Matt “Hoss_TBF” Hawrilenko and others face Polaris
- Filed under: Gossip, High Stakes News, Hoss_TBF, Matt Hawrilenko, Phil Laak, Poker, Unabomber
- Date: Jul 3,2008
The Man vs. Machine rematch will be played starting from today at the Gaming Life Expo which runs concurrently with the WSOP. Last year Phil “Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami beat the poker program in a series of very tough heads-up matches. Now the University of Alberta have worked more on their poker playing computer program and plan to take the title this year. Their program is callet “Polaris”.
The opponents for Polaris this year include Stoxpoker coaches Nick Grudzien and IJay Palansky and the limit hold’em specialist and very familiar name at Full Tilt Poker Matt Hawrilenko aka. Hoss_TBF - all of them can boast with well over $1 million in poker winnings.
“In the same format as last year, Polaris will play against professional human players in a game of limit Texas Hold’em poker. Each match will consist of 500 hands with the cards dealt in duplicate, meaning that Polaris will receive the same cards in one room that the professional receives in the other room and vise-versa. The duplicate system will be employed in order to balance out the luck of the cards and emphasize the capabilities of the participants.”
With the new improvements associate professor Michael Bowling, leader of the university’s computer poker research group, is sure that they will manage better this year:
“It’s possible, given enough computing power, for computers to play ‘perfectly,’ where over a long enough match, the program cannot lose money. Humans will always make some mistakes, meaning the program will have an advantage.”
“We’re still quite far from the necessary computing power for perfect play. However, we’ve been able to take what we learned last year and apply it to improving this year’s program.”
This one will also be worth watching!
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