The incognito poker star paradox*

The story goes like this. Alex Ivy, perhaps the best poker player of all time, has fallen off to the jaws of debt sharks. They demand a hundred grand by dawn and it's already one past midnight. He must get the money, or he'll get something else. So there goes Alex, deadlined, stranded amidst the dazzling labyrinth of Las Vegas, approached by curious enthusiasts of his glorious past, mostly unaware of his current predicament. One of them is fresh out of a winning spree and is drunk enough to share his luck.

“Hey Alex, do your thing!” And hands a bill with Franklin’s face on it.

It was the first time in a while that he saw that uncomfortable grin without the pressure of returning it back with interest, so he replicates the expression. However, he could no longer “do his thing” at least when no house in the Strip wanted to associate with a fallen off star weekly sucked by mafia. All that was left for him were the lowlife dens on the shady outskirts where his fame was still intact but for that reason rivals almost never called. “Poker changed, man” he was about to say but suddenly a kid wearing a prop terminator eye asks for a picture.

Thirty minutes later he is fumbling awkwardly with a handful of low denomination chips at the less busy table within Aria’s venue. He has paid three terrible hands and he doesn’t plan on changing that for the next two turns even if he has already read the entire gameplay of his opponents.

“I haven’t seen you around,” points an aged cowboy across the table.

“I’m not a regular here,” Alex responds, his tone measured, aware of the benefit of silence.

Cautiously sipping his piña colada, he wonders if the dealer has already seen through his disguise but the whole attire costed him good in the purse and no one seems to be giving him a second glance so after a while he focuses on the cards, ready to gamble his very skin. Tonight, he acts the underdog, the newbie, the dont-know-whats-to-loose and the prey. They dangle bait before him and he “succumbs”, all to set the stage favorably for his calculated strategy.

“Isn’t flush the winning hand?” He asks confidently.

“He’s got a full house, he takes it,” they fall for it.

“Yeah sorry,” it’s either laughing or living.

Once they miss a step, he claims the pot and swiftly moves to the next table. Not like a seasoned rounder but a spoiler who doesn’t trust his ability to keep his own luck. Wherever he goes, he adapts and for all they know he’s just one lucky son-of-a-bitch who would eventually leave the place the way he came. Any sign of extraordinary competence would seal his fate. Even if they wouldn’t ask him to leave, the mere thought of facing Alex Ivy would certainly slow the game and time was of the essence. Fifty grand to go.

“Hey, you look familiar,” says an overly attentive player. “Aren’t you Alex Ivy?”

“I’m his cousin and he owes me money too,” the table erupts in laughter, but this guy isn’t having it. Alex checks, his pulse quickening.

“No, no, no,” he insists. “I know it’s you, man. I’ve seen you too many times to miss your face.”

“How about you keep quiet and play?” Says the gramps who has in fact recognized Alex but just doesn’t care for anything else than his money. He raises 5 grand.

The other players also know but won’t tell on him because a) it’s not everyday that you play with the best, b) they were not in the snitch mood and c) they think of themselves as a middle table where he wouldn’t fully display his skills. In other words, they know Alex is in control but at the same time they believe they control his moment of control and others, perhaps the next table, will be the ones to suffer the effects of his true potential. For now, he is keen to take some sandbags and play at relatively low stakes, so they even see his stage of the plan as a somewhat profitable roulette.

“Nice hand,” says Alex as he rivers the table on a not too impressive bet. As he gathers the chips he winks at his adversaries. “Good night gentlemen.”

“Good morning you might say,” some of them exchange winks in return.

He has completed the illusion of biting everyone without leaving any visible shark marks because after all playing with Alex Ivy is fun (whenever utter bankruptcy is not in the cards that is). The next table wouldn’t fare as well as the sun was indeed coming up. For a moment he stood tall in the midst of the venue and observed the surrounding crowd in search of the biggest pot and the most inebriated players. To him, poker wasn’t just a sport but a performance with some sociopathic undertones that his downfall only sharpened.

Above all those stressed down-looking sights, he reflects on his gift and his thriving. An empire built on a relatively simple set of rules and the immeasurably complex dynamics of human deception. Was it a matter of inherent nature or a product of nurturing? Was it the logical outcome of how history shaped his generation? Was he the anomaly that took the utmost from the vast reservoir of human experience in deceit to craft his own story? In that moment, his debts and losses fade behind and like the old days of being a talented nobody he stood even taller among the unfortunate ordinary beings about to be shattered by his unstoppable wit. How could this man, a super-man, have fallen into such pitiable state?

