The First Man-Machine
Poker Championship

Phil Laak in pre-match television interviews

Ali Eslami in pre-match television interviews

Actress and poker player Jennifer Tilly (Phil's girlfriend) listens to the pre-match interviews

Jonathan Schaeffer introduces the third match

Phil Laak sits down and is ready to begin his session against Polaris

A look at the third session blogging table. Neil Burch sits on the left and Morgan Kan on the right

Phil getting his photo taken by photographers from the New York Times and a Vancouver local newspaper

Phil Laak concentrating on the current hand

These were some of the custom University of Alberta CPRG poker chips that were handed out to various people during the match. Note the UofA green and gold colours

An upclose shot of Phil Laak's terminal and the microphone in his left hand that he commentated into

The media was constantly present. Here one of the members of the media records some of the action. Note that there wasn't many people present at this time since the AAAI conference was in full swing at this point

A look at the projected image of what Phil saw on his screen. Here Phil wins a pot with a pair of aces

One of the many posters around the room. This one depicts Phil and Ali as kings of poker with short bios for each player

A technical glitch upstairs in the hotel room made it necessary to break the action while the glitch got sorted out. During this time Phil did another interview

The match programs were gorgeous. Printing for them provided by Priority Printing in Edmonton

Phil scores a large pot when he makes a full house against Polaris' trip eights!

Phil continues his commentary of the match

A view of the collected audience. More people arrived after sessions earlier in the day were finished

Phil was done before Ali in this session. During this time, Phil needed to settle a couple of hands including where he bet an audience member that the program had him beat when he folded a big hand

Phil Laak, Scott Fortin, Darse Billings, and Morgan Kan look into the logs to find out who won the bet

Phil Laak and Jennifer Tilly in front of the AICML poster in the room

Phil Laak stacks some chips in preparation for more post game interviews

Phil Laak interviewed

More interview action shots

Even more interview action shots

Phil and Ali find out that they won the third session!

Phil and Ali interviewed by BBC radio after the third session is over

Ali Eslami in front of the AICML poster