The
Grand Prize of the competition is $100,000 and is and 6 of the finest computer
scientists in the world are eager to face off to prove they are the best and brightest.
POKER ROBOT, LLC is responsible for producing the event -- contestant recruitment,
technology consultants, and worldwide publicity and promotions management."Until
now, Poker Robot competitions have existed in the underground," said POKER
ROBOT, LLC, spokesperson Darren Shuster, "and we're making it a truly global
competition for Poker and gaming enthusiasts to enjoy at the venue in Las Vegas,
on TV or via the Internet."
Round
One: $100,000 Grand Prize
WSOP®
(The World Series of Poker, the human version), it will take about 6 weeks to
narrow down the competitors to the final table. At this event, because of the
lightening speed of competing Robots, it will only take 72 hours -- comprised
of 4 six hour shifts.
The event is being
staged during the finals of The World Series of Poker® (the human version)
the second week of July 2005. An independent Hollywood crew is in the process
of recording most of the contestants at their homes in preparation for their journey
to Las Vegas. Why? To earn the $100,000 Grand Prize and global bragging rights
for building the ultimate Poker mind.
The
venue of 2005 World Series of Poker Robots® is being closely guarded for security
purposes and will be announced 48 hours in advance of the competition to both
media and public.
The Players
Poker
pros Hilton "Print" Givens of Indiana, Ben Lo from Hong Kong and others
will be flying into Las Vegas on July 11, 2005. These players are available to
speak with the media upon request. Because of the security surrounding these robot-builders
and the upcoming competition, in terms of secrecy and privacy, please direct your
inquiries directly to the Media Office, Darren Shuster or Lindsey Rarick at (818)
992-3145.
"It will be very exciting
to see how the Robots perform compared to the human players" said Richard
Rowe, . "It's really the search for the absolute best Poker mind."
Can
robots really bluff as well as humans? We’ll find out in Round Two when the
competition turns to Man Vs. Machine®.
Round
Two: Man Vs. Machine
The winning
robot will then challenge the Champion of the 2005 World Series of Poker®
to a man versus machine duel. Will they accept the ultimate challenge?
Lies
and deception are at the very heart of a good Poker competition – what happens
when the human element is removed? How will the best player in the world fair
against the best Poker computer in the world? Are top professionals willing to
put their reputations on the line?
Online
Poker Rooms Doing Battle
Most of
the confirmed competitors have run their programs on PartyPoker.com, which forbids
such activity and confiscates the accounts of those it catches.
PartyPoker
marketing director Vikrant Bhargava said he wasn't pleased to learn that many
of the poker bot World Series contestants honed their skills on his site, adding
that eventually all such cheats get caught. Other sites don't care whether users
are human, he said, because the house takes the same percentage of the pot no
matter who's playing. But Bhargava said PartyPoker has 100 employees looking for
robots, collusion among players and other scams.
Gaming
companies won't disclose all their secrets for sniffing out bots, but some of
the techniques are simple. Any person playing three tables simultaneously for
48 hours without a bathroom break, for example, or invariably taking exactly one
second to bet, is not a person.
Computer
gaming experts said the robots have some major hurdles to overcome before they
have a chance against the world's top human beings — especially in multi-player
games with no betting limit, where the psychology is most important and the number
of possible bets is much larger.
Bluffing
can be programmed: For every 100 basically worthless hands, for instance, a machine
might be instructed to bet heavily five times.
A
far bigger issue is the need for abstract pattern recognition. Computers are much
worse than humans at anything vague, said poker pro Magriel, a 58-year-old former
math professor and world backgammon champion.
At
such tasks, "computers are basically idiots," Magriel said. "A
computer has an enormous problem recognizing a face. A baby is better."
The
need to recognize patterns comes when anyone new sits down at the table. Good
poker players learn from the behavior of their foes and adapt on the fly. Computers
can store and process millions of past hands, but they have too little data on
each new competitor.
For that reason,
Schaeffer's team has been focused for years on improving a program's ability to
compete one-on-one and learn from as few as 50 hands. After that, the current
version does well for a while, until a strong human opponent figures out its patterns.
Then the person starts winning.
Magriel
once predicted computers would never master backgammon. Now that he knows different,
he thinks a better-than- human poker program is inevitable in two or three decades.
"It was a little depressing in
chess and backgammon that computers got so good," he said. "In poker,
it won't really depress me. I sort of expect it at some point."
NOTICE:
The World Series of Poker Robots (WSOPR)® is in no way associated with The
World Series of Poker (WSOP)®
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