Search Search AI’s defeat of pro poker players a ‘paradigm shift’, say scientists 'The implications go beyond being a milestone for artificial intelligence' Click to follow The Independent Online In a feat reminiscent of the controversial victory by supercomputer ‘Deep Blue’ over world chess champion Garry Kasparov, a computer program has managed to beat a string of professional poker players at the game.
 DeepStack, as it was called, defeated 10 out of 11 players who took part in a total of 3,000 games as part of a scientific study into artificial intelligence.
 The 11th player also lost, but by a margin that the researchers decided was not large enough to be statistically significant.
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 Writing in the journal Science, the researchers, from Alberta University in Canada, said: “Artificial intelligence has seen several breakthroughs in recent years, with games often serving as milestones.
 “A common feature of these games is that players have perfect information.
 Poker is the quintessential game of imperfect information, and a longstanding challenge problem in artificial intelligence.
 “In a study involving 44,000 hands of poker, DeepStack defeated with statistical significance professional poker players in heads-up, no-limit Texas hold’em.
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 The researchers said DeepStack had been able to win despite being given no training from expert human games.
 “The implications go beyond being a milestone for artificial intelligence,” the Science paper said.
 “DeepStack represents a paradigm shift in approximating solutions to large, sequential imperfect information games.