The Probot Playground Competition
Our first coding event!
Setting Up the Competition
In April 2019, we hosted our first ever coding competition at UC San Diego. Since founding the company in February, EJ and I tried to think of different ways to beta test our platform and see if people would even be interested in a new wave of AI gaming. This is when we came up with the idea of hosting a hackathon-like event that would bring together the best coders and AI developers on campus and have them create their own bots and compete in an automated poker competition. In order to create buzz about the event, we wanted to make it available to all students, even if they did not know how to code. Along with the tournament, we decided to also host a mini career fair with various technology companies who would attend the event and discuss possible employment opportunities with the attendees.
Working with Sponsors and Companies
To host the event, EJ and I wanted to reach out to a campus department that would be interested in helping us host the event. Luckily, we were able to work with the Data Science Institute at UC San Diego and set-up the event. Following this partnership, we had also contacted different companies to see if they would be interested in sponsoring the event. One of the companies that was interested was Razer, a hardware manufacturing company who is well-known for their elite gaming systems. Razer was extremely excited to be apart of this event and donated various products to the winners of the tournament.
Along with Razer, we also got into contact with multiple companies who wanted to attend the career fair. We had a long list of companies and had 8 different companies that ranged from local tech start-ups to campus departments. This list included companies like Riot Games, the creators of the popular multiplayer game League of Legends, VidaLoop, and Heali. We also had a couple of campus departments like ITS Services who hires a lot of student workers during the school year. All of the companies and departments who we worked with to host the event were tremendously helpful and we couldn’t have had such a great event without them!
Competing with the Best of the Best
This event was extremely important for two reasons: beta-testing our platform, and identifying the market fit. First and foremost, we wanted to develop a platform that worked and could handle multiple bots playing at the same time. Secondly, we wanted to see if anyone would even be interested in playing a game like this. Through campaigning around campus and contacting professors, we had over 75 students developers registered to compete in this event! In order to compete in the competition, every student/pair was asked to develop and submit their own AI poker bot.
After months of prepping, contacting sponsors, and booking a venue, we hosted our event on April 28th, 2019. After competing for the entire day, we had 3 winners. All of the winners took home different prizes from Razer.
The tournament ran on a round robin structure. Each bracket consisted of 4 different bots playing poker until 1 bot remained. Because the bots could finish a single poker game in a matter of minutes, each round consisted of playing 4–6 games which could allow bots to learn and adjust their strategies. At the end of all of the games, the top 2 bots would advance to the next round. At the final bracket, we had 6 of the best bots playing for the top 3 spots of the tournament. Each bot was created with a different strategy. One bot was purely statistical, counting which cards had been played and used probabilities to determine if it should raise, call, or fold. Other bots were reactionary, if someone raised above a certain threshold, they would decide to call or fold. Some bots had no strategy whatsoever, folding or calling randomly. The multitude of strategies was diverse and made every game different and it was interesting to see how the bots learned and reacted to one another.
This event was very helpful in preparing our company afterwards. The platform that we used to host the games became the foundation for main site we are currently building right now. The popularity and success we had with students registering also meant that there is a market that would be interested in playing AI games.
What’s next for the Probot Playground Competition?
After the success of our first event, we definitely want to continue to pursue more activities and events in the future. One idea is to host an annual coding competition at UC San Diego and other college campuses. This would allow us to expand our platform and coding competition to young developers interested in AI development.
Once we launch our platform, we want to start hosting a monthly online tournament that would allow any user from all over the world to compete. By expanding this tournament, it opens up AI poker any developer on the planet. It introduces the possibility of different algorithms and strategies that can revolutionize the way we play AI gaming. And it doesn’t stop at poker, we could expand AI gaming to any other game from strategy to adventure games.
Do you think you could build the best bot?
Make sure to stay tuned to our blog as we get closer to our launch date in September and follow us on all of our social medias for any new announcements.
Can you rule the playground?
