AI poker computer programme moves to China.

By RP, April 7, 2017

Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) artificial intelligence computer program Libratus will be showcased during a China exhibition with a Winner-Take-All prize of $290,000.

AI computer programmer Libratus exceeded expectation when it convincingly bested its human rivals in the “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante” 20-day poker contest between four human players (see previous InfoPowa reports) culminating earlier this year in January.

A version of Carnegie Mellon University’s Libratus will play six top Chinese players in a 36,000-hand exhibition featuring a different AI, named Lengpudashi or “cold poker master”.

Team Dragons, which is being led by Alan (Yue) Du, a Shanghai venture capitalist and amateur player who won the $5,000 Buy-In, No-Limit Hold’em category of the 2016 World Series of Poker, will play 10 hours per day with the human players each playing two hands at a time.

“I am very excited to take this new kind of AI technology to China,” said Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science and co-creator of Libratus/Lengpudashi with Ph.D. student Noam Brown. “I want to explore various commercial opportunities for this in poker and a host of other application areas, ranging from recreational games and business strategy to strategic pricing, cybersecurity and medicine.

“This is an exhibition, not a match, challenge or competition,” he added. “We are running a relatively small number of hands, so this is not a scientific experiment like the Brains vs. AI competition in January.”