The first AAAI Computer Poker Competition took place
July
16-20, 2006,
at the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in
Boston, MA.
The particular variation of poker played was heads-up
limit Texas
Hold-Em,
and two different tournament structures were played:
(1) the Bankroll
Competition, and
(2) the Series
Competition.
The
complete set of tournament rules can be found here.
A more detailed analysis of the statistical significance can be found here.
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Competitors
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There were five competing bots, three designed at
universities and two
designed by individuals. All played well, each winning at least one
series.
Hyperborean |
Michael
Bowling, Martin
Zinkevich, Darse
Billings,
Nolan
Bard,
Morgan
Kan, Michael
Johanson, Robert
Holte, Jonathan
Schaeffer, Neil
Burch, Carmelo
Piccione, and Finnegan
Southey developed Hyperborean
at
the University
of Alberta in
Edmonton, Canada.
One paper on their bot was:
Darse Billings, Neil Burch, Aaron Davidson, Robert Holte, Jonathan
Schaeffer, Terence Schauenberg, and Duane Szafron. "Approximating
Game-Theoretic Optimal Strategies for Full-Scale
Poker". In Proceedings
of
the International Joint Conference on
Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-03). 2003. |
BluffBot |
BluffBot
was written by Teppo Salonen in Irvine, US. |
GS2 |
Andrew
Gilpin and Tuomas
Sandholm designed GS2
at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, US.
The most recent paper on their bot is:
Andrew Gilpin and Tuomas Sandholm. 2006. "A competitive Texas Hold'em
poker player via automated abstraction and real-time equilibrium
computation". In Proceedings
of the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence
(AAAI-06). 2006.
|
Monash
BPP |
Monash BPP was designed by Ann Nicholson,
Kevin
Korb, and Steven Mascaro
at Monash University
in
Victoria, Australia.
One paper on their bot was:
K.B. Korb, A.E. Nicholson and N. Jitnah. "Bayesian Poker". In Uncertainty in Artificial
Intelligence (UAI-99). 1999.
|
Teddy |
Teddy was written by Morten Lynge in Ikast,
Denmark. |

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Bankroll Competition
|

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In the Bankroll Competition,
there was a time limit of 7 seconds for a program to make each of its
plays,
and each program played
40,000 hands against each of the other
programs in a round-robin fashion.
The player with the highest total bankroll was
declared the winner.
Hyperborean, BluffBot, Monash BPP, and Teddy competed.
The medalists were:
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Hyperborean
(University of Alberta, Canada). Overall winning rate: 0.3925
small bets per hand. |
 |
BluffBot
(USA). Overall winning rate: 0.0954 small bets per hand. |
 |
Monash
BPP (Monash
University, Australia). Overall winning rate: -0.0273
small bets per hand. |
The units were "small bets/hand". To put this in
perspective, always folding loses 0.75 small bets/hand. Each individual
series is summarized below. The number
is the amount
(in
terms of small bets/hand) the row player won from the column player.
Green (positive) indicates a series where the row player won money. Red
(negative) indicates a series where the column player
won money.
|
Hyperborean |
BluffBot |
Monash BPP |
Teddy |
Hyperborean |
|
0.0514 |
0.7227 |
0.4067 |
BluffBot |
-0.0514 |
|
0.5271 |
-0.1895 |
Monash BPP |
-0.7227 |
-0.5271 |
|
1.1678 |
Teddy |
-0.4067 |
0.1895 |
-1.1678 |
|
Note that Hyperborean's margin of victory over BluffBot has very little
to do with its performance against BluffBot directly. The majority of
the difference is in how well Hyperborean and BluffBot played against
Monash BPP and Teddy. A discussion of the statistical significance can be found here.

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Series Competition
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The Series Competition was also round-robin, but the
structure was
designed such that the focus was on whether one bot "wins" against
another instead of by how much. In other words, it is not enough to
glean a lot of money from the weaker players, you have to hold your own
against everyone, because the series between the two "best" players
determined the outcome.
In this competition, there was a much longer
time for a program to play a hand -- 60 seconds.
Thus, series between a pair of programs programs involved only
12,000 hands.
Instead
of measuring total winnings against all opponents, each series
between two programs was declared a win for one of
the programs, and the program with the most wins at the end of
the tournament was declared the overall winner.
Hyperborean, BluffBot, Monash BPP, and GS2 competed. The
medalists were:
 |
Hyperborean
(University
of Alberta, Canada). Record: 3 wins, 0 losses. |
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Bluffbot
(USA).
Record: 2 wins, 1 loss. |
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GS2
(Carnegie
Mellon University, USA). Record: 1 win, 2 losses. |
The units were "small bets/hand". To put this in perspective, always
folding loses 0.75 small bets/hand. A green cell indicates the row
player won the series, and a red cell
indicates the column player lost the series. The numbers indicate how
many small bets/hand were won during the series.
|
Hyperborean |
Bluffbot |
GS2 |
Monash BPP |
Hyperborean |
|
0.1145 |
0.1843 |
0.7344 |
BluffBot |
-0.1145 |
|
0.1200 |
0.5214 |
GS2 |
-0.1843 |
-0.1200 |
|
0.6512 |
Monash BPP |
-0.7344 |
-0.5214 |
-0.6512 |
|
|
Hyperborean |
BluffBot |
GS2 |
Monash BPP |
Hyperborean |
|
Hyperborean
wins |
Hyperborean wins |
Hyperborean wins |
BluffBot |
Hyperborean wins |
|
Bluffbot wins |
Bluffbot wins |
GS2 |
Hyperborean wins |
Bluffbot wins |
|
GS2 wins |
Monash BPP |
Hyperborean wins |
Bluffbot wins |
GS2 wins |
|
A discussion of the statistical significance can be found here.

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Implementation
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In order to level the playing field, every bot was run on an identical
machine. The greater degree of control allows us to force the bots to
"forget", resulting in better results overall.
The competition was run on 16 Windows machines in the Computer Games
Lab at the University of Alberta. There was one server machine, and 14
client machines (1 extra machine in case one of problems). The
computers were 3.4 GHz P4 machines running Windows XP Professional,
with 1 GB of RAM and an 80 GB hard drive.
The machines were setup and are maintained by Rod Johnson, Jon Martin,
and John Bartoszewski. The competition code was written and
run by Martin Zinkevich, Christian Smith, and Luke Duguid.
We are planning to
run a computer poker tournament again at AAAI
next year,
July 22-26, 2007, in Vancouver.
If you are interested in participating
contact Martin Zinkevich - maz AT cs.ualberta.ca
Discussion of the rules will begin this summer, so please let us know
now if you want to participate!
Copyright © 2006 |
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