A quartet of professional poker players has beaten a form of artificial intelligence in a series of Heads-Up No Limit Hold’em contests. Scientists claim the narrow margin of defeat was a statistical tie.

Artificial intelligence (AI) will not take over online poker rooms quite yet. The quartet of Doug Polk, Bjorn Li, Dong Kim and Jason Les have beaten Claudico – the AI program created by a Carnegie Mellon University team – by $723,713, over a period of 80,000 hands.

Les called the event ‘historic’, and said he was happy to be involved and ‘be part of the winning team’. The scientists have a slight problem with the use of the word ‘winning’. With $170 million available on the table, during the two-week event, the white suits are calling this one a ‘statistical tie.”

Li gathered most of the haul ($529,033), Polk second ($213,671), Kim third ($70,049), and Les was actually beaten by Claudico (-$80,482). All the action was streamed live on Twitch. Viewers from over 100 countries can breath a sight of relief. Online poker has not been solved.