- OpenAI’s o3 mannequin received a five-day poker match of 9 AI chatbots
- The o3 mannequin received by taking part in essentially the most constant recreation
- Most prime language fashions dealt with poker effectively, however struggled with bluffing, place, and primary math
In a digital showdown not like something ever dealt on the felt, 9 of the world’s strongest massive language fashions spent 5 days locked in a high-stakes poker match.
OpenAI’s o3, Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet 4.5, X.ai's Grok, Google's Gemini 2.5 Professional, Meta’s Llama 4, DeepSeek R1, Kimi K2 from Moonshot AI, Magistral from Mistral AI, and Z.AI’s GLM 4.6 performed hundreds of palms of no-limit Texas maintain 'em at $10 and $20 tables with $100,000 bankrolls apiece.
When OpenAI’s o3 mannequin walked away from a weeklong poker recreation $36,691 richer, there was no trophy, simply bragging rights.
The experimental PokerBattle.ai was completely AI-run with the identical preliminary immediate issued to every participant. It was pure technique, if technique is what you name hundreds of micro-decisions made by machines that don’t actually perceive successful, dropping, or how humiliating it’s to bust with seven-deuce.
For a tech stunt, it was unusually telling. The highest-performing AIs weren’t simply bluffing and betting – they had been adapting, modeling their opponents, and studying in actual time how you can navigate ambiguity. Whereas they didn’t play flawless poker, they got here impressively near mimicking seasoned gamers' judgment calls.
OpenAI’s o3 shortly confirmed it had the steadiest hand, taking down three of the 5 largest pots and sticking near textbook pre-flop concept. Anthropic’s Claude and X.com’s Grok rounded out the highest three with substantial income of $33,641 and $28,796, respectively.
In the meantime, Llama misplaced its full stack and flamed out early. The remainder of the pack landed someplace in between, with Google’s Gemini turning a modest revenue and Moonshot’s Kimi K2 hemorrhaging chips all the way down to an $86,030 end.
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Playing AI
Poker has lengthy been the most effective analogs for testing general-purpose AI. Not like chess or Go, which depend on good data, poker calls for that gamers cause below uncertainty. It’s a mirror of real-world decision-making in the whole lot from enterprise negotiations to navy technique, and now, apparently, chatbot growth.
One constant takeaway from the match was that the bots had been typically too aggressive. Most favored action-heavy methods, even in conditions the place folding would have been wiser. They tried to win massive pots greater than they tried to keep away from dropping them. And so they had been terrible at bluffing, not as a result of they didn’t strive, however as a result of their bluffs typically stemmed from misinterpret palms, not intelligent deception.
Nonetheless, AI instruments are getting smarter in ways in which go far past surface-level smarts. They’re not simply repeating what they’ve learn; they’re making probabilistic judgments below strain and studying to learn the room. It’s additionally a reminder that even highly effective fashions nonetheless have flaws. Misreading conditions, drawing shaky conclusions, and forgetting their very own “place” isn’t only a poker drawback.
You may by no means sit throughout from a language mannequin in an actual poker site, however odds are you’ll work together with one making an attempt to make choices that matter. This recreation was only a glimpse of what that might appear like.
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