Artificial intelligence won in Poker – Libratus
March 15, 2017 | News
His predominance over the human mind at the start of 2017 was demonstrated by artificial intelligence, called Libratus, when he won four best world players in Hold’em. Jason Les, Daniel Macaulay, Dong Kim and Jimmy Chow come together to fight Libratus as part of the poker battle “Brains Vs. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante. ” The rivalry took place in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Texas Holdem – one of the most popular versions of poker, featuring a multiplicity of options for the development of events. As in any card game, poker players simply have to recognize the bluff and be able to mislead the enemy themselves, because none of them know what cards are in the hands of the opponent. It is important to learn how to masterfully adapt, analyze information and calculate the actions of rivals in advance based on their actions – betting, raising, calling, folding.
The team of people was not particularly lucky from the very beginning of the competition, although they managed to finish the first week with zero result: the players never won against Libratus, but they did not lose to it either. However, the system later took the situation under its control, crushing the best poker players time after time. After playing half the tournament, Libratus outflanked the team of 40 stacks. Оver 120 hands were played during the tournament. The machine’s win amounted to 1 766 250 virtual US dollars. Most of all, the car lost to Jason Les – $ 880,087. The best result for Dong Kim: he owes artificial intelligence to only $ 85,649. The first half of the marathon he managed to remain in the black, but in the second part of the tournament he still lost to Libratus and finished the game in a small (in comparison with other team members) minus.
The success of the machine once again allowed to prove that the system of artificial thinking under certain circumstances acts more logically than a person. The victory of Libratus was immediately noted by experts, placing it in the ranks of the best systems – Alpha Go, Deep Blue, Watson.
After a careful analysis of the algorithm of Libratus’s actions, it became clear that the car won the skills of the machine for self-training and improving the skill of the game right during the poker marathon. At the end of each distribution, the artificial intelligence step-by-step analyzed the game, calculated the degree of effectiveness, defined errors and made adjustments to its strategies for improving the game. Closer to the middle of the marathon, artificial intelligence determined for itself the best strategy, which was confirmed by easing the load on the computer. By the way, the system was an incredibly diligent student – in preparation for the competition Libratus played with itself more than 1 trillion parties.
The defeat of players can also be explained by their physiological needs. After all, after each game they analyzed their actions and the actions of the machine, looked for the mistakes made and planned the strategy for tomorrow. After that, people went to dinner and sleep. Libratus, who did not need rest and food, continued to analyze the game, determine the weaknesses of rivals and develop a strategy throughout the night.
An important role was played by the productivity of the machine. In order for Libratus to function fully, the Bridges computer was placed in a computer center in Pittsburgh itself and supplied with a capacity of 846 knots (total 1.35 Pflops). During the poker competition, Libratus employed six hundred of them. For comparison, the total power of Bridges is 7250 times higher than the performance of a high-end gaming computer. The amount of RAM of the computer was 274 TByte. Thus, the size of the memory Bridges was 17,500 times higher than the memory capacity of a fairly powerful gaming computer.
Artificial intelligence Libratus – the brainchild of the development team from the University of Carnegie Mellon. The system is an improved version of the program Claudico, which in 2015 during a similar poker tournament could not beat the team of people. The “fathers” of the algorithm are Professor of Computer Science Tuomas Sandholm and graduate student Noam Brown.
Naturally, they are incredibly proud of their creation and do not hide that they expected the victory of artificial intelligence. Sandholm noted that the ability of artificial intelligence to think strategically has finally surpassed human thinking. And the convincing victory of Libratus in no way can be attributed to luck or luck. Sandholm repeatedly stressed that the system was endowed with the ability to analyze, draw conclusions, risk and bluff even with a minimum of information. But until this moment such abilities were demonstrated only by people. Judging by the developers, the training of artificial intelligence skills bluff – another breakthrough in information technology. It is possible that in the very near future your gadgets will be able to bargain with the sellers themselves and knock out discounts for their owners.
The creators of Libratus have big plans for it. After all, playing poker is just one of the many skills of an artificial intelligence system. It is supposed to be used in the military field (building military strategies), medicine (to develop a successful treatment plan), cyber security, to use for assessing exchange risks and organizing business negotiations process with benefits for the interested party. All the secrets of the work of Libratus performers have promised to reveal in the very near future.
The players themselves were satisfied with the experience. In addition, they left Pennsylvania not empty-handed. The opponents of artificial intelligence shared the cash prize given to them for participating in the poker tournament. The amount of the fund is 200 thousand of dollars. The members of the team of people were unanimous in their opinion: it seemed to them that they were playing not with a computer, but with a person who knows how to bluff and analyze the game magnificently. Makaley stressed that the game was tough, and the opponent exceeded all his expectations. It’s only the beginning.
