Who's Got the Upper Hand? Poker Computer Program Pits Man Against Machine
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (04/24/15) Sean D. Hamill

Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) "Brains vs. Artificial Intelligence" Heads-Up, No-Limit Texas Hold ’em poker tournament is a two-week challenge pitting four of the world's best poker players against Claudico, a CMU-developed program that has already defeated top human competitors in less-complicated versions of poker, such as Limit Texas Hold ’em. The four competitors will compete for their share of a $100,000 pot funded by Rivers Casino on the North Shore and fellow sponsor Microsoft. The four poker players--Doug Polk, Bjorn Li, Jason Les, and Dong Kyu Kim--say they are participating in the tournament in order to be a part of the cutting edge of computer technology. The CMU researchers, led by professor Tuomas Sandholm, hope the tournament can help teach them how to improve Claudico for much broader applications. "These algorithms we developed are really for use in any game of incomplete information in general, from cybersecurity, to negotiations, to medicine," Sandholm says. The tournament runs every day for eight hours through May 7, playing 80,000 hands of poker.