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A Texas Hold 'em Tournament For Ais


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poker table and computer mouse

The development of world-class poker-playing programs is increasingly being seen as an important milestone in the development of intelligent computing.

Credit: Getty / IEEE Spectrum

The University of Alberta's Computer Poker Research Group has been competing in the Annual Computer Poker Competition (ACPC) since the contest was launched in 2006. ACPC's first contest had just four entrants that played one of two poker games. However, ACPC has grown quickly. Last year's contest had 21 poker-playing programs for heads-up limit, eight programs for heads-up no limit, and 10 programs for three-player limit.

This year's competition includes three poker games, including heads-up limit, heads-up no limit, and three-player limit Texas Hold 'Em. In the future, more games will likely be introduced as recommended by competitors and the competition's officials.

After playing millions of hands of poker, two criteria are used to determine the winner in each of the three games. In the total bankroll mechanism, the winner is simply the program that wins the most chips against all of its opponents combined. In contrast, the bankroll instant-runoff mechanism for determining winners sequentially eliminates the player that earned the fewest chips against the remaining non-eliminated players, and the last player remaining is declared the winner.

From IEEE Spectrum
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Abstracts Copyright © 2012 Information Inc., Bethesda, Maryland, USA


 

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