Pluribus Poker Bot: A Game Changer or Just Another Challenger?

Pluribus, a poker bot developed by a group of scientists who previously created Libratus for NLHE HU, has recently made headlines by defeating a group of professional poker players, including Linus Lökeberg, Nick Petrangelo, Darren Elias, and Greg Merson. The bot learned to play poker by playing against itself for eight days on a server with a 64-core processor.

One of the key points highlighted is that Pluribus did not run on a supercomputer but on two 14-core processors with 128 GB of memory. This has raised concerns among poker professionals about the accessibility and potential widespread use of such bots.

Simple Poker, a team of developers of popular professional solvers, provided insights into the implications of Pluribus. They stated that the bot uses known algorithms and technologies, such as the MCCFR algorithm, which is also used in public solvers like Simple Preflop Holdem. According to Simple Poker, the current version of Pluribus works only with static stacks of 100 BB, which is not representative of real-game variability. Additionally, the bot requires significant time for some moves, making real-time adaptation challenging.