The latest Man vs. AI Computer heads up poker challenge is now just over halfway through and it looks as if the humans are in the lead.
Our readers will recall that the Brains vs. AI Heads-Up No-Limit Hold’em poker challenge at Three Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh pits four poker professional players against Claudico, a smart, self-learning computer program developed by the Computer Science department at Carnegie Mellon University.
Doug Polk, Bjorn Li, Dong Kim and Jason Les have been playing against Claudico for the past week in strictly controlled conditions and are currently $568,662 ahead after the completion of 42,100 of the planned 80,000 hands.
Of the three professional players, only Jason Les is battling to stay ahead of the AI program at present.
Carnegie Mellon computer science professor Tuomas Sandholm says he remains optimistic that Claudico will recover lost ground over the remainder of the experiment due to the program’s ability to improve its playing strategy as the contest progresses.
“Claudico performs real-time reasoning while playing a hand and improves its strategy during the match by continuously computing,” the professor said.
“This is quite possibly the highest-quality poker ever seen. Furthermore, both Claudico and the humans are improving their game throughout the event. Both sides are already playing stronger than they were at the start.
“I have been extremely impressed by the pros’ ability to improve and adjust their game no matter what curve balls Claudico has thrown at them.”
The top performing professional so far is Doug Polk, who is up almost $357,000 but says he has been impressed by his AI opponent.
“Playing Claudico has been unlike any other game I’ve ever played,” he says.
The challenge ends May 8.