Computer beats pros in six-player No Limit Hold 'em poker -- a first
AI program beats pros in
six-player poker -- a first
An
artificial intelligence program has beaten a group of top poker players in
six-player Texas hold 'em -- a breakthrough for the technology
Date
created : 11/07/2019 - 22:19
Washington (AFP) Artificial intelligence
programs have bested humans in checkers, chess, Go and two-player poker, but
multi-player poker was always believed to be a bigger ask. Mission:
accomplished.
Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University,
working with Facebook's AI initiative, announced Thursday that their program
defeated a group of top pros in six-player no-limit Texas hold 'em.
The program, Pluribus, and its big wins were
described in the US journal Science.
"Pluribus achieved superhuman performance
at multi-player poker, which is a recognized milestone in artificial
intelligence and in game theory," said Tuomas Sandholm, a computer science
professor at Carnegie Mellon.
Sandholm worked with Noam Brown, who is working
at Facebook AI while completing his doctorate at the Pittsburgh-based
university.
"Thus far, superhuman AI milestones in
strategic reasoning have been limited to two-party competition," Sandholm
said in a statement released by the school.
According to the creators of Pluribus, the
technology could be used to solve a "wide variety of real-world
problems" that, like in poker, involve actors who bluff, or hide key
information.
The program first defeated two major poker
champions, Darren Elias and Chris Ferguson, who each played 5,000 hands against
it.
Pluribus then took on 13 pros in a separate
experiment, five at a time. In a total of 10,000 hands, the program
"emerged victorious," researchers said.
First, the program practiced against itself,
learning little by little how to use poker moves to best advantage.
Surprises cropped up.
"Its major strength is its ability to use
mixed strategies," said Elias.
"That's the same thing that humans try to
do. It's a matter of execution for humans -- to do this in a perfectly random
way and to do so consistently. Most people just can't."
One surprise was that Pluribus used "donk
betting" -- ending one round with a call and starting the next with a bet
-- far more than would the pros, who traditionally see the move as a weak one.
Brown even ventured so far as to say that some
of the program's strategies "might even change the way pros play the
game."
© 2019
AFP
Comments
Post a Comment