Polaris defeats the Stox Team

Published on 11 Jul 08 12:51 by Drakhor

For the first time, the computer wins the duel Man versus Machine: The software bundle with the name 'Polaris 2.0' has defeated a team of Stoxpoker members on the Gaming Life Expo. The variant was Limit Hold'em Heads-up.

The Stox Team

Last year, Polaris only went up against two human opponents: Phil Laak and Ali Eslami. This time, the human team was made up of a group of Stox members. In it were Nick 'Stoxtrader' Grudzien, Kyle 'cottonseed' Hendon, Rich 'digs' McRoberts, Victor 'vmacosta' Acosta, Mark 'newhizzle' Newhouse, IJay 'doughnutz' Palansky and Matt 'Hoss_TBF' Hawrilenko.

Duplicate Poker

To decrease the variance and get a more meaningful result, the matches were resolved according to the rules of duplicate poker. This means that at first a round was played, then the computer software received those hole cards the human had in the previous round and vice versa. The community cards were also identical.
Each time 500 hands of Limit Hold'em were played. Afterwards, the winnings and losses of both duplicated 500-hand sessions were added. Starting at a difference of at least 25 small bets, one team was then decided as the winner of the match. With a smaller difference, the match was rated as a tie. The blinds were $500/$1,000.

Match 1

In the first duplicate match, Nick Grudzien and Kyle Hendon took on the computer software. Hendon generated $37,000 in his 500 hands, Grudzien finished his match with a loss of $42,000. The difference of $5,000 was less than the stipulated 25 small bets and thus the first match was rated as tied.

Match 2

The second match went to the Team Human, made up of Rich McRoberts and Victor Acosta. McRoberts made a plus of $89,500, which was enough to make up for Acosta's losses of $39,500 and win the round.

Match 3

Mark Newhouse was able to reap the biggest profit for the Stox Team with a convincing plus of $251,500. Unfortunately, his partner IJay Palansky lost $307,500. This made Polaris the winner of the third match.

Match 4

The last match had to bring the decision. And it was clearer than expected. Polaris defeated both opponents. In the first round the software had a plus of $60,500 against Matt Hawrilenko. In the duplicate round it won $29,000 against Palansky.

The Polaris Software

Polaris is a computer bot for Limit Hold'em heads-up. Developed at the University of Alberta, the project has already been under way for over 16 years. It is based, amongst others, on the bot "HyperBorean07", which won the Limit Series of the "Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence" (AAAI) - a poker tournament only for bots.
The developers of the software are confident that they will beat Limit Hold'em heads-up in the next years once and for all. Furthermore, they want to extend their work to, for the computer, more complex Hold'em variants.