Jonathan Schaeffer heads a team that is pitting its poker-playing supercomputer, Polaris, against two poker pros, Phil (The Unabomber) Laak and Ali Eslami.Schaeffer is a boffin at the University of Alberta. "This is a world first, and, I hope, the beginning of something that will grow and become an annual event," said Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer, a team leader of the Polaris program.
Schaeffer believes the event is an evolution of the 1997 match between IBM's "Deep Blue" chess program and Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion at the time.
"The difference is that chess is a game of perfect knowledge, meaning there is nothing hidden from the players. In poker you can't see your opponent's hand and you don't know what cards will be dealt. This makes poker a much harder challenge for computer scientists from an artificial intelligence perspective," Schaeffer said.
Phil Laak and Ali Eslami are playing play the 'bot and it has drawn one and won one of the two sessions on the first day. There are live updates here.
What I find interesting is the way the test is being conducted, it is interesting to know how another player would play the cards you were dealt eliminating the excuse that you were dealt garbage all night.
I shall be following events with interest.
Cheers
Professor
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