I'm one of the guys behind this. I realize it's MIT students only right now (we have a special 1-month term in January with no classes for competitions like this) but if there's enough interest we would love to hold an open tournament in the next few months.
We're also looking at opening our scrimmage server up to the public this month if there are enough people who want the intellectual fulfillment of competing :)
Edit: Created a small mailing list. Feel free to sign up if you want to be updated when we decide to launch an open tournament (towards the end of the month, most likely).
All of our classes are identified using numbers. The 6 corresponds to the sponsoring department (EECS) and 912 happened to be available within the department, so we snagged it.
Indeed, I am definitely interested in participating in the open tournament, but would love to be able to use something other than Python. I don't have any code except for some really old stuff I did for fun, but I would love to keep working on it using Ruby.
Really interested to hear more about the details, especially the format - will it be a single tournament or a cash game with thousands of hands? Since it's all bots playing, I assume they'll play through enough hands/tables to diminish/negate the role of luck.
Will the bots adopt to patterns in the other bots' playing styles? Most interestingly, will a bot come out of this that can go head-to-head with the likes of Tom Dwan, Phil Ivey and other poker pros? Most bots I've heard of in online poker just follow a set of rules for what to do with certain hands in different positions and scenarios. A bot that can adapt/pick up on betting patterns from the other player (over the course of thousands or tens of thousands of hands) would be really cool.
I would expect most competitors will attempt to design a simplified GTO/balanced (un-exploitable) strategy, with some base assumptions what's considered as "good poker". The only way I can see teams approaching a more exploitive strategy is if the tournament was filled with lots of very weak 'house bots' with highly exploitive strategies (like the previous rock-sissors-paper bot competion that was filled with lots of non-GTO house bots that could be predicted and exploited).
No known bots have come close to playing competitively heads up or ring in big-bet games (such as no-limit or PLO) above the micro/lowstakes. However bots already exist that are very strong at limit heads up.
Certainly possible, and teams can utilise off-the-shelf analytics tools to aid in the analysis (if that's allowed); however using this information beyond very simple adjustments (such as preflop) is very difficult. Also any deviation from a balanced strategy will open up the bot to counter-exploitation.
As I say if dummy players are in there (playing easily exploitable passive or maniacal strategy) then I think there's good reason to implement an exploitive strat; otherwise the effort probably won't have the payoff amongst other static-strategy players.
In heads up limit, bots are already at a high class level, maybe world-class. If you want to test this, there's a HU limit bot machine in the Bellagio that's rake free and plays a fair game (fair deal, no knowledge of the cards to come or holecards). It currently spreads up to $10/20. The designers are confident enough to allow anyone to take it on. The bot employs a non-learning strategy.
I beg to differ that HU limit has 'very little strategy'. The game tree is vast and well beyond computational power to solve by brute force.
TV pros may appear to 'tend to play' tournament NL as this is where they get the most exposure, but cash games are certainly where most make their money. HU limit may not get the action of NL/PLO these days, but it's still a popular game.
Nosebleeds games of 1k/2k and 2k/4k has been running a bunch recently, including action from PI, durrr and Antonius.
Sources? I've always assumed that the bots are as good as the pros now even at high stakes. Haven't there been prized competitions where the bots beat the pros some years?
I can't give you a direct source; but there is very little public progress to bots in big bet (NL/PL) games past very simplistic, rule-based bots that may fair okay in nano-stakes games. Of course there an outside chance that powerful bots do exist and are being employed in live games, but there's been no academic work that claims much access.
However in limit games, where the game tree is finite and can be simplified, there's been great strides in poker AI. In heads up the level is expert-to-world class (see my other posts in this thread) and likely very strong in 6-max too. Academically the polaris team (uni of alberta) have published a great deal, and there are commercial/private bots that are considered very strong.
Perhaps I should I have clarified with No Limit. Yes heads up limit poker bots are pretty high standard. But No Limit (and 6+ players) is the real interesting game to solve.
If the goal is to test the team's ability to enter in to new areas, this mike be good reason to set the test to be a non-hold'em game. Something like PL 5CD heads up shoot-out* would be pretty interesting domain (and much smaller game tree) to work with.
Even if it is hold'em, there's the still teh question of structure (limit/big bet, NL/PL, antes, blinds, tournament or cash, heads up/ring/9m) that there's a lot of possibility.
We're also looking at opening our scrimmage server up to the public this month if there are enough people who want the intellectual fulfillment of competing :)
Edit: Created a small mailing list. Feel free to sign up if you want to be updated when we decide to launch an open tournament (towards the end of the month, most likely).
http://mitpokerbots.com/interest