Rival AIs Battle to Rule Poker (and Global Politics)

Tuomas Sandholm and Noam Brown spent the past year building an AI that plays Texas Hold'Em. The two Carnegie Melon researchers call their creation Libratus, and they believe it can top the world's best players at no-limit Hold'Em, a version of the classic poker game that allows any bet at any time. No machine has ever reached such heights with this unusually complex game of cards. Although AI systems have topped the best players at checkers, chess, Othello, and even Go, no-limit Hold'Em creates a different obstacle. In contrast to those other games of intellect, a poker player can know only part of what's happening during each hand.