AI Is Changing Poker

Thomas van de Weerd on Wiki




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 domino99 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. In particular, players are starting to bet more aggressively to obtain small advantages.

As for how this plays out in Hold'em, a game where players can bet after being dealt two cards ("the pocket") and again after seeing three shared cards ("the flop") and a fourth shared card ("the turn") and a fifth shared card ("the river"), Les gave a couple of examples:

—Higher three-bets (i.e., responding to a raise in the initial round of betting with a new and particularly large raise). Les, in an email, writes that three-bets these days are often 50% larger than they used to be. Players are "trying to make the pot very large with their good hands and some bluffs … therefore, charging people a very big price to see the flop or attempt to four-bet back at them."