Man-machine poker championship: Session 2, Phil Laak

On July 23rd and 24th, the first man-machine poker championship was held at AAAI 2007 in Vancouver, Canada. This match pitted poker professionals Phil Laak and Ali Eslami against Polaris — a poker playing computer program designed by researchers at the University of Alberta. The match’s unique structure attempted to reduce luck by running duplicate matches. In this format, Ali and Phil formed a team against a team of two computer programs. Teammates played the same series of hands, but from …