Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagLiz Boeree

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Flush royal in poker player hand. Lucky winner.

Does AI Really “Get” Poker? Why That Matters.

Science journalist Maria Konnikova, also a professional poker player, explores the human side of poker and efforts to automate it

Maria Konnikova (left), a science journalist who quit a good gig to become a poker player, learned a a good deal about the human side of the game and about AI programmers’ efforts at automating it. Along the way, she won money and wrote a book, The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win (June 2020). In an excerpt at Wired, she reflects on the fact that computer pioneer John von Neumann (1903–1957) was a poker player and “Not just a poker player, but someone for whom poker inspired brilliant insights into human decisionmaking, someone who considered it the ultimate game for approximating the strategic challenges of life.” Poker is a game of skill but Read More ›