Doug "WCGRider" Polk, Dong "Donger Kim" Kim, Bjorn "iamalagtard" Li and Jason Les beat poker bot Claudico (developed by Carnegie Mellon University) for more than 73 buy-ins in two weeks, but the developers claim that the results are a statistical tie.
We have previously reported about four of the best heads-up NLHE players in the world taking on Claudico, the heads-up bot developed by Carnegie Mellon University which is currently considered to be the best NLHE heads-up bot.
The battle started on April 24 at the Rivers Casino in Pittsburgh and lasted for two weeks, with Microsoft putting up a $100,000 prize for the best performing human player (the players decided to split the money four ways).
The "Brains" were battling the bot for 8 hours a day and dominated from Day 1 beating Claudico for a total of $732.713 (fake dollars) in 80,000 hands.
The most successful player was Bjorn Li, he won more than $500,000 from the bot, but Polk and Kim were also profitable, while Les ended up as a slight loser.
Polk said the following about the bot’s play:
"The bot played well in a number of spots, but it also made players that I didn’t understand at all. Once it shoved all-in for $19,000 on a $700 pot, a professional player would never do this."
The developers of Claudico have announced in advance that the bot could play like an "alien" in some spots, but they were sure about it’s victory. The fact that the human team has beat the bot for more than 73 buy-ins (which equals a winrate of 9 big blinds/100 hands) didn’t seem to bother the developers, who called the result statistically insignificant and a tie.
Tuomas Sandholm, the professor leading the Claudico development team has stated that since there were a total of 1.6 billion chips in play in the 80,000 hands, winning $732,000 is statistically not significant and that the match is basically a tie.
We can’t help but wonder how he would have interpreted the results if the winner was Claudico…
