Poker players are getting much better thanks to AI

A bunch of top poker pros are getting ready to take on Libratus, the latest and greatest poker bot, in a 20-day Heads-Up No-Limit Texas Hold'em challenge. Since the bot's predecessor, Claudico, was almost good enough to beat top players, and Libratus is supposed to be a lot better, the humans could be in trouble. On the other hand, humans are getting better, too, says competitor Jason Les. "From the human side, poker has gotten much tougher in the last 20 months," Les told Carnegie Mellon University, which developed the bot. Les says that humans are getting better at poker thanks to computer-assisted analysis tools like PioSOLVER and PokerSnowie.