The matter of advancement of AI poker (or artificial intelligence) is one that has long been an exciting topic for tech engineers and enthusiasts. Furthermore, in recent times, we have actually started to witness real developments in this field, making AI a reality instead of a science fiction fantasy. AI has been pitted against human intelligence in a number of different tasks, situations and games to find out how it will react to these challenges, with one of the latest examples of this testing being a game of poker in which AI was playing against human beings.
Earlier this year, an AI named Libratus was subjected to a pretty intensive test when it was put up against a number of the finest and most successful poker players in the world during a tournament lasting for 20 days. The human players who pitted their wits against Libratus were Daniel McAulay, Jimmy Chou, Jason Les and Dong Kim, and the tournament saw them playing against the AI poker bots via 11-hour sessions in front of computer screens at Pittsburgh’s Rivers Casino.
The chosen form of poker was Texas Hold’em, but the results did not make easy viewing for those worried that one day technology like AI will render us all redundant. Libratus comfortably defeated all four of these top poker pros, claiming chips that amounted to winnings of $1.7 million. Perhaps wisely, the human players were not competing for real money on this occasion, but the results were a stunning vindication of AI technology. Libratus is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University boffins and proved astonishingly flexible – able to change strategies each day to best its opponents.
This left the, perhaps somewhat bruised, poker pros complaining that the boffins were adjusting it after play ended each day, but there is no evidence to support this. In case this was not enough of a chastening experience for humanity, a second AI – this time named Lengpudashi – went on to repeat this triumph over a run of exhibition poker games held in China during April. This time the competition lasted for five days, but the results were equally comprehensive – as Lengpudashi won £230,000.
The human players that took it on included Yue Du, who has enjoyed success at the World Series of Poker, but the other players were investors, computer scientists and engineers, rather than pros. They tried to out think the AI poker bots by deploying machine intelligence and game theory, but this proved no more effective than the strategies of the poker players in the earlier match-up. While this doesn’t mean that the game is up for us humans when it comes to poker, it does indicate that AI may well play a major role in the game in years to come – whether it becomes part of the set up at online casinos or in some other form.
