How computers were finally able to best poker pros

Twelve days into the strangest poker tournament of their lives, Jason Les and his companions returned to their hotel, browbeaten and exhausted. Huddled over a pile of tacos, they strategized, as they had done every night. With about 60,000 hands played -- and 60,000 to go -- they were losing badly to an unusual opponent: a computer program called Libratus, which was up nearly $800,000 in chips. That wasn't supposed to happen. In 2015, Les and a crew of poker pros had beaten a similar computer program, winning about $700,000.