Poker Players Beat Polaris Poker Program
Top poker pros, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, narrowly prevailed against Polaris, the poker software designed to challenge human players, after four rounds in the world’s first man-versus-machine poker championship. The two won by just 570 points in the fourth and final game in the match.
An audience of computer scientists and a few spectators watched the grueling poker battle in a conference room at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Vancouver, Canada. The tournament stretched until 11pm on Tuesday (July 24). The room erupted in cheers when the humans won.
“I really am happy it’s over,” said Eslami, 30, adding that playing against the computer was more exhausting than any previous game in his career. Eslami, a former computer consultant, also praised the machine and the computer scientists.
“I’m surprised we won…. it’s already so good it will be tough to beat in future” as scientists make further improvements on Polaris’ programming.
Scientists billed the competition as a milestone for computer artificial intelligence, similar to the 1997 match in which a computer named Deep Blue beat Russian genius Garry Kimovich Kasparov at chess.
Darse Billings, a one-time professional poker player and lead architect of the Polaris team at the University of Alberta said, “Polaris showed scientists that it is possible for a computer to do well at the essentially psychological game of poker. I wouldn’t be surprised if we can beat them tomorrow.”
The man-versus-machine poker tournament was the highlight of the conference on artificial intelligence attended by 1,000 scientists from around the world.
Tags: Polaris Poker program, Phil Laak, Ali Eslami
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