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Poker News

Doug Polk to Play Against “Claudico” the Poker Bot

Written By: Maya Michaels | April 28, 2015 | Posted In Poker News

A team for computer science at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), developed the artificial intelligence for poker bot “Claudico”. Four poker professionals will be testing their game heads-up, in a battle lasting two weeks against the poker bot. The game they will be playing is, no-limit Texas Hold’em.

The four professional poker players, Doug Polk, Jason Les, Bjorn Li, and Dong Kim will be playing for the chance of winning $100k each by besting “Claudico”. There will be over 20k hands played each, starting on April 24th lasting until May 7th. The game is being called “Brains VS. AI”, and is being played at Pittsburgh’s Rivers Casino.

Tuomas Sandholm, computer science professor at CMU, leads the creators of  “Claudico”. They are betting $400k that a computer bot can hold their own against these four professional poker players, over the total of 80k hands. Describing this challenge as another benchmark for AI, Sandholm compares this to past challenges in computer science involving chess.

Strategies that were used for creating this computer program, can be applied elsewhere according to Sandholm. “Computing the world’s strongest strategies for this game was a major achievement, with the algorithms having future applications in business, military, cyber security, and medical arenas,” he states.

Doug Polk believe the one that has the edge is the human, when it comes to beating “Claudico”. Being a specialist in cash games online, Polk has won $3.6 million playing in live tournaments. Polk states his strategy will be to focus on actual playing, since there is not a human trying to read him mind and his hand. He says he looks forward for the match.

After day two of the challenge, the players are ahead by $59,766. The players have already played an amount of 12k hands. Polk leads in the amount of money won, being ahead by $69,041. Bjorn Li is next, with $68,850 ahead. Dong Kim has the amount of $32,712 ahead, and Les has been experiencing some troubles and is down by $110,837.

The game can be watch on Twitch.tv at 11 a.m. Eastern time.

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