Why humans still beat AI at strategic games

Researchers ran three Colonel Blotto tournaments—a game with massive complexity and no single dominant strategy—pitting humans against each other, LLMs against each other, and both against each other. Humans won by deploying mid-level heuristics that balanced sophistication with consistency; LLMs fell back on simpler, repetitive patterns. The striking part: humans treated AI opponents identically to human ones, suggesting they think strategically about rules rather than adapting to specific competitors.