“Over the years, the game of poker has attracted more and more attention worldwide with the popularity of televised Texas Hold ‘em tournaments like the high stakes World Series of Poker. In the process, professional poker players have become celebrities, with catchy nicknames like Action Dan Harrington, Phil “the poker brat” Hellmuth and Doyle “Texas Dolly” Brunson.

Getting swept up in the poker craze, a local software developer and his friend created a poker program that took top honors in this year’s Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Computer Poker Competition in Alberta, Canada. After going undefeated in the no-limit, heads-up category, Jay Cordes, 36, co-developer of BluffBot 2.0, took the news in stride.

“We were just a couple of guys messing around and having fun with the program,” Mr. Cordes said of him and his partner, Teppo Salonen.”

But the two-man team proved to be a winning combination with their “poker robot” beating out teams of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, the University of Alberta and other academic institutions. The pair attributed their program’s success due to a conservative style of play, some well-timed bluffing and their competitors’ lack of programming creativity.

“Most of the other competitors, being universities from around the world, were possibly focusing on producing scientific results and research in the process instead of just focusing winning the competition,” said Mr. Salonen.

The Claremont Courier (08/29/07)

“Poker teaches people to think for themselves, it is a key component of individuality and a prime aspect of managing resources,” Prof Nesson said, admitting that some of these instincts for survival hardly encouraged notions of mutual trust.

Business dealmakers could learn from poker the art of avoiding making the first offer, he added, while teenage tearaways could take from it life skills such as patience, composure, respect for their foes and understanding someone else’s point of view. Law graduates would understand the law of evidence and diplomats could apply the art of bluffing to international relations.

As for personal finance and risk management, Prof Nesson said there was no better educational tool than poker to teach people how to make the most of their limited chips stack and “how to lose” or “to lose well”.

“As far as I’m concerned, it would be a better world if we all played poker,” Prof Nesson said.”

Financial Times (08/17/07)

“Competition from state lotteries, Indian casinos and riverboat gaming – along with pressure from animal-rights groups – have cut into greyhound profits. And consumer tastes are changing; witness the proliferation of televised poker tournaments on various networks.

Before meeting with the Figueroas on Friday, I asked 30-year-old Bradenton resident Troy Bailey why he prefers the action inside Sarasota’s One-Eyed Jacks Card Room to wagering on canine competitors giving their all on the dirt oval.

“In poker, you can use your own skills and abilities,” Bailey explained. “If you play well, you’re consistently going to win, and if you play poorly, you’re going to lose.

“There is some luck involved, but you are in control of your own fate. And as you learn more about it, you can have a great hand and set a trap for someone who doesn’t have as much experience.”

Bailey also relishes the interaction at the table above the often-solitary pursuit of race handicapping.”

Bradenton Herald (08/18/07)

“Law enforcement authorities contend poker tournaments that are advertised, and held for profit and not for the benefit of a licensed charitable organization, are illegal.

No charges have been filed against Burns, who contends his poker tournaments are not illegal.

In an interview, Burns confirmed that he operated the card games but said he violated no state law. He contends that face-to-face poker tournaments are not illegal in Pennsylvania because poker is a game of skill, not chance.

“I like to play Texas Hold’em, and I enjoy holding Texas Hold’em tournaments. I do not believe my activities are illegal,” Burns said. “But I was more or less told I will be arrested.”

Tribune-Review (08/17/07)

PokerNews: How has the UIGEA [Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act] changed the landscape of poker programming? Is it getting easier these last few months, or harder?

Mori Eskandani: It never gets easy. In the back of your mind, things can happen and regulations can come that will make it hard to operate. It never gets easier; you’re always worried about that. But you’re also hoping that people realize that poker is a game of skill. They call it – skill games are OK, and yet poker is not OK. It’s really an oxymoron. There’s no game that’s got more skill than poker.

PokerNews (08/11/07)

“WPT is honoured to be the marketing partner chosen by the CLSAC for the China National Traktor Poker Tour,” said Steve Lipscomb, CEO of WPT Enterprises. “Poker, especially Tuo La Ji Poker, requires a great amount of skill and passion, both key ingredients in creating dynamic and engaging sports television. We look forward to applying our expertise revolutionising televised Poker in the United States to help bring this exciting Sport to Chinese television for the first time.”

Gaming Intelligence Group (08/07/07)

“The final table of the World Series of Poker’s main event shows, once again, that poker tournaments are games of skill.

Courts have developed tests over the last couple of hundred years to determine whether a particular game is predominantly chance or skill. If courts and prosecutors were honest in applying these tests, at least no-limit Texas hold’em tournaments would have to be considered skill contests and not gambling.

Let’s take a look at the most common tests and what happened on July 18, 2007.

1) A skillful player will win more than an unskillful one. The tournament started 12 days earlier, with 6,358 paying $10,000 each to enter. All the chips that were lost by players went to other players, not the house.

2) Skill can be learned from experience, from real or mock play. Here’s how the Associate Press described the nine players at the final table, in the order in which they were eliminated…”

Poker Player Newspaper (08/06/07)

“Is poker a game of skill or chance? At Duplicate Poker – their version of Texas Holdem is all skill, and that means almost all US residents can sign up, play, and even make credit card deposits!

In the post-UIGEA online poker world, some poker rooms have elected to carry on with business as usual – albeit while their US clientele struggle to move money on and off the site. However Duplicate Poker, has tweaked their product to allow US residents in most states (sans Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, South Carolina, Tennessee and Vermont) to play for real money without the legal hangups.

Duplicate Poker different is that it is structured to remove the element of luck from Texas Holdem and places the emphasis squarely on skill. A skill-game plays and behaves differently and best of all, a skill-game is free to accept credit card transactions from US players.”

PokerNews (08/03/07)

“For anyone stuck on a casino stool, playing hours of video poker, rest assured: humans can still beat a computer.

Phil Laak pitting his poker skills against a software program. Mr. Laak, working with a partner, Ali Eslami, won two rounds out of three.

But computers may soon dominate on the felt-top table, as they have on the chessboard.

In a match of wits between man and machine this week, a software program running on an ordinary laptop computer fought a close match, but lost to two well-known professional human poker players.

The contest, which was billed as the “First Man-Machine Poker Championship” and which offered prize money totaling $50,000, pitted two professionals, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami, against a program written by a team of artificial intelligence researchers from the University of Alberta. They gave it a name that probably no gambler would ever choose as a nickname, Polaris.”

New York Times (07/26/07)

“After two thousand hands and countless “flops”, “rivers”, and “turns”, two elite poker players have narrowly defeated a formidable computer opponent. The result means that, while chess world champions have fallen to computers, humans still hold sway in poker, a game where psychology plays a huge role.

Phil “The Unabomber” Laak and Ali Eslami took on Polaris, software developed by researchers at the University of Alberta in Canada, in a set-up designed to reduce the role that luck normally plays in a game of poker.

The pair played Polaris simultaneously in different rooms, with computer and human playing opposite hands in each game. In other words, if Laak was dealt a full house, Polaris would have exactly the same hand, at the same time, in its game against Eslami.

The game was played at a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence in Vancouver, Canada.”

New Scientist (07/25/07)