Libratus AI sealing the deal against human team, players answer questions in Reddit AMA

Just few days are left for the challenge between computer AI Libratus and 4 professional poker players to be completed.

There is no way for the human team to win anymore as they are behind $1,377,422, with Dong Kim being close to break even ($22,309 in red), while Jason les is the biggest losers on the team, accounting for over 50% of teams negative score with $718,341 in red.

During the weekend Kim and team mate Jason "PremiumWhey" Les answered a few questions about the challenge for a Reddit Q&A.

Here are some of the questions, while the entire thread is linked in the bottom:
How do you think the outcome of this match will affect the future of poker?
A) Jason: The fact is the AI exists, and it's extremely tough whether we win or lose. Even if we were to just barely win, it would have been an AI that could beat essentially everyone. This is going to be a problem for internet poker as time goes on.

Q) Marshy92: How excited are you guys to go crush some regular human opponents after trying to grind it out against Skynet? More seriously: how has your strategy improved from facing an opponent like Libratus? Are you gonna start overbetting more frequently you think?

A) Jason: Once you face Libratus, there's nothing worse any human could ever do to you. Every human is going to seem like a walk in the park.

Jason + Dong: We are definitely going to start overbetting more frequently. It takes a lot of studying to figure out the right way to do it though. The moment you're somewhat imbalanced there (bluffing too much, or bluffing too little) then you're making a huge mistake.

Q) JoeyMafia: Do you ever tank on every action to let the computer feel some of it's own medicine?

A) Dong: Sometimes I have the nuts and bot jams on me and I go get a coffee so I can come back to a good situation. For the most part though, I come back to a really shitty situation.

Q) LolPharisees: I play midstakes 6 max, should I just quit poker in light of this? Can I not just assume that I should expect 3 bot assisted Russians per table within 6-8 months?

A) DONG: good thing for you, its much more complex to solve a ring game. Not only is there actions, betsizes cards etc, but now you have to deal with multiple players. I would march forward

Q) forava7: Have you picked up or noticed any patterns/habits? Does this AI remind you of certain player(s)?

A) Jason: I would say a lot of the basis of the AI's style reminds me of how Doug Polk plays. But overall I would say the style is unique. Libratus mixes it's strategy across all sorts of actions and bet sizes so picking up reads on its ranges is very difficult. We have statistics on the frequencies it does different things, but it's near impossible to come up with anything too concrete.

You can find the entire Q&A from Reddit under this link.

Polk interviewed the team the other day and they complain that they cant take breaks, grinding 8+ hours nonstop every day, playing when you're just not in the mood, etc. I think all of these variables are pretty huge for successfully testing an AI. Plus there's the whole real-money aspect of it. I say you put these guys up against the bot playing 25/50 HU cash on their terms, meaning they can sit it whenever they want and you get different results.

I wouldn't be able to take the constant tanking. The cap for time allowed on each street needs to be reduced drastically especially since the computer seems to be taking that time so frequently. Something like:

preflop - instant
flop - 3 seconds
turn - 5 seconds
river - 15 seconds

And of course breaks and less hours for the players.

I think there is a reg at nl50 that tanks worse than this bot, kristybabe tanks every decision preflop or not. And at nl500 zoom there are regs that tank when they are up against another reg to ensure they get a higher proportion of hands with the fish, lol.

something interesting that they said in the interview with doug is that the bot plays very differently than humans @ 200bb deep. Lots of overbetting. So apparently humans still need to get quite creative in deep heads up poker.

They each played 30k hands? What's the likelihood that Donger ran really well to break even and Jason ran really bad to lose like 35 buy ins. Or is Jason just the weakest one of the 4?

Well Dong and Jason were the mirrored pair so likelihood of Donger having ran great and Jason awful, seems pretty high.

On January 30 2017 02:49 Stroggoz wrote: I think there is a reg at nl50 that tanks worse than this bot, kristybabe tanks every decision preflop or not. And at nl500 zoom there are regs that tank when they are up against another reg to ensure they get a higher proportion of hands with the fish, lol. something interesting that they said in the interview with doug is that the bot plays very differently than humans @ 200bb deep. Lots of overbetting. So apparently humans still need to get quite creative in deep heads up poker.

How does it make sense to tank in hands with regs, aren't you just both missing out on potentially being dealt into a hand with fish? I'm not seeing it :0

I guess he means in 6 max some people tank against reg so they are not willing to play hands against them anymore but the fish are.

