Software ‘Claudico’ to Challenge Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les in No Limit Hold’em Match

Claudico
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  • PG News April 25, 2015
  • 2 Minutes Read

In an exciting new development, Carnegie Mellon University researchers have devised a software called ‘Claudico’, which they claim can beat top pros at No Limit Texas Hold’em. A challenge has been organized at Rivers Casino’s Levels Lounge, where Claudico will combat top pro`s Doug Polk, Dong Kim, Bjorn Li and Jason Les through a laptop-based game for 80,000 hands in a two-week tournament. Though the traditional form of money-exchange will not be used in this tournament, Microsoft Research and Rivers Casino have put up an accumulated prize pool of $100,000 to be shared between the above pros.

The scientists, CMU computer science Professor Tuomas Sandholm and researchers Sam Ganzfried and Noam Brown will be drawing on Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center’s massive Black Light computer to power Claudico’s strategy decision-making process.

Sandholm, who has been spearheading the research since 2004, stated that, “The ability of computers to beat humans in poker has been a goal for over 10 years.”

While games of chess and checkers are complex and may have thousands of possible scenarios, they are not as hard to solve as poker. This is because the aforementioned games are complete information games and have all the necessary information on the board for everyone to see. Whereas, in poker, there is incomplete information, making decisions more difficult.

Professor Sandholm explained the importance of the program saying that this was why poker was the ideal method to check artificial intelligence, as there were more variables than all the atoms in the universe. Thus, such decision-making was based on insufficient information, much as it was in other such as medicine, arms negotiations and cybersecurity. Sandholm added that this was the reason the National Science Foundation had funded the research.

For the researchers, the ultimate prize will be the creation of a super artificial intelligence software that can tackle the amazing thought process complexities that are required while playing skill-based games like poker. The potential of unlimited variables in No Limit Hold’em was the main challenge for the artificial intelligence.

This competition is a continuation of earlier artificial intelligence development, where IBM’s Deep Blue program defeated chess master Garry Kasparov in 1997 and in 2011, the IBM Watson beat Jeopardy champions Brad Rutter and Ken Jennings.

Speaking about the competition, poker pro Jason Les, who holds a degree in computer science, said that he was looking forward to the challenge and believed that, “I think in the early stages, the computer might have an advantage, but at a certain point the players can figure out what’s going on and adjust. But it’s a strategy game. You bring a strategy to the table and the computer’s strategy may be better than mine.

Referring to his degree he stated, “It makes it more interesting to me to be in a situation where two of my worlds collapse together. I think the work they’re doing is incredible.”

Les finally did accept that strategies that worked while playing with humans might need to be changed while playing against a computer.

Before Claudico, another such software called Tartanian7, had won the Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold ’em category of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Annual Computer Poker Competition in July, last year.

In Jan 2015, a group of five scientists had come up with a another similar software, named ‘Cepheus’, which they claimed, ‘solved; the game of Limit Hold’em and could not be beaten by any human poker player ever. The owners explained that the computer had been built by letting it play all the possible permutations possible in Limit Hold’em, until it reached a point where it chose the most optimal move to win the game.

These scientific developments are certainly welcome, especially when the objective is towards the progress of areas, like medicine. However, it will be interesting to watch, if any kind of artificial intelligence can mimic that ‘gut feeling’ many successful poker players rely on, when all the information they have, are just the cards they hold in their hands.

Image Courtesy: spectrum.leee.org

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