The First Man-Machine
Poker Championship

Ali gets interviewed by a television crew before the first match

Jonathan Schaeffer (right) introduces Ali Eslami (center) and Phil Laak (left)

Ali Eslami begins play and commentary

The television cameras were focused on the stage for a large portion of the matches

Ali makes a straight flush: 6789T of diamonds!

Members of the University of Alberta CPRG team, Darse Billings (left) and Neil Burch (right) watch the action

A view of Ali's stage and what he got to look at during play. In this hand, Ali made the nut flush

Ali's girlfriend Ana (behind) and Bluff player of the year Chad Brown (front) cheering on Ali

A look at the stage that Ali was on

Ali concentrating on a difficult hand

The players flip their cards over to reveal the same hand and split a pot with quad tens!

Phil and Ali find out that they drew the first match with Polaris!

The members of the University of Alberta CPRG team celebrate the draw.

Post match interviews. The people in the photo, from left to right, are: Jonathan Schaeffer, Michael Bowling, Phil Laak, BBC reporter (Name:), and Ali Eslami

The interview continues. Darse Billings (left) and Martin Zinkevich (right) join the picture

The crowd hears the announcement.

Members of the University of Alberta CPRG. From left to right: Michael Bowling, John Hawkins, Andrew Albert, Nolan Bard, Michael Johanson, and Joshua Davidson (sitting in front)

The crowd listening to the post-game comments from the players

Ali and Phil continue post-game comments

A graph for each half of the duplicate match plotted in Poker Academy Prospector