The University of Auckland Game AI Group is a research laboratory with an international reputation that has comprised over 20 researchers whose interests lie in applying the principles and techniques of Artificial Intelligence research to a number of modern game domains; such as, Texas Hold'em Poker, Bridge, First Person Shooter and Real-Time Strategy Games.
Play the Sartre Texas Hold'em poker web app
Note: Sartre does not play for real money
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2016Google's AlphaGo sytem beats Aja Huang, considered one of the world's best Go players, in a Go tournement. Go was until recently considered unsolveable by traditional AI techniques. However, a new method, called deep learning, has shown that even "impossible" problems can now be solved. Read more about AlphaGo.
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2015The University of Alberta's Computer Poker research group have anounced that the game of Texas Hold'em Poker has been "solved", meaning a human cannot beat the latest version of their poker bot.
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2013Jacky Zhen's paper Neuroevolution for Micromanagement in the Real-Time Strategy Game Starcraft: Brood War was nominated for Best Student paper at the 26th Australasian Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence.
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2012The paper: Rubin, J. & Watson, I. (2012). Case-based strategies in computer poker. AI Communications 25:19-48., has been published.
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September 2011The 2011 Computer Poker Competition was held at the AAAI-11 Twenty-Fifth Conference on Artificial Intelligence. Our case-based poker agent, Sartre, competed in all events this year. Once again, Sartre's performance improved since the previous year's competition, placing 2nd in four events, 4th in one event and achieving a 1st place finish in the multi-player, limit Hold'em competition. The final results were as follows:
Two-Player Limit Results:
2011 limit heads up bankroll and runoff results Bankroll Runoff Total Bankroll Average (sb/h) 1. Hyperborean-iro 1. Calamari 0.286 ± 0.004 2. Slumbot 2. Sartre 0.281 ± 0.006 3. Calamari 3. Hyperborean-tbr 0.225 ± 0.005 4. Sartre 4. Feste 0.220 ± 0.005 5. LittleRock 5. Slumbot 0.216 ± 0.006 6. ZBot 6. ZBot 0.209 ± 0.006 7. GGValuta 7. Patience 0.209 ± 0.006 8. Feste 8. 2Bot 0.192 ± 0.006 9. Patience 9. LittleRock 0.180 ± 0.005 10. 2Bot 10. GGValuta 0.145 ± 0.006 11. RobotBot 11. AAIMontybot 0.001 ± 0.012 12. AAIMontybot 12. RobotBot -0.035 ± 0.010 13. Entropy 13. GBR -0.051 ± 0.012 14. GBR 14. Entropy -0.097 ± 0.013 15. player.zeta 15. player.zeta -0.176 ± 0.017 16. Calvin 16. Calvin -0.230 ± 0.012 17. Tiltnet.Adaptive 17. Tiltnet -0.268 ± 0.010 18. POMPEIA 18. POMPEIA -0.549 ± 0.006 19. TellBot 19. TellBot -0.759 ± 0.016
No Limit Results:
2011 no limit heads up bankroll and runoff results Bankroll Runoff Total Bankroll Average (bb/h) 1. Hyperborean-iro 1. Lucky7 1.567 ± 0.053 2. SartreNL 2. SartreNL 1.302 ± 0.042 3. hugh 3. Hyperborean-tbr 1.133 ± 0.026 4. Rembrant 4. player.kappa.nl 1.026 ± 0.105 5. Lucky7 5. hugh 0.968 ± 0.054 6. player.kappa.nl 6. Rembrant 0.464 ± 0.024 7. POMPEIA 7. POMPEIA -6.460 ± 0.051
Multi-Player, Limit Results:
2011 multi-player limit bankroll and runoff results Bankroll Runoff Total Bankroll Average (sb/h) 1. Hyperborean-iro 1. Sartre3P 0.266 ± 0.024 2. Sartre3P 2. Hyperborean-tbr 0.171 ± 0.023 3. LittleRock 3. AAIMontybot 0.130 ± 0.045 4. dcubot3plr 3. LittleRock 0.122 ± 0.022 5. Bnold3 5. OwnBot 0.016 ± 0.035 6. AAIMontybot 6. Bnold3 -0.084 ± 0.028 7. OwnBot 7. Entropy -0.099 ± 0.043 8. Entropy 8. player.zeta.3p -0.521 ± 0.040 9. player.zeta.3p -
July 2011The paper: Successful Performance via Decision Generalisation in No Limit Texas Hold'em, has been accepted for presentation at the 19th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (ICCBR 2011).
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April 2011The paper: On Combining Decisions from Multiple Expert Imitators for Performance, has been accepted for presentation at the Twenty-Second International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI 2011).
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January 2011The UoA Game AI Group is very pleased to announce that the article - Computer Poker: A Review, has been accepted by Artificial Intelligence Journal for publication. A preprint of the article is now available in the Publications section.
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November 2010SartreNL is now available to challenge online. SartreNL achieved 2nd place in the no limit heads up runoff division of the 2010 Annual Computer Poker Competition. The latest limit version of Sartre is also available to challenge.
