Machine Beats Man in Rematch

Early in July as part of a human vs. machine heads-up poker exhibition during the Gaming Life Expo held at the Rio All-Suites Hotel & Casino during the 2008 World Series of Poker, Polaris 2.0 faced players from Stoxpoker, a coaching web site. The computer program, a collection of poker-playing programs collected and developed in part by the University of Alberta’s Computer Poker Research Group (CPRG), was defeated last summer in Canada by the team of Phil Laak and Ali Eslami.

This year, the Stoxpoker crew brought along seven members of its team to take on the newly improved machine including Nick Grudzien, Kyle Hendon, Rich McRoberts, Victor Acosta, Mark Newhouse, IJay Palansky and Matt Hawrilenko. There were four sessions in which two human competitors simultaneously yet separately played hands of ‘duplicate’ limit hold’em against Polaris 2.0.

In the end, Polaris won the majority of the rounds and claimed victory over the humans. CPRG now intends to move beyond heads-up limit hold’em and broaden its research to more complicated poker games. They also hope to apply their findings in the area of artificial intelligence to non-poker-related instances as well.

For more info and full results, check out the CPRG web site at the University of Alberta.

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Tags: Polaris, Stoxpoker, University Of Alberta