If you are ever in China and you see a robot playing poker, just ask its name before challenging it into a game or putting money on the table because if the name is Lengpudashi, chances are you are never going to get your money or your self-esteem back. This AI-powered robot is a distant AI gene cousin of the Libratus, who toppled four of the world's best poker players in a friendly poker bout. Lengpudashi recently decided to try its luck and defeated a seasoned team of six best poker players bagging $290,000.
The creators of Lengpudashi, Tuomas Sandholm, who is a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in the US and PhD student Noam Brown said that the money, which had been garnered will go to Strategic Machine, a firm which they both founded.
These consecutive victories are poignant in nature and are not just isolate cases of AI managing to show "human" capabilities because games such as poker are more complex than games of chess, as one of the chief constituents is the fact no matter how much one crunches numbers or run simulations; poker remains a game of chance. Therefore, the AI had to constantly evolve throughout the course of the game to understand the factors, which are continuously changing, to stay ahead of the curve.
The robot had to learn how to call a bluff or stage a bluff when needed and all these while playing with a team which is being led by last year's World Series of Poker $5,000 buy-in, no-limit winner, Yue Du from China. To add to the entire scenario, Yue du was not only playing the game with his team, he also had the added advantage of having engineers, computer scientists and investors, who all chipped in to give their advice on how to defeat the AI.
Artifical Intelligence and human innovation are slated to have an interesting relationship in the days that are yet to come. Until then the best piece of advice that one can get before playing a robot, is making sure that its name is not Lengpudashi.
