AI Cleans Out Pros at Texas Hold’em

In a historic win, a team of scientists from the University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group — which includes researchers from Charles University in Prague and the Czech Technical University — has created an AI that defeated professional poker players last December. The researchers detailed their creation — a GPU-trained AI system called DeepStack — in a recent issue of Science magazine. The victory in heads-up no-limit Texas hold’em is the latest in a growing string of victories over human competitors. This one, however, is particularly significant. Unlike games of “perfect information” — such as checkers, chess and go, where both players are seeing the same pieces — poker players have to use intuition to guess what cards the other players are holding.