When AI started performing better than humans in poker games, headlines appeared across several news outlets, including the BBC, New York Times, and Guardian. The New York Times headline “How AI Conquered Poker” highlighted AI’s importance in professional poker.

Until Libratus and Deep Stacks came along, AI was limited to simple games that did not need bluffing or strategy. When Libratus defeated four top-level poker professionals in 2017 with its superior card-playing strategy, it demonstrated that artificial intelligence is capable of almost anything. This AI outspent its rivals by almost $1.7 million, and all four of them had fewer chips at the end.

So, AI is shaking things up in professional poker. Gamers now use AI-generated plans when it comes to accurate predictions of the game’s outcomes and recommendations for successful checks or folds. They use AI to devise game strategies, such as prompting the AI with questions to simulate various games and analyzing the opponent’s tendencies, among other things. These methods are expanding poker’s possibilities and, driving players to grow.

Strong prompts let AI show its full potential, allowing players to get techniques that give them an advantage. This article therefore covers the ways to develop strong prompts and how to use them to get useful strategies.

Poker Strategies and AI

Today, we can say poker strategies and AI in the same breath because of the AI programs that poker players use to analyze their performance and develop a deeper understanding of GTO strategies.

AI has made its way into the gaming scene as a tool to help players improve their advanced poker strategies. It allows players to gain a deeper knowledge of game processes, such as recognizing opponents’ intentions, deciding on a better betting strategy, and managing risks. Machine learning allows AI systems to learn from prior game data, which human players may not notice. It enables players to do even more in-depth analyses to develop better strategies that are suited to the actual difficulties of playing high-stakes poker games. For example, to train DeepStacks machine learning algorithms, analysis for over ten million poker game scenarios was provided. This means that it can offer a good number of useful strategy tips hence, the reason for its desirability in most strategy games.

Players must also learn how to organize the prompts to assist the AI in its analysis. By mastering how to use AI prompts, players can find improvements in the approach they take to the game and gain an advantage. 

Hand Evaluation Prompts

AI hand evaluation prompts can improve poker strategies since they can interpret the strength of the hands held in different situations. Using a prompt like “ Analyze the probable outcomes of playing speculative hands against premium hands in multi-way pots”, can reveal tactics that players might have not had in mind before. The analysis can demonstrate potential in strong hands that may not be obvious at first glance, as well as how a player might capitalize on these “secondary” hands.

AI hand evaluation prompts can be easily customized to follow tactics based on the progression of the game and other players. For example, a prompt like “Teach an AI to modify hand evaluation standards in response to opponent profiles and game conditions” encourages the AI to consider how specific contestants play and adjust the worth of the hands. This allows the power of a hand to be described not only in terms of its relative value to other hands but also in terms of the game’s conditions. 

Bluffing Prompts

AI bluffing prompts can improve poker strategy by using artificial intelligence to perfect the act of deceit and randomness. 

Let’s consider a prompt like “Create an AI-powered strategy that switches between pure bluffs and semi-bluffs based on the opponent’s reaction record”. This will ask the AI to develop a bluffing strategy that is unexpected and hard for opponents to predict. With the help of AI bluffing prompts, players can develop staking-out strategies, as well as the most optimal and flexible strategies that will be useful in any sequence of the game, resulting in more convincing and successful bluffs.

Betting Prompts

A prompt like “Create a betting strategy that gradually modifies stake sizes in response to patterns of opponent activity,” will evaluate data to look for patterns in opponent behaviors to increase the likelihood of making a winning bet. Other examples such as “Calculate the best wager amount to make against an unpredictable opponent when you have a poor hand” allow the AI to be aggressive and bluff in some cases, but also to tread carefully.

Final Thoughts

Writing meaningful poker strategies using AI requires learning both poker and AI. AI in poker allows for the identification of trends and the best guess on the next possible move, as well as great decision-making, providing gamers with a competitive advantage at the table. The ideal method to use AI is to ask clear, context-based questions that allow the tool to generate realistic recommendations. With AI stepping into poker, virtually all aspects change and the kind of play that we bring to the game shifts dramatically.