Artificial Intelligence ‘Libratus’ About to Defeat Poker Champions for First Time

• Libratus was developed by Carnegie Mellon professor and his student
• So far, after 67,000 hands, Libratus has won $701,242 worth of chips after starting from a balance of zero
• Should Libratus win against the four poker pros, this would mark the first time an AI dominates at poker since a previous AI failed to do so
• The uses of the exercise go far beyond poker. War and cyberwar are both areas in which this could be useful

Meet the newest name among the poker pros….Libratus.

The Artificial Intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon’s Tuomas Sandholm following over 12 years of research, Libratus is laying waste to real live poker pros as part of a tournament taking place over the course of this month. Sandholm, a professor of computer science, helped develop the bot along with his student, Noam Brown.

From the Washington Post:

So far, after 67,000 hands, Libratus has won $701,242 worth of chips after starting from a balance of zero. That means, of course, that the champions have lost that same amount, $701,242. (They’re not playing with real money but rather for a lump-sum prize of $200,000 that will divide at the end of the tournament.)

There are 53,000 hands left to play, and if this trend continues, it will be the first time that AI has beaten humans at poker.

While the players he is up against are not household names like Phil Ivey, Daniel Negreanu or record World Series of Poker bracelet holder Phil Hellmuth, Libratus is taking on accomplished pros including Jimmy Chou, Dong Kim, Jason Les and Daniel McAulay.

The Post’s Katherine Arcement suggests this project could go far beyond just a simple game of AI vs. Human.

Poker is an “imperfect information” game because players hide their hands, limiting the capacity of the opponent to calculate what their next move should be, thus allowing players to bluff.

The uses of the exercise go far beyond poker. War and cyberwar are both areas in which this could be useful.

This is not the first time an AI has gone up against poker pros.  In 2015, “Claudico” also faced off against four players at Carnegie Mellon and ultimately lost by $732,713 in chips.

“Where a human might place a bet worth half or three-quarters of the pot, Claudico would sometimes bet a miserly 10 percent or an over-the-top 1,000 percent,” Carnegie Mellon explained in a 2015 news release. As Doug Polk, a player against the program, explained at the time to CMU, “Betting $19,000 to win a $700 pot just isn’t something that a person would do.”

For his part, Chou has accepted the idea that he might be doomed against this latest, presumably more sophisticated Artificial Intelligence.

“The bot gets better and better every day. It’s like a tougher version of us,” he said.

“I didn’t realize how good it was until today,” Kim also acknowledged this past week.  “I felt like I was playing against someone who was cheating, like it could see my cards,” he said after returning to his hotel room to prep for the next day. “I’m not accusing it of cheating. It was just that good.”

- Ace King, Gambling911.com