6th annual International Conference on Cognitive Modelling
Ip>CCM 2004 International Conference on Cognitive Modelling ICCM 2004
spacer Representing the Human Mind spacer CONFERENCE DATES: July 30 - August 1, 2004    


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ICCM 2004 POKERBOT COMPETITION RULES

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Because of the open-ended nature of the game that favors the exploration of the research issues described in the original announcement, the variant of the game selected for the competition is No Limit Texas Hold’em. The detailed rules (unless otherwise specified) are those followed by the crowning event of the World Series of Poker and can be found online at a number of websites (e.g. www.learn-texas-holdem.com).

The initial bankroll given each player at the start of the game is $10,000, with initial blinds of $10 and $20. The blinds will double every 100 hands to bring the game to a timely conclusion. To fairly distribute resources, the response time for each player is limited to a total of 100 seconds per 100 actions. The winner of each game is the last player left. To reliably determine an overall winner, as many games as possible will be played during the week between the submissions and the announcement of the results, with the players restarted to their initial state between each game. The overall winner of the competition is the player that wins the most games. If more players are submitted than can be reasonably accommodated at a single table, satellite games will be held to narrow down the number of players until they can be consolidated into a single table.

The software will consist of a server that will accept TCP/IP socket connections. A detailed protocol of communication (and enforcement of time limits) will be made available shortly. The server implementing that protocol as well as a dummy player will be made available by May 1st. Players should consist of an executable application for the Windows XP, Mac OS or Linux platforms (specific versions to be specified later). If you are (still) interested in submitting a player, please let us know your platform of choice at the email address below. Each client application should have a memory requirement no larger than 40 MB, and use no more than 500 MB of drive space at any time. Violating the time and space limits, as well as any attempt at circumventing any rule, will lead to the immediate disqualification of the player.

Players should be submitted by July 15 at the latest, and preferably significantly earlier to allow for benchmarking, testing and remediation of problems. Results will be made public by July 23. The logs of all games played (which will include all players' hole cards) will be made public after the tournament to allow anyone to review them for fairness and accuracy.

If you have any questions or comments, please email Christian Lebiere. Answers and corrections will be promptly posted to the list.

Thank you very much for your participation in the Pokerbot World Series at ICCM2004.

The organizers, Christian.Lebiere Dan Bothell

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