The University of Alberta's Polaris poker playing software took on Vegas over the July 4th weekend and won the 2nd man-machine showdown with a record of 3-2-1. Polaris played against some of the best online poker players in the world at the stoxpoker.com booth at the 2008 Gaming Life Expo in Las Vegas, July 3-6. According to ars technica "Each match consisted of 500 hands of poker. In the first of four matches, Polaris and the human players wound up in a draw. The second match ended with the human players up by $50,000. The third and fourth matches were decisive wins for Polaris—it won the two matches by ending up by nearly $150,000." Last year Polaris was bested by it's human counterparts but it seems as though the lessons learned have resulted in better game play, hmm practice does make perfect particularly if you are an AI program.
