This Computer is a Better Poker Player than Humans

Simple board games with limited number of moves possible have always been easy for the computer to play. Games like chess are easy for the artificial intelligence to play and beat human being at, but the games that require a bit more such as Poker, can be a different story.

Not only must the Artificial Intelligence know about the rules of the game to play, it must also have some amount of intuition to win. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada have created a computer which is apparently advanced enough to win at Poker.

Called DeepStack, the intuitive computer is able to solve mathematical models of how decisions are made by players. It played at a Poker tournament in December last year and managed to beat 11 of the professional Poker players who managed to complete their matches with him.

By the way each match was of three thousand hands. So it was not a fluke. DeepStack repeatedly came ahead of professional poker players to prove that AI had come a really long way. Of course there are implications of this science project far beyond merely playing poker. There will be a number of applications possible when the program is refined and redirected towards other problems to solve.