If your a reg with 2 tables, there is another reg with 1 table and then a 1tabling rec. you get dealt a hand with the rec, and a hand with the reg. naturally, hit the 100 second timebank against the reg and fast play the rec. since your time banking this 1 table reg they are just sitting there while on the other table the rec gets consecutive matching with you after fast playing every hand.

On January 30 2017 01:05 NewbSaibot wrote: Polk interviewed the team the other day and they complain that they cant take breaks, grinding 8+ hours nonstop every day, playing when you're just not in the mood, etc. I think all of these variables are pretty huge for successfully testing an AI. Plus there's the whole real-money aspect of it. I say you put these guys up against the bot playing 25/50 HU cash on their terms, meaning they can sit it whenever they want and you get different results.

^ for "real" data. Poker is largely psychological and requires brains to be functioning at their best for optimal play. Playchips, endless grinding, and not being in the zone makes a huge difference imo. Also that platform looks hideous. I couldn't pay my A game when I switched from Stars to Lockpoker during Black Friday because the "feel" was off.

Comfortable or not, the bot will get more improvements over the years, while playing in the zone or whatever just won't be good enough to close the gap. Anyway, huge news, nobody expected poker bots to become top 10 players so soon.

Jason + Dong: We are definitely going to start overbetting more frequently. It takes a lot of studying to figure out the right way to do it though. - My advice to these guys is to check that 10 year old article written by Rhaegar: https://www.liquidpoker.net/pokerarticle/365045/Advanced_Fundamentals

And let's hope the next year we see more poker pros going vs the bot. Also, big congrats to the science team!

This conditions of this challange make it impossible to 100% guarantee that this bot beats best human players. The bot tanked constantly which is tilting by itself. I think normal game conditions should apply like time banks and maximum time allowed for each street. Humans weren't allowed to use HUDs + they had to play 8 hours straight so I'd assume that they could even lose vs worse human players under this conditions. + Jason Les failing for the 2nd time in a row so he should probably get replaced by someone better and the result could be quite different.

There are a lot of reason for why the challenge is extremely in the favor the of bot and the companies supporting it. There are similarities to IBM playing chess.

These companies have a lot of money to be extracted if they beat the humans. Lots of marketing and future contracts and funding. They are a business and this challenge is run as a business. The players signed up for a very bad deal and that is why Doug dropped out. Like IBM, Libratus is said to never play again since it won. There will never be a rematch and from now on CMU will have a nice little slogan for new PhD candidates/funding/contracts.

These guys are being paid $200k to lose, so all these companies involved can make a ton of money.

The players should have demanded it be set up realistically, use HUDs, have proper breaks and days off. Instead they were hustled by the glitz and glamour from better business minds. Doug saw through it all and even brought that up in his interview saying "Dong you did this challenge last time, you should have realized how terrible the set up was. Don't you think a part of these handicaps are partly your fault?"

I first read this title as "Libratus AI sealing the deal against human team, answers questions in Reddit AMA".

NOW THAT would have been truly terrifying.

On January 30 2017 22:29 Highcard wrote: There are a lot of reason for why the challenge is extremely in the favor the of bot and the companies supporting it. There are similarities to IBM playing chess. These companies have a lot of money to be extracted if they beat the humans. Lots of marketing and future contracts and funding. They are a business and this challenge is run as a business. The players signed up for a very bad deal and that is why Doug dropped out. Like IBM, Libratus is said to never play again since it won. There will never be a rematch and from now on CMU will have a nice little slogan for new PhD candidates/funding/contracts. These guys are being paid $200k to lose, so all these companies involved can make a ton of money. The players should have demanded it be set up realistically, use HUDs, have proper breaks and days off. Instead they were hustled by the glitz and glamour from better business minds. Doug saw through it all and even brought that up in his interview saying "Dong you did this challenge last time, you should have realized how terrible the set up was. Don't you think a part of these handicaps are partly your fault?"

200% IBM/Kasparov here

lol hand:

Jason: raises $100 to $330
Libratus_Jason2: calls $230
*** FLOP *** [2s 7d 8c]
Libratus_Jason2: checks
Jason: bets $580
Libratus_Jason2: raises $580 to $19670 and is all-in

libratus shows up with KTo, nice shove for 200bb

confirmed bot goes on tilt.

^ well hey, he cant call without the best hand right? Just bluff allin until you're called, then you know you're beat.

challenge is over, bot won 14.72 bb/100 overall, even higher than nl50 rake! jason les got crushed for almost 30bb/100!

Jason seems completely oblivious to the fact that he's a giant fish in the line up in that AMA.