Can Unabomber Out-Bluff Polaris?

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Big bets on man vs. machine as poker pros challenge multi-faceted poker program

It's been done in chess and backgammon, and now two top poker pros are to face off against a poker computer program. University of Alberta academics are so confident in their latest poker bot Polaris that they have put up $50 000 that Phil 'Unabomber' Laak and fellow poker pro Ali Eslami will not be able to defeat it over 2 000 hands of Texas Hold 'Em.

The conventional wisdom is that poker is too complex a game for programs to fully exploit all its techniques and quirks successfully, but the academics feel that artificial intelligence (AI) technology has reached a stage where this may no longer be the case. They are supported by recent developments at the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa and the University of Edinburgh where it has been claimed that a poker program has been taught the art of bluffing.

Laak and Eslami will take on the poker-playing computer during the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Vancouver on July 23 and 24.  Each match will be comprised of 500 hands played in four sessions. At the end of each session, the combined bankroll of the two men will be compared with that of the computer to determine the winner.

Polaris is a mix of cross-communicating computer programs with different abilities. One element is very aggressive, but doesn't take into account the playing style of its opponents, whilst another fills this gap by 'learning' from the strengths and weaknesses of competing players and adjusts its style accordingly.

However, all of the component programs master the most characteristic aspect of poker: bluffing. "There is a mathematically optimal rate at which you should bluff. Computers can calculate that. If humans bluff too much, you can exploit them and win money," Alberta University's Professor Jonathan Schaeffer told the Edmonton Sun newspaper.

But could the academics be bluffing? And do they know that in 2005 Laak defeated the best poker robot in the world in a heads up match during the 2005 WSOP!