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A Computer Masters Heads-up Limit Texas Hold 'em Poker

1/8/2015
A person playing the poker variant, Texas Hold

A person playing the poker variant, Texas Hold'em

A breakthrough in artificial intelligence published in January 2015 allowed a computer to master the simplest two-person version of the poker game known as Texas Hold'em working through every possible variation of play to make the perfect move every time. When performed without mistakes, just like the childhood game tic-tac-toe, there’s no way to lose. In this case the player is Cepheus, an algorithm designed by Canadian researchers.

We have a strategy that can guarantee a player won’t lose,” said Michael Bowling, a computer scientist from the University of Alberta, who led a team working on the program. “It’s going to be a break-even game. It’s only when someone makes a mistake that they could end up losing.

Michael BowlingNeil BurchMichael JohansonOskari Tammelin, "Heads-up limit hold'em poker is solved," Science 347, no. 6218 (2015) 145-149 

"Poker is a family of games that exhibit imperfect information, where players do not have full knowledge of past events. Whereas many perfect-information games have been solved (e.g., Connect Four and checkers), no nontrivial imperfect-information game played competitively by humans has previously been solved. Here, we announce that heads-up limit Texas hold’em is now essentially weakly solved. Furthermore, this computation formally proves the common wisdom that the dealer in the game holds a substantial advantage. This result was enabled by a new algorithm, CFR, which is capable of solving extensive-form games orders of magnitude larger than previously possible" (Abstract).

See also: http://news.sciencemag.org/math/2015/01/texas-hold-em-poker-solved-computer, accessed 01-14-2015.

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