A year ago during the Man Versus Machin Poker Championship, an earlier version of the program had narrowly lost from poker pro's Phil Laak, the Unabomber, and Ali Eslami. That year the team played the computer in Vancouver, resulting in two wins, a statistical tie, and one loss against the computer. The games consisted out of multiple rounds of 500 duplicate hand matches, with the same hands being dealt in both games, but in opposite directions. The result of the match was measured by counting the total amount of chips lost or won by each team.

This year's match will be held according to the same structure as last year, but the opponents of this year are Nick Grudzien, Matt Hawrilenko, and Ijay Palansky. The artificial intelligence computer is completely improved and redesigned; the not all too original name is Polaris II.

Polaris 2 is developed by researchers of the Computer Poker Research Group of Alberta University. The online poker coach Bryce Paradis sais: "The Polaris 2 team has made incredible improvements since the match last year. The most powerful change is that the AI will now learn from and adapt to its opponents' play as the match progresses. This year's Man Versus Machine match is going to push our team to their limit."