot of live Texas Hold’em poker

Last week it was established that only up to the river you will be able to receive all the information about the spot. In fact, for the informative primacy of the individual elements, 100% of the information is contained in the whole deck of fifty-two cards. This implies that the Theory of Completeness of Information – TCI – also takes into account the unseen arrangement of all components within the stub. If after the initial dealing you had the opportunity to see all fifty-two elements of the deck, you would really have 100% of the information available. As a result, potentially, the possibility of identifying 100% of the skills in possession. 

The informative influence in live poker

In fact, each player will be able to access, progressively, the vision of only five elements of the board, plus their own pocket cards, for a total of only seven cards out of fifty-two, so it will be possible to know only a portion of the total information contained in the deck. At this point it becomes necessary to understand the informative influence (Deutsch and Gerard, 1955) of the known elements that, progressively, develops in the single phases of the spot. It is expressed in the form of a quantity of information potentially accessible for each stage of the spot. The new paradigm of the theories of communication offers a particular tool that, through a mechanism of deconstruction and signification, helps to define “the value of probability that is realized within many combinatorial possibilities” [Anolli, 2012] at every stage of the spot. In the field of Semiotics and Philosophy of Languages there is a group of researchers dedicated to the study of communication according to the principles of piecewise Semantics.

Go to the next article to not miss the thread of the Skill Poker Index speech, or go to the first article of the series to resume it.

Pietro Semeraro 

Transl. by Margherita Basile