Computer 1, Humans 0 in the first official poker tournament

At the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) annual conference in the Hyatt Regency, Vancouver the first official poker tournament pitting humans against computer is underway.

Phil Laak and Ali Esmali are set to play against Polaris, a computer program developed by the University of Alberta games research group.

“Each session will involve a human playing 500 hands against Polaris. However, the cards dealt in the first match to the human will be dealt to the computer in the second match, and vice versa,”

“The result of a session is the sum of the two humans’ scores versus the sum of the two Polaris scores.

“This format, inspired by the rules of duplicate bridge, significantly reduces the luck element and increases the chances that the best team will win based on skill.”

The tournament will be played over four sessions of 500 hands, each session with a $5000 prize to the winner. The scientists who developed the software will be present, and using feedback from the human players to improve the code.

The first days play resulted in a first session draw and the second session was won by Polaris.

“We’re ecstatic about the win and the match yesterday. But we have to really take that with a grain of salt,” said Michael Bowling, computer science professor at the University of Alberta and team leader of the Polaris Team Project.

“The way our program was playing was very, very aggressive which turned out to work very well. But it also had to do with the cards…and that turned into our favour to some degree, so we’re excited to see what happens in the next two matches.”