First Man vs Machine Poker Tournament To Feature Phil Laak - 07-22-07

July 22 - It is being billed as the first "Man vs Machine Poker Championship". Poker pros Phil Laak and Ali Eslami will play in a tournament against Polaris, a poker program developed by a research team from the University of Alberta. The tournaments will take place on July 23 and 24 in Vancouver, and will be for real money.

The event is an attraction at the annual meeting of Canada as part of the annual meeting of AAAI (Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence).

The game will be fixed limit Hold 'em. Laak and Eslami will each play four 500-hand Limit Hold'em sessions against the computer. The card dealt to Laak and Eslami will be the same and so will the community cards. The pros will play at the same time against separate copies of Polaris, and will not be able to communicate with one another.

If the humans win all four sessions, they will spli a $50,000 prize. If they accumulate more than 25 small bets together in one session , the split $5000. If wither the humans or Polaris win by less that 25 small bets, the match is a tie.,

Laak has before prevailed over a computer, when Golden Palace sponsored a competition to find the best poker bot. Laak played the winning bot and defeated it.

The research team is lead by Jonathan Schaeffer, the Chair of Computer Science at the University of Alberta. Schaeffer is known as the author of a successful checkers playing program. The poker challenge however will be harder to solve as it is a game of incomplete information.

Polaris has the ability to learn from its opponent's play and exploit their weaknesses. We look forward to see if it can do so successfully.