Man Wins vs. Machine

In heads up competition between team human and team machine, the results are in. The team of Phil Laak and Ali Eslami won the fourth and final poker session against the Polaris machine team to take a 2-1 overall victory. Poker pros Laak and Eslami came into day two trailing behind the Polaris software team 0-1.

Polaris arrived on day 2 after having drawn the first session then beating the human team in the second by 955 dollars. Representing the machine team, Polaris is a computer poker-playing program developed by The University of Alberta Computer Poker Research Group. This is the first challenge to the program from actual professional poker players. Rest assured this will not be the last we see of Polaris.

The Man-Machine Poker Championship is a $10/20 Limit Texas Holdem Head's up duplicate match. There are four sessions; each on has 500 hands for a total of 2000 rotating duplicate hands of poker. It can take several thousands of hands to ascertain the most adept poker player due to the luck component in the short term. By duplicating the hands, it reduces the luck component significantly. In a duplicate poker match, the same series of cards are dealt to the players in the same seat on different tables. This would create the following scenario: table 1 seat 1 Phil Laak, table 1 seat 2 Polaris; table 2 seat 1 Polaris, table 2 seat 2 Ali Eslami. Each time they will be playing the same hands against the respective players. Every session breaks into the 500 hands, after which the bankrolls of the human competitors are combined and the bankrolls of the machines at each table are also combined then they are compared. Once the totals from the tables are brought together, the winner is determined, and the next sessions can be ready to begin.

At noon on the 24th the competition resumed in session 3. Table 1 was Laak vs Polaris, and table two was Polaris 2 vs Eslami. One of the notable hands played, Phil and Polaris 2 are deal pocket 6's, the board shows Kc Ac Ah 2s 7s. Polaris 1 and Eslami display Queen high, and the 6's at Phil's table hold up. He even animated himself a bit with the statement "take that Polaris punk." After 500 hands, the human team won session 3 by $820 dollars, setting up the rubber match in session 4.

The final session starts at 6pm. The tables are Ali Eslami vs Polaris on table 1 and Polaris 2 vs Phil Laak on table 2. About midway through the hands at table 1, Ali takes the lead with Polaris unable to breath through to gain an advantage. Ali Eslami won that table by 460 dollars. To this point, the winner of the session had been in seat one while the person in the opposite seat lost. This time was different. While Ali was tackling Polaris at table 1, Phil was doing the same on table 2, winning by $110. The humans took the final session by $570 total.

It was an exciting two-day event. Polaris put up a fantastic fight against two of the worlds strongest and skilled poker players. The University of Alberta research team was able to obtain and immense amount of data to study and research for the next Polaris vs People match. This was a touch n go event to start with, making any subsequent event a must see!