Top poker pros face off vs. artificial intelligence

Four of the world's best professional poker players will compete against artificial intelligence developed by Carnegie Mellon University in an epic rematch to determine whether a computer can beat humans playing one of the world's toughest poker games. Artificial Intelligence: Upping the Ante," beginning Jan. 11 at Rivers Casino, poker pros will play a collective 120,000 hands of Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em over 20 days against a CMU computer program called Libratus. The pros--Jason Les, Dong Kim, Daniel McAulay and Jimmy Chou--are vying for shares of a $200,000 prize purse. The ultimate goal for CMU computer scientists, as it was in the first Brains Vs. AI contest at Rivers Casino in 2015, is to set a new benchmark for artificial intelligence. "Since the earliest days of AI research, beating top human players has been a powerful measure of progress in the field," said Tuomas Sandholm, professor of computer science. "That was achieved with chess in 1997, with Jeopardy! in 2009 and with the board game Go just last year.