Special thanks to Jing Li who architected, designed and implemented the browser-based application using Java servlet, JSP, MySql and javascript technologies. -
July 2010The results of the 2010 Computer Poker Competition were announced this month at the AAAI-10 Conference on Artificial Intelligence. This year we submitted Sartre as our entry for the heads-up limit competition and SartreNL as our entry for the heads-up no limit competition. Both Sartre and SartreNL achieved a top 3 spot in 1 of the divisions. Sartre placed 3rd in the limit bankroll division out of 13 competitors. SartreNL placed 2nd in the no limit bankroll instant run-off division out of 5 competitors.
Full results are presented below. Figures quoted are in big blinds per hand.
Limit Results:Limit Heads up bankroll 1. PULPO 0.225 ± 0.003 2. Hyperborean.tbr 0.207 ± 0.002 3. Sartre 0.203 ± 0.002 4. Rockhopper 0.200 ± 0.002 5. Slumbot 0.199 ± 0.002 6. GGValuta 0.193 ± 0.003 7. Jester 0.164 ± 0.003 8. Arnold2 0.160 ± 0.003 9. GS6.tbr 0.139 ± 0.004 10. LittleRock 0.118 ± 0.003 11. PLICAS -0.046 ± 0.005 12. ASVP -0.320 ± 0.006 13. longhorn -1.441 ± 0.005
Limit Heads up runoff 1. Rockhopper 2. GGValuta 3. Hyperborean.iro 4. Slumbot 5. PULPO 6. Sartre 7. GS6.iro 8. Arnold2 9. Jester 10. LittleRock 11. PLICAS 12. ASVP 13. longhorn
No Limit Results:No Limit Heads up bankroll 1. Tartanian4.tbr 2.156 ± 0.048 2. PokerBotSLO 1.458 ± 0.184 3. Hyperborean.tbr 1.212 ± 0.026 4. SartreNL 0.537 ± 0.034 5. c4tw.tbr -5.362 ± 0.201
No Limit Heads up runoff 1. Hyperborean.iro 2. SartreNL 3. Tartanian4.iro 4. PokerBotSLO 5. c4tw.iro -
May 2010The paper: Similarity-Based Retrieval and Solution Re-use Policies in the Game of Texas Hold'em, has been accepted for presentation at the 18th International Conference on Case-based Reasoning.
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February 2010A new paper: A Multi-Layered Flocking System for Crowd Simulation, has been added to the publications section. The paper is to appear in the proceedings of the International Conference on Computer Games, Multimedia and Allied Technology.
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December 2009Jing Li has developed an online web application where players can play heads-up, limit Texas Hold'em against the Sartre system. To challenge Sartre click here.
The paper: A Memory-Based Approach to Two-Player Texas Hold'em, was recently presented at the 22nd Australasian Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AI-09) in Melbourne, Australia. The presentation slides can be found here. -
November 2009Simon van den Hurk's honours dissertation - A Multi-Layered Flocking System For Crowd Simulation, has been added to the publications section.
The group is working with the developers of the social-media game SmallWorlds to provide a case-based memory for non-player characters, such as pets. SmallWorlds is the winner of the Social Computing Category in the 2009 Adobe Max Awards. -
July 2009The results of the 2009 Computer Poker Competition were announced at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Pasadena, California this month. We submitted Sartre as our entry for the heads up, limit hold'em competition. Out of 13 entrants, Sartre placed 6th in the bankroll division and 7th in the the runoff division.
The results for each division are presented below. The figures quoted are in small bets per hand (sb/h).
Limit Heads up bankroll 1. MANZANA 0.186 2. Hyperborean - BR 0.116 3. GGValuta 0.110 4. Hyperborean - Eqm 0.116 5. Rockhopper 0.103 6. Sartre 0.097 7. Slumbot 0.096 8. GS5 0.082 9. AoBot -0.002 10. dcurbHU -0.07 11. LIDIA -0.094 12. GS5Dynamic -0.201
Limit Heads up runoff 1. GGValuta 2. Hyperborean - Eqm 3. MANZANA 4. Rockhopper 5. Hyperborean - BR 6. Slumbot 7. Sartre 8. GS5 9. AoBot 10. GS5Dynamic 11. LIDIA 12. dcurbHU 13. Tommybot
Descriptions of each of the competitors, as well as further results from other competitions and the hand histories can be found here.
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June 2009We have had two papers accepted at the ICCBR-09 Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning for Computer Games. SARTRE: System Overview, provides an overview of the Sartre system that takes a memory based approach to playing Texas Hold'em. And, the position paper, Memory and Analogy in Game-Playing Agents, that puts forth the idea that experience-based, lazy learners may be beneficial in a general game playing environment.
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May 2009Jonathan has created a short video summarising our research into the application of CBR to the game of Texas Hold'em. The video can be viewed here.
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March 2009The Camus (Case Assembly, Maintenance and Usage System) framework has been uploaded to the Projects page. Sartre uses the Camus framework to manage its experience-base.
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January 2009Implementation has begun on Sartre (Similarity Assessment Reasoning for Texas hold'em via Recall of Experience). We plan to submit Sartre as our entry for the 2009 Computer Poker Competition to be held in July.