Correction to the above: I stated Deepmind applied Neural Nets+MCTS and achieved ok results. I was actually misremembering two David Silver (Deepmind) papers as

Correction to the above: I stated Deepmind applied Neural Nets+MCTS and achieved ok results. I was actually misremembering two David Silver (Deepmind) papers as one. Smooth UCT modified UCT (popular brand of MCTS) to be able to handle imperfect information games. MCTS does not converge under imperfect information. Smooth UCT is strong at limit poker. Limit is much simpler than no-limit. Neural Fictitious Self Play based on fictitious play (invented 1950s), is an approach to reinforcement learning using neural nets for function approximation. Typical RL methods like DQN are highly exploitable. Against strong programs, NFSP did okay, with a win rate of -50 mbb/h against the best bot it played against. Looking not just at Deepmind, there's Deepstack. It's similar to AlphaGo OG, combining CFR+Neural nets. Deepstack did not win convincingly against humans at 2 player no limit hold em. The general point I'm trying to make here is that Chess and Go are closer to checkers than to poker, which is itself a constrained game with known rules. I mention all this and this Deepmind paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.00832.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.00832.pdf, to provide a sense of scale to those talking about smoke and fire alarms.