Can an AI Play Poker?

In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has made significant inroads in a wide variety of disciplines such as medical diagnosis, stock market prediction, and playing chess and Go. Can AI also master the game of poker?

In 2015, a team of Carnegie Mellon University researchers created an AI called Claudico that took on some of the world’s best professional poker players in a 20-day Texas Hold’em tournament. Although Claudico ultimately lost the tournament, it did achieve some notable successes, such as winning $732,000 from Dong Kim over the course of 4 days.

The ability to win money from poker is not just a matter of luck; it requires sophisticated pattern recognition and probability calculations. For instance, a good poker player must be able to quickly assess the relative strength of their hand compared to their opponents’ hands and make decisions accordingly.

To date, however, no AI has been able to consistently beat human opponents at poker. In part, this is because poker is what computer scientists call an “imperfect information” game.

PRO TIP:AI is becoming increasingly sophisticated, and a growing number of AI systems are being developed to play complex card games such as poker. While traditional AI algorithms are not yet capable of competing against skilled human players, they can still provide useful insights into the game and help new players understand some of the fundamental strategies.

This means that players do not have complete information about their opponents’ hands or the cards that will be dealt next. As a result, players must constantly make probabilistic estimations based on limited data.

For example, consider the following scenario: You are holding a hand with two aces (AA) and your opponent is holding a hand with an ace and a king (AK). The flop (the first three community cards dealt) comes down as A-Q-8.

At this point, you know that you have the best hand (two pair: Aces and Queens), but you don’t know if your opponent also has two pair or if they are drawing to a flush or straight. As such, you must make a decision based on limited information and probabilities. Do you bet or check? How much should you bet?

If you are playing against an AI opponent that is able to accurately calculate probabilities in situations like this, then you will likely lose more often than not. In other words, an AI that can play poker well enough to beat human opponents would need to be incredibly sophisticated.

So far, no AI has been able to reach this level of sophistication. However, as AI technology continues to improve, it is likely only a matter of time before an AI poker champion is crowned.