While playing online poker, the discussions that the three seat or seven seat is nothing more than a programmed bot has spanned over several years. Technology and time has given cheaters more and more ways to spawn these type of cash cows that prey upon the unknowning real poker players behind their avatars. But, with a game like poker that presents incomplete information while playing out a hand, a computer can only play one style and stick with that style with the patience of Job.

Until Now.

"The First Man-Machine Poker Championship" is putting pros Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami to the test versus the University of Alberta's program called Polaris. The $50,000 match is set out to determine if a human who can change his/her style on a whim and is affected by emotional and physical behaviors able to confuse a learning and adaptive program such as Polaris and exploit the holes to beat it.

Unlike Chess programs that can play optimally 18 moves ahead after your every move, poker creates a problem that there is no one set-in-stone way of playing a hand versus any type of opponent. This programming nightmare is the reason why poker is so popular because you can get the same cards against different opponents and the betting sequence comes out totally different.

Check out the web site for the results, and here's the site's primer introducing you to the competition:

For the first time ever, a poker-playing computer program will challenge two top-level poker professionals in a controlled scientific experiment with real money on the line.

A team of researchers from the University of Alberta has improved on their reigning world champion poker software, and is taking it to the next level.

The program, Polaris, will take on two of the sharpest poker players in the world - Phil "The Unabomber" Laak and Ali Eslami.

The $50,000 match will take place in Vancouver, Canada, in conjunction with the annual conference of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), July 23 and 24.

The competition will consist of four 500-hand duplicate matches. In each duplicate match, the same series of cards will be dealt in two parallel Man versus Machine matches, with teammates playing the opposite hands in each game. At the end of the match, the total number of chips won or lost by each team is added together to determine the winning team. This format is used to reduce the element of random luck to a minimum, and get a much better indication of the differences in skill.

For more information, please see the related pages on the details of the competition, more about the competitors, previous Man versus Machine matches, and answers to frequently asked questions. This website will be updated with news on the match as it develops.