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Stephen Jordan reports at the National Monitor that four of the world's greatest poker players are going into battle against a computer program that researchers are calling Claudico in the "Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence" competition at Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh. The pros — Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les — will receive appearance fees derived from a prize purse of $100,000 donated by Microsoft Research and by Rivers Casino. Claudico, the first machine program to play heads-up no-limit Texas Hold'em against top human players, will play nearly 20,000 hands with each human poker player over the next two weeks. "Poker is now a benchmark for artificial intelligence research, just as chess once was. It's a game of exceeding complexity that requires a machine to make decisions based on incomplete and often misleading information, thanks to bluffing, slow play and other decoys," says Tuomas Sandholm, developer of the program. "And to win, the machine has to out-smart its human opponents." In total, that will be 1,500 hands played per day until May 8, with just one day off to allow the real-life players to rest.
An earlier version of the software called Tartanian 7 [PDF] was successful in winning the heads-up, no-limit Texas Hold'em category against other computers in July, but Sandholm says that does not necessarily mean it will be able to defeat a human in the complex game. "I think it's a 50-50 proposition," says Sandholm. "My strategy will change more so than when playing against human players," says competitor Doug Polk, widely considered the world's best player of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em, with total live tournament earnings of more than $3.6 million. "I think there will be less hand reading so to speak, and less mind games. In some ways I think it will be nice as I can focus on playing a more pure game, and not have to worry about if he thinks that I think, etc."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @03:45PM
You could switch the AI each hand, randomly, and no one would know if they were playing against the 'pure logic' AI this hand, or one of the the 'read the players' AIs, I would think being able to switch without a tell would be pretty powerful.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @04:50PM
That's what makes poker much more interesting than chess when it comes to AI. A randomizer could easily cause the computer to lose just as well. How do you make a computer unpredictable enough to confuse opponents while still, on average, being able to make more money than it loses. and an AI that does nothing to attempt to predict its opponents but has opponents with the intelligence to predict it to some extent doesn't sound like such a great AI.
In poker you won't win every hand. Winning and losing is partly based on the hand you're given. The computer may lose simply because it was randomly given a worse hand than you even though its hand is statistically favored. What makes for a statistically good poker player, after playing a more statistically significant number of hands, is a lot more than just playing based on a predictable statistical algorithm. The last thing you want to be is predictable but, on the other extreme, you don't want to act completely randomly either because that will also cause you to lose. There is a lot of intelligence involved as well. Money changes hands much faster when people start betting. If the computer acts randomly on a big hand it may lose a lot of money which could cost it the game. If it's programmed never to act randomly on a big hand that makes it predictable in the long run which is also bad. One must also factor in how much money you have vs how much money your opponent has. An computer with relatively much more to lose than you may attempt to act more conservatively. However turning off the randomizer during these times also makes it more predictable. Turning it on may cause it to lose very important hands. Making it random only during smaller, less significant hands, when the computer has relatively more to lose also makes it predictable. Poker is much much more than just sticking a randomizer next to a statistical algorithm.