Jonathan Schaeffer employer University of Alberta
Poker: Polaris
Schaeffer is a member and, until 2004, leader of the computer poker research group at the University of Alberta, which has developed several strong computer programs for playing Texas hold 'em poker.  The earliest and most general of these is Poki, which uses Monte Carlo simulation to choose actions during a game.  More recently, the group has focused on the two-player (Heads-Up) variant, and has developed a series of programs that approximate Nash equilibrium strategies for the game.  Several of these programs (such as Poki, SparBot and VexBot) are available in products such as Poker Academy from BioTools.
In July 2007, Schaeffer announced a competition between the group's newest program, Polaris, and two human professionals, Phil Laak and Ali Eslami.  The competition was held at the 2007 Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference, which also hosted an international competition between computer poker programs.  Out of four matches against the human professionals, Polaris won one, tied one, and lost twice; overall, the humans won the competition by a small margin. In the computer competition, Polaris (playing under the name Hyperborean) won the Limit Hold'em event and came first in the No-Limit Hold'em event.  In 2008, an updated version of Polaris defeated a team of human professionals in the Second Man-Machine Poker Competition.Currently
Schaeffer was previously the vice-provost for information technology at the University of Alberta. On July 1, 2012, he started serving a five-year term as dean of science at the University of Alberta. He is a founder of Onlea, a nonprofit organization, which produces interactive online learning experiences such as Massive Open Online Courses.
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