Man vs Machine - High Stakes Regs Taking on NL Hold'em Bot Claudico

00:17
28 Apr

A very interesting, some would even say historic, heads up match is currently underway. Dubbed "Brains vs Artificial Intelligence", it sets up four high stakes HU pros against the No Limit Hold'em bot called " Claudico".

Action streamed live

Taking place at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh from April 24 to May 7, the entire match is being streamed live on Twitch, using the channels created specifically for this purpose:

Doug Polk - www.twitch.tv/claudico_vs_dougpolk
Dong Kim - www.twitch.tv/claudico_vs_dongkim
Bjorn Li - www.twitch.tv/claudico_vs_bjornli
Jason Les - www.twitch.tv/claudico_vs_jasonles

There is also a special Twitch channel keeping track of all the results - www.twitch.tv/claudico_extra

The action will be streamed eight hours every day, from 11 am to 8 pm, including breaks for human players. The stream will feature a 30 minute delay to ensure the integrity of the games.

Claudico project

Devised by Dr. Tuomas W. Sandholm, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellone University in Pittsburgh and his team, Claudico should answer the question if the artificial intelligence has progressed enough to outwit human players at heads-up no limit Hold'em tables.

After eleven years in development, Claudico's play should be close to optimal at all times. According to professor Sandholm, poker has become what chess used to be in terms of the AI challenges. Unlike chess, however, poker is a game of incomplete information, meaning that for the machine to win, it has to be able to outsmart the human players.

I think it’s a 50-50 proposition. I think there’s a good chance we’ll lose this thing. Tuomas Sandholm;
The software runs on very complicated mathematical algorithms, which have also found its application in various other fields, including business, medicine and military. This is an achievement in its own right, but all of it still cannot guarantee a victory.
The challenge
The team behind the project feels that the AI is as ready as it will ever be, and hence the challenge has been issued. Four players who have been selected to take on Claudico are all very experienced, very strong heads-up players, with Doug Polk being arguably the best HU player in the world.
Each of these pros will play 20,000 hands against the software in order to produce meaningful, scientifically relevant results. For their participation in the research, each of the four pros will receive a share of the $100,000 prize pool, secured by Microsoft Research and Rivers Casino.
Doug Polk expressed the feeling that humans should have an edge here, but he was somewhat reserved as, in his own words, I don't know what I am going to be up against. Polk did say that he anticipated he will have to adjust his strategy more than if he was playing against a human player, as there will be less mind games and it should be more straightforward.
In order to further decrease luck factor, the challenge has been set up in such a way that the Player A will receive the same card as the computer against Player B and the same applies for the Players C and D.
No Limit Hold'em in Numbers
Although Limit Hold'em bots have been nearly brought to perfection, No Limit is completely different animal. As Sandholm noted, the game is very complex to crack as there are so many variables and the algorithm has to try and figure out the reasons behind particular actions.
Limit Hold'em contains only (relatively speaking) 10 to 13th power sets of information. Although this is a huge number, it really pales in comparison to No Limit Hold'em, which contains 10 to 161st power sets of information due to players having much more maneuvering space and options available to them.
Because of this complexity, Claudico was not developed to mimic human players or learn from them. Instead, it analyzed basic poker rules to come up with the optimal strategy. Its name is Latin for limp, a well known poker term, which is usually connected to bad or weak play. However, Claudico incorporates limping as a part of its playing style. This and many other unexpected twists could make beating the AI quite a task for the pros.
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At this point in time, 16,500 hands have been dealt and Claudico is stuck almost 17 buy-ins at the $50/100 level ($166,566). Doug Polk and Bjorn Li have been crushing so far, while Dong Kim and Jason Les are in the red, with Les being stuck $117k.
At this rate, it seems that Claudico could get completely crushed by the pros, but there is still plenty of play left, so we'll try not to jump to the conclusions just yet. It will certainly be a fun challenge to follow either way, and if Claudico somehow makes the comeback in the next 10-20k hands, it will really add to the excitement.
That said, go Brains!