Is there a way to be invincible playing poker? A team of researchers from the University of Alberta (Canada) has developed a computer program that is capable of always winning at this famous card game. The software has been dubbed Cepheus and all its details have been published in the journal Science .
The software is based on a new algorithm that learns from unsuccessful decisions and even data that may be false (such as bluffing) and uses this information to build a gigantic database containing all the possible moves in a game. The result: an unbeatable player.
“Cepheus has created and developed its own strategy from scratch, only knowing the rules of the game. The result is more than 260 terabytes of information, 1,000 times more than what the English version of Wikipedia occupies ”, Michael Bowling, co-author of the study, explains to Sinc.
For his training, Cepheus fought against himself on 4,000 computers for two months, making 6,000 million hands every second, obtaining a volume of information more than enough about the possible combinations of cards as well as the existing possibilities of playing a hand.
Cepheus’s key algorithm is CFR +, a set of mathematical equations “with a relatively simple premise: Cepheus’s intelligence is the result of his training . It starts acting randomly and, from there, calculates the value of all possible actions in all possible situations ”clarifies Bowling. That is, its calculations continually update the strategy based on the regret of each decision.
Does the machine win every game? The first hand seems to be the only one in which there is a chance to beat Cepheus, but the probability of losing is so small that a player with great experience “could be playing all his life against the program without making mistakes and still could not find any imperfections ”, concludes the researcher.
