The poker competition pitting four poker professionals against the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science program Libratus (see previous reports) is reportedly not going well for the humans, with the AI player $471,600 ahead of its human opponents at the ten-day half way mark of the 20-day contest.
With 40,340 hands played (about a third of the 120,000 planned) Dong Kim is down $29,506, whilst Jimmy Chou ($113,7728), Daniel McAuley ($141,877) and Jason Les ($186,489) are all carrying losses.
The NLHE contest, played in a Pennsylvanian land casino under strictly controlled and monitored conditions, has shown that Libratus can deliberate and ‘think’ about its moves, and plays a varied game that has impressed the human players.
Chief scientist in the Libratus program, Tuomas Sandholm, told local reporters: “It’s thinking…it is thinking faster (than the old programs), but it is also thinking more.”
The “Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante” contest kicked off on January 11 and is scheduled to end on January 30.
It appears that Libratus is a definite improvement on Claudico, the 2015 poker playing program from the Carneigie Mellon team which over 80,000 hands was able to conclusively defeat only Jason Les, whilst fellow professionals Doug Polk, Bjorn Li and Dong Kim walked away with positive cash balances (see previous InfoPowa reports).
However, doubts were expressed over whether 80,000 hands was a sufficiently large sample to be convincing…hence the 120,000 target of the current contest.