Programmers Develop Nearly Optimal Strategy for Heads-Up Limit Texas Hold'em

A team of programmers has developed a nearly optimal strategy for heads-up limit Texas Hold'em poker. The news about this achievement was published on January 8, 2015, on multiple authoritative websites including The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and Nature. The article by the authors of 'Cepheus' (Michael Bowling, Neil Burch, Michael Johanson, and Oskar Tammelein) describing the algorithm was published in the prestigious journal Science.

The project 'Cepheus' took 11 years to complete, with significant improvements made after the involvement of Oskar Tammelein from Finland. The computation for the solution of heads-up limit Texas Hold'em required 11 terabytes of storage and 900 CPU-years of processing power. The 'Cepheus' program used a method of full enumeration, playing millions of hands against itself and learning from mistakes.

The 'Cepheus' program confirmed that limping with a small blind is not optimal and that capping pre-flop with strong hands is rare. Michael Bowling stated that even after 60 million hands, an opponent knowing the strategy of 'Cepheus' would have a less than 0.05 bb/100 advantage. The 'Cepheus' program played more hands from the big blind and 3-bet with smaller pairs more frequently than many professionals.