Man vs. Machine II (Poker Bot vs. Humans) Polaris wins!
The second annual Man vs. Machine is taking place this weekend. The University of Alberta is known for their amazing poker bots, and they are once agian putting Polaris up against some of the better poker players around.
It works like this.
-The game for the event will be two-player Limit Texas Hold'em.-A team of two humans will play against a team of two computer programs (both being copies of the Polaris poker technology).
-A match consists of teammates playing the same series of hands, but from opposite sides (one North, the other South) to reduce the element of luck to a minimum.
-No communication between teammates is permitted during play.
-All players (bot and human) will connect to an independent poker server run by Poker Academy, which will administer the parallel games.
-Each series of cards will be generated randomly, based on a combination of independent seeds provided by the human team, representatives of the bot team, the match arbiter, and the match administrators (no single entity determines the cards to be dealt).
-There will be four live matches consisting of 500 hands each, played over 4 days (one match per day).
-There will be two remote matches consisting of 500 hands played prior to the live event to give competitors a feel for the software.
-A winner is determined by adding the total winnings/loses of the two teamates. If a team's margin of victory is 25 small bets or less, the match is considered a draw.
Last year Phil Laak and Ali Eslami beat Polaris over four days. The first match was a draw, Polaris won round two, and then Laak/Eslami won the final two rounds to win.
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I have just graduated from the University of Alberta and so had opportunities to talk to some of those involved. Very interesting stuff!
So, of all the amazing things we could be doing with AI, we chose to have it gamble. That's just fantastic!
(@)
This thread did not deliver on my expectations for "Man vs. Machine".
-Bad Mojo
And man that dog looks like he's having a good time, but that monkey is f*cking into it. This isn't his recreation; this is his life and he knows it in a way I will never know anything. --Danjo Olivaw
That was an awesome link, Bad Mojo. I especially liked:
...it was called a 'radio'.
Oh, those crazy sci-fi writers...
If I could only bring three things to a desert island, all three would be you. And I'd make you all kiss. -a softer world
To be fair, poker is not really the end result of this research. Poker is a method to learn about artificial intelligence using imperfect information.
Here's a quote from my lone front page article on Slashdot, Poker Driving Artificial Intelligence Research
There is a reason a university would fund something like this beyond gambling!
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Dammit, here's me thinking this thread was about a fantabulous rap battle...
Pistols for two and coffee for one.
Gamertag | Spore
Okay, with one day to go, it is a draw. In the five matches so far, it is 2-2-1. In terms of dollars, Polaris is up over $100K. Polaris won its two matches by $120 thousand and $50 thousand. Of of the human wins was by $25,500, which was just one mere half-bet away from being a draw. One side has to win by more than $25,000 for it to count as a win.
With one to go, it will be winner takes all. But the humans will need to win by $105,500 in order to even up the board.
This is a much bigger accomplishment than beating a human in chess. I've tried my luck with Polaris off and on for the last year, and she is a tough cookie. You can take on Polaris by just downloading the demo for Poker Academy.
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Polaris took the last match yesterday by $89,500. So over the course of the six matches, Polaris is up nearly $200K playing $1000/$2000 blinds. The humans were all limit specialists that have millions of dollars in cash winnings. This was a pretty huge win for Polaris and the University of Alberta.
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