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AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

bbc.co.uk

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Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#31

Post by jedberg »

EDIT: Read below, I am wrong. I clearly didn't know what I was talking about.

This is a great achievement in AI, don't get me wrong, but the headline should read, "AI beats the best four poker players we could find who were willing to play for a mere $200K".

All the actual best players play for millions and have a reputation to uphold. They would never agree to do this.

They four guys they got are pretty good, and could certainly destroy me, but they aren't the best of the best.

I'd love to see the bot play in the World Series of Poker for a few million.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#32

Post by madenine »

blueside wrote: post #23
TylerE wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just showing your ignorance. That margin of victory over that many hands isn't luck or coincidence. The pros were absolutely dominated.

I disagree and it's not ignorance on my part. Due to the nature of the poker and heavily weighted component of luck, a terrible AI can theoretically win. I am sure the AI they built is a mighty and spectacular achievement, but poker is about the only game I know where the worst player can easily beat the best player. Prove me wrong and I'll happily accept your insult of "ignorance" edit I should have been more clear,…

"the worst" player might win a few hands, or even beat "the best" player due to luck.

They will not be able to consistently beat a better player, especially not professional players.

That's what this AI is doing. It didn't beat them once or twice. It beat them consistently over the course of 120,000 hands in a 20 day event.

Is it theoretically possible that "the worst" player could do that based entirely on luck? Sure, probably in the same realm as monkeys, typewriters, and Shakespeare.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#33

Post by sanswork »

blueside wrote: post #23
TylerE wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just showing your ignorance. That margin of victory over that many hands isn't luck or coincidence. The pros were absolutely dominated.

I disagree and it's not ignorance on my part. Due to the nature of the poker and heavily weighted component of luck, a terrible AI can theoretically win. I am sure the AI they built is a mighty and spectacular achievement, but poker is about the only game I know where the worst player can easily beat the best player. Prove me wrong and I'll happily accept your insult of "ignorance" edit I should have been more clear,…

In these contests they typically play each hand twice with the sides reversed to remove the luck factor.

So the deck for hand 1000 might be the same as hand 113853 but they swap who is the button.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#34

Post by sethbannon »

"Each night after the play ended, the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Centre added computations to sharpen the AI's strategy."

This sounds more like an "advanced chess" setup, where a human teams up with an AI to play. The title of the article should really be "amateur poker players + AI defeat professional poker players". The real test would be if the AI self-corrected over the length of the tournament, without human intervention.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#35

Post by [deleted] »

niketear wrote: post #29
moosinho wrote: post #13

Hmm, why is it surprising that AI is good at poker? The way I see the game is that a bad poker player will just hold a model of his hand in mind. A slightly better one will also hold a model of his opponent's hand. Even better one will also model his opponent's model of himself... and so on recursively. And who's really good at recursion? Computers.

People have been trying and failing to do so for decades, the state space of the underlying incomplete information game is absolutely massive.

[deleted]

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#36

Post by baq »

jedberg wrote: post #31

EDIT: Read below, I am wrong. I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. This is a great achievement in AI, don't get me wrong, but the headline should read, "AI beats the best four poker players we could find who were willing to play for a mere $200K". All the actual best players play for millions and have a reputation to uphold. They would never agree to do this. They four guys they got are pretty good, and co…

my understanding is these are some of the best HU players the world has seen. WSOP is a completely different story being a super-large MTT.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#37

Post by [deleted] »

sanswork wrote: post #33
blueside wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree and it's not ignorance on my part. Due to the nature of the poker and heavily weighted component of luck, a terrible AI can theoretically win. I am sure the AI they built is a mighty and spectacular achievement, but poker is about the only game I know where the worst player can easily beat the best player. Prove me wrong and I'll happily accept your insult of "ignorance" edit I should have been more clear,…

In these contests they typically play each hand twice with the sides reversed to remove the luck factor. So the deck for hand 1000 might be the same as hand 113853 but they swap who is the button.

[deleted]

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#38

Post by eva1984 »

brilliantcode wrote: post #5

it won't be long before we hearing more headlines like: "AI beats top 10 hedge fund managers" to "AI run hedge fund blows up due to black swan event" regardless it's an incredible feat. It really casts questions into what our edge as humans are which is slowly disappearing and we didn't even need to put a brain in a jar and hook it up to a computer....it's deep learning reinforced algorithms that is appearing to outl…

> So the question is, how does an average joe hacker like me exploit and leverage this wonderful thing called deep learning? I'm not interested in reading PHD papers with advanced calculus.

Well reading paper is a must to get to deep learning. Those papers may not be that math heavy once you are used to it. Most of the time, it is about network architecture and loss objectives.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#39

Post by gamegoblin »

blueside wrote: post #23
TylerE wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just showing your ignorance. That margin of victory over that many hands isn't luck or coincidence. The pros were absolutely dominated.

I disagree and it's not ignorance on my part. Due to the nature of the poker and heavily weighted component of luck, a terrible AI can theoretically win. I am sure the AI they built is a mighty and spectacular achievement, but poker is about the only game I know where the worst player can easily beat the best player. Prove me wrong and I'll happily accept your insult of "ignorance" edit I should have been more clear,…

Consider a game played in a series of rounds in which N% of rounds are decided by luck (random player wins) and (100-N)% are decided by skill (better player wins). As the number of rounds approaches infinity, the win percentage of the better player will approach (100-N/2)%

That is, if the game is 100% luck, the better player will have an expected win percentage of (100-100/2) == 50%

If the game is 0% luck, the better player will have an expected win percentage of (100-0/2) == 100%

If the game is 95% luck, the better player will have an expected win percentage of (100-95/2) == 52.5%

Conclusion: If there is any non-zero amount of skill in the game, the better player will win in the long run.

Re: AI Beats Four Top Poker Players

#40

Post by sanswork »

jedberg wrote: post #31

EDIT: Read below, I am wrong. I clearly didn't know what I was talking about. This is a great achievement in AI, don't get me wrong, but the headline should read, "AI beats the best four poker players we could find who were willing to play for a mere $200K". All the actual best players play for millions and have a reputation to uphold. They would never agree to do this. They four guys they got are pretty good, and co…

>All the actual best players play for millions and have a reputation to uphold.

All these players are high stakes players. I think you're underestimating the fun factor. As for reputation. For a poker player having a reputation as being beatable is a profitable thing to have.

>but they aren't the best of the best.

Who do you think is? Like how many people do you think rank above this group at HUNL?

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