Man vs. Machine poker battle - UPDATE - the Machine Wins!

[The Buzz]

Man won last time. This year? Who knows?

The second annual Man vs. Machine poker battle will take place over three days at the World Series of Poker from July 3 - 6 this year in Las Vegas.

Each match will consist of 500 hands with the cards dealt in duplicate, meaning that Polaris will receive the same cards in one room that the professional receives in the other room and vise-versa. The duplicate system will be employed in order to balance out the luck of the cards and emphasize the capabilities of the participants.

"It's possible, given enough computing power, for computers to play 'perfectly,' where over a long enough match, the program cannot lose money," said associate professor Michael Bowling, leader of the university's computer poker research group. "Humans will always make some mistakes, meaning the program will have an advantage.

"We're still quite far from the necessary computing power for perfect play. However, we've been able to take what we learned last year and apply it to improving this year's program."

Full story here ... http://www.physorg.com/news134137022.html

[The Buzz]

Interesting update from the University of Alberta team ... Polaris has defeated its human opponents.

"We're very excited," said Michael Bowling, head of the U of A team. "I think there's no question that we're playing on the level of the absolute best human players in the world at the game of heads up limit hold 'em."

The computer emerged from the weekend with a record of three wins, two losses and a draw.

Full story here ... http://www.canada.com/edmontonjourna...2-4a3e3fe3e17e

[JamieF]

Nice Article

With the popularity of poker and the entertainment value of a man versus machine battle, it is easy to forget that this competition is an academic pursuit. Games are an excellent domain for artificial intelligence research because games have well defined rules and clear goals.

It sounds like the future will be something like the movie i-robot.

[bb1web]

Hi all (Buzzy),

I wonder if they've a program that plays no limit? and I wonder if it is possible to play "perfectly" in a no limit situation?

[The Buzz]

Here's what Michael Bowling, who heads up this project, told Casino City's Aaron Todd on the subject two years ago ...

"Although no limit has a lot of popularity, the downside to it is it amplifies the luck in the game," Bowling said. "This is an academic endeavor, so we want to make sure that all of our results are statistically significant. We don't want to just flip a coin and declare a winner."

[The Buzz]

More on this story from Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics and the writer of a NY Times blog on poker ... he believes this outcomes isn't actually all that significant.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.co...ng-poker-pros/