AI gets better at Poker. The poker bots are coming

The First Battle Between AI & Humans is Over And We LostThe war that sci-fi enthusiasts predicted between machines and humans may have begun, and the battleground was not the Internet or banking systems, but rather on the floor of a world-class casino.

According to facts and statistics from Pokersites, AI (Artificial Intelligence) earlier this year made a big leap in their abilities to predict and strategize human behavior, defeating us at one of the most popular strategy games played in modern time: Poker.

Libratus

A poker playing bot designed and built by the team at CMU is, today, likely the best poker player on the planet, based on preliminary results and testing. Libratus challenged four of the world’s top professional players in a not-so-friendly game of cards, and to the surprise and terror of the sci-fi community, defeated all four rather decisively. The bot won at an average rate of $14.70 per hand, played over the course of over 120,000 hands, for a total of over 1.75 million dollars. Additionally, only one pro was able to keep his net losses under six figures, though ultimately losing to the poker bot.

Implications

Poker is one of the most simple-to-learn, difficult-to-master games on earth. A player would need 10 billion years, playing 1 hand per second, to experience all limit-hold-em situations. Considering that AI is capable of ramming 20,000 years of human work into every week, AI will continue to get better and faster than a human ever could. The technology itself is already being applied across a wide range of sectors including banking, medicine, and healthcare, cybersecurity, government, and defense.