Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer (born 1957) is a

Canadian Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of ...

researcher and professor at the

University of Alberta The University of Alberta, also known as U of A or UAlberta, is a public research university located in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. It was founded in 1908 by Alexander Cameron Rutherford,"A Gentleman of Strathcona – Alexander Cameron Rutherfor ...

and the former

Canada Research Chair Canada Research Chair (CRC) is a title given to certain Canadian university research professors by the Canada Research Chairs Program. Program goals The Canada Research Chair program was established in 2000 as a part of the Government of Canada ...

in Artificial Intelligence. He led the team that wrote Chinook, the world's strongest American checkers player, after some relatively good results in writing

computer chess Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysi ...

programs. He is involved in the University of Alberta GAMES group developing computer poker systems. Schaeffer is also a member of the research group that created

Polaris Polaris is a star in the northern circumpolar constellation of Ursa Minor. It is designated α Ursae Minoris ( Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an apparent magnitude that ...

, a program designed to play the

Texas Hold'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five community cards are dealt fac ...

variant of poker. He is a Founder of Onlea, which produces online learning experiences.

Early life

Born in

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

, he received a Bachelor of Science degree in 1979 from the

University of Toronto The University of Toronto (UToronto or U of T) is a public research university in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park. It was founded by royal charter in 1827 as King's College, the first institution ...

. He received a Master of Mathematics degree in 1980 and a Ph.D. in 1986 from the

University of Waterloo The University of Waterloo (UWaterloo, UW, or Waterloo) is a public research university with a main campus in Waterloo, Ontario Waterloo is a city in the Canadian province of Ontario. It is one of three cities in the Regional Municipality ...

. Schaeffer reached national

master Master or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles * Ascended master, a term used in the Theosophical religious tradition to refer to spiritually enlightened beings who in past incarnations were ordinary humans *Grandmaster (chess), National Master ...

strength in

chess Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to disti ...

while in his early 20s, but has played little competitive chess since that time.

Draughts: Chinook

Chinook is the first

computer program A computer program is a sequence or set of instructions in a programming language for a computer to execute. Computer programs are one component of software, which also includes documentation and other intangible components. A computer program ...

to win the world champion title in a competition against humans. In 1990 it won the right to play in the human World Championship by being second to

Marion Tinsley Marion Franklin Tinsley (February 3, 1927 – April 3, 1995) was an American mathematician and checkers player. He is considered to be the greatest checkers player who ever lived. Tinsley was world champion 1955–1958 and 1975–1991 and never lo ...

in the US Nationals. At first the American Checkers Federation and English Draughts Association were against the participation of a computer in a human championship. When Tinsley resigned his title in protest, the ACF and EDA created the new title Man vs. Machine World Championship, and competition proceeded. Tinsley won with four wins to Chinook's two. In a rematch, Chinook was declared the Man-Machine World Champion in checkers in 1994 in a match against Marion Tinsley after six drawn games, and Tinsley's withdrawal due to pancreatic cancer. While Chinook became the world champion, it had never defeated the best checkers player of all time, Tinsley, who was significantly superior to even his closest peer. The championship continued with Chinook defending its title against

Don Lafferty Don Lafferty (1933–1998) was a Grandmaster checkers (British English: draughts) player. In 1982 he defeated Derek Oldbury for the World GAYP (Go as you please) championship with a score of 1-0-23. He was challenged for the championship in 1984 ...

when it lost one game, won one and drew 18. After the match, Jonathan Schaeffer decided not to let Chinook compete anymore, but instead try to

solve Solve may refer to: * Sölve, viking king of Sweden * SOLVE, an American environmental organization * Solve (advertising agency) * "Solve" (song), by Japanese pop band Dream * HSwMS ''Sölve'' See also * Equation solving * Problem solving * ...

checkers. It was rated at 2814 Elo. In 2007, after 18 years of computation, he proved through a

weak solution In mathematics, a weak solution (also called a generalized solution) to an ordinary or partial differential equation is a function for which the derivatives may not all exist but which is nonetheless deemed to satisfy the equation in some precisel ...

that checkers always results in a draw if neither player makes a mistake. The solution involved 10¹⁴ calculations from endgame positions with fewer than 10 pieces on the board.

Poker: Polaris

Schaeffer is a member and, until 2004, leader of the computer poker research group at the

, which has developed several strong computer programs for playing

Texas hold 'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is one of the most popular variants of the card game of poker. Two cards, known as hole cards, are dealt face down to each player, and then five Community card poker, communit ...

poker. The earliest and most general of these is Poki, which uses

Monte Carlo simulation Monte Carlo methods, or Monte Carlo experiments, are a broad class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to obtain numerical results. The underlying concept is to use randomness to solve problems that might be determini ...

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 In game theory, the Nash equilibrium, named after the mathematician John Nash, is the most common way to define the solution of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players. In a Nash equilibrium, each player is assumed to know the equili ...

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,

, and two human professionals,

Phil Laak Philip Courtney Laak (born September 8, 1972) is an Irish–American professional poker player and a poker commentator, now residing in Los Angeles, California. Laak holds a World Poker Tour (WPT) title, a World Series of Poker (WSOP) bracelet, a ...

and

Ali Eslami Ali Eslami is a business strategist and renowned high-stakes poker primarily focused on limit mix-games. Eslami is one of the first two people to win the Man-Machine Poker Competition. He represented the United States on the U.S. Poker team in t ...

. The competition was held at the 2007

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

(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 Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

at the

. On July 1, 2012, he started serving a five-year term as

dean Dean may refer to: People * Dean (given name) * Dean (surname), a surname of Anglo-Saxon English origin * Dean (South Korean singer), a stage name for singer Kwon Hyuk * Dean Delannoit, a Belgian singer most known by the mononym Dean Titles * ...

of science at the

. He is a founder of Onlea, a nonprofit organization, which produces interactive online learning experiences such as Massive Open Online Courses.

References

* ''Canadian Who's Who 1997.'' University of Toronto Press. .

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Schaeffer, Jonathan 1957 births Living people Artificial intelligence researchers Canadian computer scientists Canada Research Chairs Canadian draughts players Canadian chess players Fellows of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence Fellows of the Royal Society of Canada Game theorists Scientists from Toronto Sportspeople from Toronto Canadian poker players University of Alberta faculty University of Toronto alumni University of Waterloo alumni