‘Poker-bot’ aces world’s star players

IDEA Sandholm & Brown AN artificial intelligence program has beaten top poker stars for a first time.

Pluribus triumphed in six-player no-limit Texas hold’em, a popular form of the gambling card game.

Beaten pros included Darren Elias, record holder for most World Poker Tour titles, and Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, winner of six World Series Poker events.

Each pro separately played 5,000 hands.

Pluribus also played five professionals at a time for 10,000 hands and won.

Prof Tuomas Sandholm who developed Pluribus with Noam Brown and Facebook in the US, said: “The ability to beat five players opens up new opportunities to use AI [Artificial Intelligence] to solve a wide variety of real-world problems.”