News / Editor / 16 June 2008 / Leave a comment

While a million and one people do battle on the tables in Las Vegas for the many events that make up the World Series of Poker, the Rio Hotel and Casino is gearing up for 'Man versus Pokerbot, the sequel' (and this time it's personal), writes Rob Eddy.

At about this time last year in Vancouver, a pair of poker pros (Ali Eslami and Phil 'The Unabomber' Laak) took on a machine called Polaris in four sessions of poker and it was the humans who came out on top with a result of two wins, one loss and a technical draw.

Each session was a 500-duplicate-hand Limit Texas Hold'em match where Laak would get the same hands as Eslami's pokerbot, and Eslami would get the same hands as Laak's computer. The winner was determined by the number of chips won or lost at the end of each match.

The computer, created by the Computer Poker Research Group at Alberta University, is hungry for revenge and will take on some more of the game's best human opponents - this time at the 2008 Gaming Life Expo at the Rio All-Suite Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas from July 3-6.

Imaginatively called Polaris 2, the pokerbot and humans will go head-to-head in exactly the same format as the first meeting, only the creators will be gunning for a different result.

Lead coach at www.stoxpoker.com, Bryce Paradis, whose poker coaches will be the guinea pigs, said: "Against the current AI in Polaris 2, the average poker player would be completely dominated.

"The Polaris 2 team has made incredible improvements since the match last year. The most powerful change is that the AI will now learn from and adapt to its opponents' play as the match progresses. This year's Man vs. Machine match is going to push our team to their limit."

Nick Grudzien, IJay Palansky and Matt Hawrilenko are three stoxpoker stars signed up already, although there are expected to be further players added to the line-up.

Should be fascinating.