Portland Java User Group meeting August 19, 2008

Topic: Poker Bots 2008

Poker bots! The term conjures images of programmers hacking away late at night, trying to make a fast buck. But how interesting is the subject really? Well, as it turns out, very interesting. The game of poker poses the dual problems of nondeterminism and limited information, making computer poker implementations a deeper conceptual challenge than deterministic open-information games like chess. Better, there now exists a body of academic literature dedicated to analyzing the subtleties of the problem. But best of all, the de facto standard environment for development of poker AI software is 100% pure Java.

This talk will begin with a bit of historical context, delve into the problem space, and then offer a demonstration and source-level view of working "bots". The bots run in an offline, not-for-money, but highly competitive game environment.

Basic knowledge of the rules to Hold'em Poker (both limit and no-limit tournament varieties) is helpful to understand the presentation. This is a legitimate AI presentation aimed at professional software developers and students. No license agreements or U.S. laws were violated during its creation - and if your goal is to "cheat" at online poker, this presentation won't help you very much.
Speaker: Jeff Berkowitz, Oracle Jeff Berkowitz has worked for a variety of computer, instrumentation and software companies since the 1970s. His programming travels have included embedded systems, proprietary Unix kernels, RDBMS toolware, middleware, and both web and desktop application development. Jeff is equally uncomfortable with Unix and Microsoft programming environments, having been intermittently successful with both. Over the past few years Jeff has enjoyed the virtues of verifiable bytecode while developing systems in Java and C#.

Jeff has lived in the Portland, Oregon area since 1988 and is presently employed by Oracle Corporation in Portland. Jeff is married and enjoys nothing better than a warm day spent hovering over the smoker, microbrew in hand, slow cooking some kind of barbecue.

Location:
Oracle downtown Campus
8th Floor - Room 8005 Pacwest Center
1211 SW 5th Avenue Portland, Oregon

Official Website: http://www.pjug.org