1. CFR is quite different to the strategy described by Davidson, but both use sampling.
2. Vanilla means nothing is sampled. But groups of cards are collapsed into buckets
3. In the context of CFR, strategy means "for each situation, how frequently do I fold, call or raise". Situation = cards held, board cards, opponent previous actions, our previous actions.
4. IIRC Amax wrote the code based on the UofA papers. I don't use that approach any more
5. Not sure. UoA publication? Marc Lanctot video? Poker-AI? Google with the site option is your friend.
It's out of date now but still worth reading
https://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/research/ ... _AIJ11.pdf