SoylentNews

Fnord666 writes:

Facebook and CMU's poker AI beat five pros at once (archive)

Facebook and Carnegie Mellon University have built another artificial intelligence bot that beat some top poker pros. While AI bots have been [able] to best professional players in one-on-one competition, Facebook claims it's the first time a bot has been able to beat top pros in "any major benchmark game" when there's more than one opponent at a time. Pluribus bested professionals in no-limit Texas Hold'em in a couple of different formats: five AI bots and one human, and one bot and five real-life players. The researchers behind Pluribus wrote in a paper published in Science that creating such a multiplayer poker bot "is a recognized AI milestone."

In the likes of chess and Go, everything is laid out in the open. But in poker, there's hidden information, namely the cards your opponents have. That brings different, complex strategies to poker not seen in other games, including bluffing. As such, AI bots have typically struggled to account for hidden information and effectively act on it.

Bluffing poses a particularly interesting challenge. A successful bluff can dramatically change a poker game in your favor, but do it too much and your deception becomes predictable. So the bot has to balance bluffing with betting on legitimately strong hands.

Also at BBC, The Verge, Ars Technica, and Facebook.

Original Submission