Just a short time ago, we reported that the Carnegie Mellon University was hosting a poker challenge between poker pros and a poker playing computer known as Libratus. This was not the first time this type of challenge has taken place and players were excited to see if the new program would be hard to defeat in heads up play.
The second competition featured twelve hours days of heads up, No Limit Texas Hold’em and the human players found themselves very impressed with the opponent’s game play. During the first ten days of the competition, the computer program beat the pros seven days and held a cumulative lead of over $676,000 as of this past Friday night.
As of Friday, the only player to be able to beat Libratus was Dong Kim who stated that the program is quite impressive and does a little bit of everything in terms of strategy. The competition will last a total of 20 days and has been titled the Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante. The Rivers Casino on the North Shore has played host to the event and this is the second time that top pros have taken on the computer opponent. The first time was back in 2015 when the humans won but not by much.
In this competition, the humans will play 50% more poker hands which will increase the number of hands played to 120,000 from a previous 80,000. Each player will take on the computer one on one but the final result will not be determined based on one player but the winnings of all four human players combined versus the winnings of the computer.
Libratus was created from scratch by Tuomas Sandhold, a professor at CMU along with Noam Brown, a Ph.D. student. The goal was to create a more powerful program and one that was less easy to take advantage of than the 2015 version, Claudico. However, the professor and student did not anticipate that the new program would be that much better.
According to Kim, the way the computer was defeated last time was to try unique stuff and exploit the computer when they could. However this tactic is not working now. Jason Les also competed in 2015 and found a big difference in the program from then and now. According to Les, it was apparent that Libratus was learning very quickly how the players played the game. Looking at early game play and then fast-forwarding ahead, it is clear to see that the weaknesses were identified and were eliminated.
Brown stated that the computer was actually designed to perform in that manner. Libratus is actually benefitting from time on computers at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center to be able to learn the hands of the day. The professor and his student said they would not be commenting on how the bot has been able to change except to say that while the humans are sleeping, the bot is working to make improvements in its game.
The professor feels that if the current win rate can be maintained, then it would be a statistically significant win. However, humans are crafty and awesome at poker plus are serious and try to improve their game each day like professional athletes.
The pros actually meet each night, Les, Kim, Daniel McAulay and Jimmy Chou, to go over hands and strategize as to what they can do the next day to try and defeat the computer. So far the strategy is not working that great. The pros have seen two small wins, each less than $50,000 in a two day time frame. Libratus was able to bring in a bigger win over two days, with more than $180,000 earned.