Four of the best poker players in the world are being pitted against an artificial intelligence program in a Texas Hold ‘Em tournament. The program is called Libratus and was developed at Carnegie Mellon University School of computer science. The creators claim that the algorithm that Libratus will use in the tournament can be adapted for the purposes of cyber security, business, medicine and even military applications.
A tournament similar to this one was held back in 2015 and the outcome of that was: Humans 1, Bots 0.
A lot of poker comes down to pure luck. There’s no way to determine what cards you’re going to get (unless you’re cheating). The reason it is still considered a sport is because it relies on the player’s personalities and their ability to use their charisma to lure other players into making moves they want them to make.
Artificial intelligence bots are not known for having charisma. AI – as well as machines in general – have been traditionally designed to strictly adhere to logic. Libratus does not play as a normal poker play would, but instead analyzes the rules of poker and creates its own strategy based off of approximately 15 million core hours of computation.
The matches can be viewed via Twitch on the Rivers Casino official site.
