Human Brain 1 - 0 Computer 'Brain'

[Dazzler69]

Phil Laak and Ali Eslami recently took part in an experiment with the University of Alberta. They have developed a computer, called Polaris, that they beleive can play winning poker, this is not really that hard to imagine as a computer was created that beat the best chess players in the world. But this was a new challenge as poker is a much more diverse game and contains much more variables.

After the 500 hands of NL Hold 'Em Laak and Eslami ended up on top. There were stipulations to the games in order reduce the luck and variance, but the human poker players out did the computer player. However out of the four sessions, session 1 was deemed a draw, session 2 the computer won $1000, session 3 the humans won $820 and session 4 the humans won $570.

It shall be interesting to see if this program is developed further in the future, also if people were trying to get a chimp into the WSOP do you think they'll try to get a computer in??

[scrawnybob]

hi dazzler

I was going to put this up in news but much better a forum thread - cheers

had a quick look through the stats on the man v machine or laak v pokerbot and I think (might be the wrong way round) but the bot did better than the pros on the strong hands but worse on the marginal / bluffing hands

definately an interesting experiment - God help us if they develop bots this good for a mass market as it would kill most average / recreational players dead

Laak might have shown it a thing or two but it would tear up an average online game without too much trouble reading between the lines

cheers scrawnybob

[katymaty]

apparently they reckon alot of bots play the fixed level games. read an article last year in a magazine where they dont win loads but make a few dollars an hour, but if there were hundreds of them would make a nice profit.

And if the ones that can be programmed to play the no limit games it would probably kill online poker

[Dazzler69]

I read that stat as well Bob. The thing with a computer playing poker is it can only make decisions based on numbers and not feelings. So it is only really going to play good starting hands, and boards that it has hit.

It is not going to be able to play marginal hands as well as a human, well I dont think it will, and these are the type of hands that tournements are won and lost on, barring big hand vs bigger hand. Most people can play Aces and Kings, or 7-2off and 9-4off. The decision with these hands are simple play them or ditch them. While hands such as A-J, 9-10s, J-10s, etc etc are the hands that I think only a human will be able to play effectively as they are very position and situation dependent and a computer is not going to be as good as reading these situations as a human player.

But could you imagine a computer playing the WSOP, I can just see Norman and Lon now commentating!

'We're here at our feature table now with the Legend that is Doyle Brunson who is currently in a pot with POLARIS, Polaris is not having much luck against Doyle as the King of Poker spotted Polaris's patterns and has been raking in the chips ever since' lol