Poker-playing engineers take on AI machine, get thrashed

Beijing: Alan Du, a venture capitalist and World Series of Poker veteran, was in his fifth day of matching wits against his stone-cold opponent-- and his losses were piling up. His rival was literally inhuman. That's because Du went up against "Lengpudashi" an updated version of the Libratus artificial intelligence program that achieved a major milestone by besting four of the world's best poker pros in January. Housed within a super-computing centre near Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, its name, intended to resemble its English moniker, fittingly translates into "cold poker master." Du and five team members played 36,000 hands against the machine over the course of five days.