Machine versus man poker challenge is on!

Probably the most exciting event during the 2nd day of the AAAI conference on artificial intelligence was the start of the first man-machine poker championship. The artificial intelligence program Polaris from the University of Alberta will be playing two days of poker against professional poker players Ali Eslami and Phil Laak. Ali and Phil will be playing against two instances of Polaris in different rooms. The game is Texas Hold'em and it will be played in a way that luck will be a lesser factor to the final outcome. Instead of explaining this in writing, watch the following video of Polaris creator Jonathan Schaeffer introducing the players and explaining the importance of the challenge in addition to how the games will be played.