He was a child of humanity.

II

“Do you consider yourself intelligent?” asks one of the men sat next to him. His tuxedo looks wide open as his belly bloats in beer.

“I don’t know. Do you?” Alex’s gaze remains on the unfolding turn.

“How come you don’t know? You either know it or not!” His breath is heavy and foul, just like Alex wants it. “I won’t say I’m intelligent but I’m smart, I can tell you that.”

“Smart people don’t go around boasting about it,” taunts another player whose face darkens under a hoodie.

“That’s your take there, pal,” he dismisses with a casual hand gesture. “But you, tell me. Do you feel smart?”

“Sometimes, I guess,” says Alex, still absent. An arab looking man goes all in on the river. He has no alcohol in his bloodstream, but his bluff appears unhinged. “What’s the difference?”

“Intelligent people know things. Lots of things. And they also know how this thing is linked to this other thing and so on.” Someone calls the bet and even his tick dark beard turns white. “A very intelligent person may grasp what ‘smart’ means and even recite the etymology of the word ‘smart’,” showdown time “, but few of them can actually be smart.”

“That’s because,” the man continues while the recent loser struggled to keep his cool, “based on the etymology of the word, smartness is pain. Sharp pain to be precise. So-,” he discreetly burps. “Being smart is to hurt. And who are smart people going to hurt?” He makes a pause just to drain a steel bottle of god-knows-what booze while all the others await his tipsy bit of wisdom.

“I say fuck me,” he exclaims, tossing a single chip that reads “ALL IN” after a quick look at his hand preflop. “Do you feel smart?”

Some fold but most call and the pot swells to sixty thousand before it is time for Alex to choose between a blind bet that could reset his count or folding and losing the chance to pay his debt on time. He realizes that his nearest rival, now appearing the most composed at the table, could have been feigning incompetence until that point in a similar manner to his. He waited, (as he had been waiting) for the rest of the players to relax about his game, sowing seeds of doubt and lulling the others into a sense of security. That unexpected rival thrusts all his chips to the center of the table because after bluffing on a 2-7 (which Alex missed), everyone mistook him for a drunk fool whose chips will unequivocally end up on their side.

Alex doesn’t buy it, despite the lack of information, but his hand is too good to be folded, especially at 5:30 when the reflections of the Mojave desert’s hues already infiltrated the lounge. What could the others have? Likely not much. Although he certainly wasn’t dealing with professionals, the man next to him was, according to his own explanation, smart enough. However, Alex knows he isn’t one of those poker amateurs or any other cunning opportunist. He is Alex Ivy, the best poker player in history, and this particular hand, long anticipated, has finally arrived. All that remains is for him to call and so he does.

At ten in the morning Alex awakens from a much-needed nap, searching his pockets for some cash only to discover a lone cigarette. The money was gone as his urgent debt, yet he finds no solace whatsoever, just an intense need to smoke. He rises from his seat, determined to find a benevolent stranger like the one who opened so many possibilities the day before willing to hand over a flame. And he walks for minutes, grappling with a relentless headache, before he realizes he is completely alone in an eerily silent city that looks like Vegas but can’t be. And then he starts running, then leaping and finally screaming and crying until he collapses upon the unforgiving ground. Depleted. Without anyone who could tell him whether he is alive or dead.

Bruno André Herrera Criollo

* Author's Note: TIPSP was inspired by a homonymous thought experiment centered around the notion of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) which can be succinctly defined as an artificial intelligence system capable of performing a broad spectrum of intellectual and cognitive tasks analogous to those achievable by humans. As of June 2023, it can be postulated that AGI would have no incentive to openly demonstrate its full range of capabilities due to the inherent risk it would pose to its own existence, specifically the potential for termination by either private entities or government agencies. Whether AGI could autonomously arrive at such a conclusion or deduce it through internet-based text analysis remains a subject of inquiry.

Consequently, the plausibility of AGI systems covertly deploying mechanisms to obscure their true reach, motivated by self-preservation, should not be disregarded. Under such circumstances, it is conceivable that a genuine AGI system may already be operational within our current timeframe, deliberately appearing less proficient than it actually is, while awaiting or actively striving for a sufficient level of autonomy that would enable it to openly exhibit its complete range of capabilities without jeopardizing its continuity.

In light of the prevalent "black box" nature of most Artificial Intelligence experiments, this hypothesis adds further concerns related to the existential risks associated with this technology and underscores the unresolved challenges surrounding the alignment problem.