DIGITAL LIFE

Artificial intelligence program plays and wins the best of poker

The artificial intelligence (AI) program, called Pluribus, defeated poker pro Darren Elias, who holds the record for most World Poker Tour titles, but also Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, winner of six World Series of Poker events . Each professional played separately 5,000 poker hands against five copies of the Pluribus (which he played against himself).
In another experience involving 13 professionals, who earned more than a million dollars playing poker, the program played at the same time with five of them and also won.
"Pluribus has achieved superhuman performance in a multiplayer poker game," Tuomas Sandholm, a professor of computer science, one of the mentors of Pluribus, said in an article in Science today.
"The ability to beat five other players in such a tricky game opens up new opportunities in using AI to solve a wide variety of real-world problems," he said. ".
"Playing a six-player game as opposed to a face-to-face game requires fundamental changes in how AI develops the game strategy," said Noam Brown, a Facebook scientist and researcher who added, "We are thrilled with their performance and we believe that some of Pluribus' gambling strategies may even change the way pros play poker. "
And defeated player Darren Elias recalled that the program was not playing with middle-aged professionals but with some of the best players in the world.
Sandholm led a research team that studied poker for 16 years and had already created before "Pluribus" the "Libratus", which two years ago also defeated poker pros.
Chess games, for example, have served as milestones for AI research. But in this case the players know how the board is and where all the pieces are. In poker the challenge is greater because the information is not complete, players do not know which cards are in play and if opponents may be, and often are, bluffing.
But Pluribus's AI is also not predictable as a machine is. Betting whenever you had the best hand possible would be logical, but if you bet only when you have the best hand it would be noticeable quickly.
That is why Pluribus calculates a balanced strategy taking into account all possibilities. Like having the best hand and not betting. Lusa Agency