Man beats machine

Man has beaten machine after two days of intense poker rivalry at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Vancouver, Canada.

The $50,000 match, between top pros Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami and Polaris, the reigning world champion computer poker program ended in victory for the humans after four cash game sessions of 500 $10/$20 Limit Texas Hold’em hands each.

The competition took the form of two duplicate matches. The same series of cards were dealt in two parallel man v machine matches, with Laak and Eslami playing the opposite hands in each game. At the end of the match, the total number of chips won or lost by each team was added together to determine the winning team.

This format was used to reduce the element of random luck to a minimum, and get a much better indication of the differences in skill.

The first session was deemed a draw before Polaris, a poker-playing computer program developed at the University of Alberta, won the second, taking a total of nearly $1,000 off the two pros.

However, Homo sapien fought back, taking the third session by $820 and the fourth $570 for the overall victory.

After the gruelling battle Eslami was in no doubt as to hard it had been to beat the bot. He commented:”We’re supposed to be the crème de la crème and we had to play our hearts out to do what we did here. I played the best heads-up poker I’ve ever played. The quality of play of this machine, this beast, that they have made is just amazing.”

And Laak agreed that it was tough going. “This was like a tournament – a seven day $10K tournament. It was a great trip and a great weekend and an amazing experience. I can’t be believe we won, at one stage I was just hoping for a draw!”

Polaris was unavailable for comment.