Some Canadian researchers are busy with developing a poker-playing computer program. For that purpose two of the world’s best players have been challenged to 2,000 hands of Texas Hold’em.

The match “man-versus-machine” will take place on the 23rd and 24th of July. It’ll be held in conjunction with the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Conference in Vancouver.

The experiment should show how good humans are relative to the best program in the world. In the end a poker program that is stronger than all human players will be produced. It actually represents a “number of different computer programs that have different characteristics: while one is very aggressive but doesn’t take into account the playing style of opponents another program actually learns from the strengths and weaknesses of other players and adjusts its style accordingly”.