Machine beats humans for the first time in poker

New York

ARTIFICIAL intelligence has made history by beating humans in poker for the first time, the last remaining game in which humans had managed to maintain the upper hand.

Libratus, an AI built by Carnegie Mellon University, racked up over US$1.7 million worth of chips against four of the top professional poker players in the world in a 20-day marathon poker tournament that ended on Tuesday in Philadelphia.

While machines have beaten humans over the last two decades in chess, checkers, and most recently in the ancient game of Go, Libratus' victory is significant because poker is an imperfect information game - similar to the real world where not all problems are laid out and the difficulty in figuring o…