The only variant of Poker where AI beats humans is heads-up (two-player) variant, which is simplest form of poker and also rarely played. The AI was (marginally) beating humans there by playing a game-theory-optimal strategy. For poker games with 3+ players,
the GTO strategy (Nash equilibrium) no longer exists, so AIs need to use more standard techniques (search-based, reinforcement learning etc.), which are, at the current state of the art, laughably weak at poker.
Not to mention, that in poker the actual hierarchy of players' skill is not 100% obvious. You could distinguish at least two areas of skills:
- play vs other experts
- play vs amateurs/weaker players. Here' the goal is not to come out ahead (which, in long term, is a given), but to _maximize_ the dollar amount taken from these players, which is a skill in itself.
Thanks for the clarification. I do not know much about poker.
The observation applies to a given variant of poker (or any other domain). So if an AI beats humans with 10000-hour experience in that variant, the best experts in that specific variant are not far-off targets.
Superficially similar problems might in fact require very different techniques to solve as your example illustrates.
This is a misnomer.
The only variant of Poker where AI beats humans is heads-up (two-player) variant, which is simplest form of poker and also rarely played. The AI was (marginally) beating humans there by playing a game-theory-optimal strategy. For poker games with 3+ players, the GTO strategy (Nash equilibrium) no longer exists, so AIs need to use more standard techniques (search-based, reinforcement learning etc.), which are, at the current state of the art, laughably weak at poker.
Not to mention, that in poker the actual hierarchy of players' skill is not 100% obvious. You could distinguish at least two areas of skills:
- play vs other experts
- play vs amateurs/weaker players. Here' the goal is not to come out ahead (which, in long term, is a given), but to _maximize_ the dollar amount taken from these players, which is a skill in itself.