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ICCM2004</title></head><body>
<div>NEW ANNOUNCEMENT REGARDING ICCM2004</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font face="Helvetica" size="+1" color="#000000"><b>ICCM 2004
Competitive Symposium: PokerBot World Series</b></font></div>
<div><font face="Helvetica" size="+1" color="#000000"><b><br>
</b></font><font face="Times" color="#000000">Game playing seems to
satisfy a basic craving of human cognition by exercising its
fundamental abilities in a competitive setting. Therefore, it
provides an excellent benchmark to study and evaluate cognitive models
in tractable yet naturalistic settings that are simple and formal yet
reproduce much of the complexity of real life. Poker is probably
the most widely played card game, with endless variations played by
millions of adherents from casual players gambling pennies to
professionals competing in million-dollar tournaments. Unlike
other games that emphasize one particular aspect of cognition, poker
involves a broad range of cognitive activities, including:<br>
<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Reasoning under uncertainty (opponents'
cards)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Dealing with probabilistic outcomes
(future cards)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Decision-making with multiple options
(chips used for bets)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Individual differences (different styles
of play)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Inference of intent (from opponents'
bets)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Intentional deception (bluffing,
sandbagging)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Pattern recognition (detecting trends
from flow of game)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Social and emotional aspects (dealing
with winning and losing)<br>
</font><font face="Symbol" color="#000000">…</font><font
face="Times" color="#000000"> Economic behavior (factoring impact of
amount of bets)</font><br>
<font face="Times" color="#000000"></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">Because of the range of
cognitive activities involved, poker provides a broader and more
challenging test for cognitive modeling than other games such as chess
that focus on a more restricted range of mechanisms (e.g. search).
Despite the complexity of aspects involved, it remains a highly
tractable domain, partly because it abstracts away from
computationally demanding perception and interaction problems.
Poker is increasingly being played in online gaming communities where
the need for challenging, cognitively plausible agents is increasing.
Poker therefore provides a challenging domain at the intersection of
fundamental research questions and potential mass
application.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">Open competitions such as
Robocup (<u>http://www.robocup.org/</u>) and the DARPA grand challenge
(<u>http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/</u>) have recently provided a
promising mechanism to make progress on long-term research issues
while focusing on a practical, measurable goal. To that end, we
are organizing a competitive symposium at ICCM-2004 with the ultimate
goal of producing a fully functional, human-like poker agent.
The competition will take place in two parts, emphasizing the dual
aspects of cognitive modeling: the production of accurate models of
human cognition that are not mere post-hoc descriptions of human
performance but can perform actual tasks in a fully functional
manner. The first part will involve head-to-head,
winner-take-all play between models to test their functionality.
The second part will involve evaluating the cognitive validity of the
models in quantitative and/or qualitative manner, such as comparison
to archived human games and Turing Test judgments.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">The variant of poker used is
Texas Hold'em, a popular, fast-paced game that is the centerpiece of
the World Series of Poker
(<u>http://www.binions.com/worldseries.asp</u>). Potential
participants should contact the organizers by email
(<u>clebiere@maad.com</u>) by<b> April 1st</b> to register their
interest and obtain detailed rules of participation.
Participants must register to the conference to be able to submit a
player but free registration will be offered to the winner(s).
The best models will be presented at a symposium during the conference
where progress on research issues will be discussed.</font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font face="Times" color="#000000">For more information on
ICCM2004 more generally, see
http://simon.lrdc.pitt.edu/~iccm/</font></div>
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