After day one, AI is crushing humanity at poker

The first day of the Brains vs. AI poker tournament is in the books, and the Libratus bot from Carnegie Mellon University emerged as the clear winner, collecting $81,716 to the humans $7,228. Both the players and Libratus' creators cautioned that it was still too early to make a judgement call about who might win the 20-day tournament. But it's clear that this year's AI has made some major improvements on the 2015 system, Claudico, which ended up losing to humanity. "I felt like Libratus is playing a lot better than Claudico did in the previous challenge," wrote Jason Les, one of the four poker pros, in an email to The Verge. "Preflop, it is using a widely mixed strategy," of small bets, calls, and very large wagers.