By Deborah Jones in Vancouver

Vancouver, Canada - Two top poker players will pit their wiles and math ability against a computer on Monday, in a two-day match scientists say is the world's first man-machine poker championship.

The program, called Polaris, will play four games of Texas Hold Em. Its opponents are Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, gamblers from Los Angeles who are among the top players in the global high-stakes cash poker circuit.

The competition will begin on Monday and end late on Tuesday, and the humans will receive $5 000 (about R40 000) for each match they win against Polaris.

But the cash is modest, noted Eslami, who said he agreed to come to this western Canadian city to compete because he's interested in artificial intelligence.

"I'm interested in being at the cusp of this wave, it's like history unfolding. It's like watching the first launch of the space shuttle," Eslami told AFP. "This is the beginning of the next revolution in computers, computers that can become human."

The man-machine poker game is billed as one highlight at the annual global conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. More than 1 000 scientists from universities and corporations pre-registered for the event in this western Canadian city, said an organiser.

"The poker is in some ways an entertaining event, but it's also a very scientific event," said Michael Bowling, the leader of the computer science team that developed Polaris at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

"The technology is more than about poker - poker is a test for evaluating," said Bowling, 31. "Building a machine with human intelligence creates an intellectual challenge."

Scientists have now developed computers that can beat humans at chess, checkers and backgammon. But if Polaris wins the essentially psychological game of poker - with its inherent bluffing, emotions, deliberate deception and elements of chance as well as mathematics - Bowling said it will be a major milestone for the progress of Artificial Intelligence.

He compared the poker competition to the 1997 chess match between Garry Kimovich Kasparov and an IBM computer Deep Blue.

Deep Blue won that match its conquest of the legendary Russian world chess champion made global headlines - and changed how humans regard computers.

Eslami and Laak are technologically savvy as well as professional gamblers. Laak is an engineer by training, and Eslami is a business graduate who worked as a gaming and computer consultant before turning to professional poker.

Eslami, 30, said the point of the Polaris-human event is more than a poker match - it helps further AI technology that humans can use in many ways.

"If they can solve the problem the applications are huge for human kind," he said. "If computers can understand human emotion they can interact with us more."

Eslami said possible long-term examples of AI use might be for smart automobile computers that can sense the emotions of drivers and take measures to avoid dangerous situations, a computerised telephone system that can pass a frustrated caller directly to a human operator, and military strategy in which computers would help understand the emotions of opponents.

"But these are large abstractions from what they're doing here," said Eslami, pointing to the scientists as the experts.

Darse Billings, the lead architect of the Polaris team, said applications of a computer capable of playing poker are in the future.

"We don't really think in terms of applications, we're doing pure research," said Billings, 45, a one-time chess master who after completing a masters degree in computer science spent several years as a professional poker player.

It was Billings, who later obtained a computer science PhD from the University of Alberta - who suggested using poker to research artificial intelligence.

"It's a game of hidden information ... The challenge is trying to get inside (the opponents) head," he said.

"Philosophically, there's nothing that a human can do that a computer can't do," said Billings, 45. "The whole world is rife with uncertainty, and we want computers to bridge that gap."

 

Published: July 24/25 2007

VANCOUVER (AFP) - Two professional poker players narrowly beat a computer late Tuesday after four tense rounds that scientists called the world's first man-versus-machine poker championship. Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, two poker players from Los Angeles ranked as the world's best, prevailed against a program named Polaris by just 570 points in the fourth and final game in the match.

    Rows of weary-looking computer scientists and a few spectators watched the grueling poker battle in an overheated hotel conference room as it stretched on until 11 pm (0600 GMT) on Tuesday. When the humans won, the room erupted in cheers.

    "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, 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.    

    Much was riding on the tense last minutes of the fourth match because the previous three games over two days resulted in one draw and one win each for humans and the machine. Scientists had 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 even though the program lost in the end it played "brilliantly." Polaris showed scientists that it is possible for a computer to do well at the essentially psychological game of poker, he said. "I wouldn't be surprised if we can beat them tomorrow," he said.

    The competition was held as 1,000 scientists from around the world converged on this western Canadian city for a conference on artificial intelligence.

    "I was expecting a draw," said computer scientist Michael Littman of Rutgers University in the United States. Littman served as the official arbiter of the game and at the end declared the humans "clear winners."

    Poker is a special challenge for computers -- which can already consistently beat humans at chess, checkers and backgammon -- because the gambling game includes deliberate deception, unpredictable emotions of opponents and elements of chance as well as mathematics.

 

 

About this website: Text and photos by Deborah Jones except where otherwise noted.