POKER
Left Poker-Faced By AI Artificial Intelligence can now play and win poker! Triumph over human opponents in poker is like setting a benchmark, going beyond the general paradigm and stretching the boundaries of poker. Here, we take a quick look at AI’s diet plan against human players.
By Ananya Agarwalla
If a computer that has learned to play only from past data constantly wins and lacks the same capacity that humans do, it shows that the realm of poker goes way beyond the idea of luck. It was in July 2019, that a piece of news spread like wildfire across the poker community all around the world that a technology named Plurubis beat the top poker players at heads-up no-limit Texas Hold ‘em poker. Darren Elias, Chris Ferguson and others with World Poker Tour Titles were beaten alas by a com20
GUTSHOT
J U LY
2021
puter. These players are not just famous; Darren Elias, held the record for most World Poker Tour titles, and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, was the winner of six World Series of Poker events. To put it simple, ‘the computer’ played a sound, game-theory optimal strategy often played by the top ‘human’ poker professionals; even the top ‘human’ poker players were not successful in finding a way to exploit it. The AI’s diet plan Over 12 days, Plurubis was tested by playing against a pool of professionals who have won
more than $1 million playing poker. They were always six-player games, meaning that the AI was put against five human players. Over 100,000 hands, the computer consistently beat the human professionals. Apart from only winning, the AI even developed new strategies that humans currently do not employ. Different types of bet sizing techniques were used. It clearly showed that the computer, even in a game based on unpredictable gameplay, bluffing and unknown information, was not taken lightly. It can compute and formulate strategies based on data and use
