Pokerbot "Libratus" Reveals Secrets On How It Demolished 4 Poker Pros

Libratus is an artificial intelligence computer program designed to play poker by a team of Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists. Earlier this year in January, this AI poker bot defeated 4 professionals over 20 days of competition.

Now, Libratus' team is revealing how it won.

Conducted at Pittsburgh's Rivers Casino, the competition saw Libratus end up over $1.8 million in chips over 120,000 hands of heads-up no limit hold'em. The bot beat professional poker players Jimmy Chou, Daniel McCauley, Dong Kim and Jason Les.

Last week, two researchers from the Carnegie Mellon team, computer science professor Tuomas Sandholm and Ph.D. student Noam Brown published in article in Science detailing exactly how Libratus was able to defeat the group of professionals.

The Science article outlines the three-pronged approach that Libratus used to win:

1. The programmers created an easier-to-solve abstract version of the game for Libratus
2. Libratus created a dynamic action plan based on the course of the game
3. Libratus then made changes/improvements in that plan on the fly when detecting mistakes to be able to exploit those mistakes.

In short, Libratus started with a basic plan of attack by considering only the easier-to-solve version given to it by its programmers. As the game went on and it learned how its opponents were playing, Libratus' strategy became more and more complex.

Finally, the AI continued to make improvements in its tactical approach in order to take advantage of the four pro's weaknesses. The AI Bot was able to recognize bluffing and other betting patterns from its opponents. In other words, like any good poker player, Libratus changed its tactics based on its opponents' playing styles, even recognizing when the pros were switching it up.

AI's Future?

Libratus' Carnegie Mellon creators Sandholm and Brown say they are hoping the AI they developed can have more far-reaching implications and use:

“The techniques that we developed are largely domain independent and can thus be applied to other strategic imperfect-information interactions, including non-recreational applications. Due to the ubiquity of hidden information in real-world strategic interactions, we believe the paradigm introduced in Libratus will be critical to the future growth and widespread application of AI.”

What do you think? Are we humans doomed? Are the online poker rooms safe or should we be worrying about bots taking all of our money?

Leave your comments below! And please follow me for more poker news, strategy and more!

Poker Robot Image Source: user theangryapple at DeviantArt.com

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