Jonathan Herbert Schaeffer (born 1957) is a

Canadian Canadians () 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 their being ''C ...

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, the first premier of Alberta, and Henry Marshall Tory, t ...

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 (Latinisation of names, Latinized to ''Alpha Ursae Minoris'') and is commonly called the North Star or Pole Star. With an ...

, a program designed to play the

Texas Hold'em Texas hold 'em (also known as Texas holdem, hold 'em, and holdem) is the most popular variant 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 face up in ...

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

Early life

Born in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

Ontario Ontario is the southernmost Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada. Located in Central Canada, Ontario is the Population of Canada by province and territory, country's most populous province. As of the 2021 Canadian census, it ...

, 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 university, public research university whose main campus is located on the grounds that surround Queen's Park (Toronto), Queen's Park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was founded by ...

. 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 university, public research university located in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. The main campus is on of land adjacent to uptown Waterloo and Waterloo Park. The university also op ...

. Schaeffer reached national

master Master, master's or masters may refer to: Ranks or titles In education: *Master (college), head of a college *Master's degree, a postgraduate or sometimes undergraduate degree in the specified discipline *Schoolmaster or master, presiding office ...

strength in

chess Chess is a board game for two players. It is an abstract strategy game that involves Perfect information, no hidden information and no elements of game of chance, chance. It is played on a square chessboard, board consisting of 64 squares arran ...

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 Execution (computing), execute. It is one component of software, which also includes software documentation, documentation and other intangibl ...

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 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 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 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 prec ...

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 the most popular variant 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, community cards ...

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 det ...

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 is the most commonly used solution concept for non-cooperative games. A Nash equilibrium is a situation where no player could gain by changing their own strategy (holding all other players' strategies fixed) ...

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, and ...

and Ali Eslami. 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 Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

(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.

Later life

Schaeffer was previously the vice-provost for

information technology Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...

at the

. On July 1, 2012, he started serving a five-year term as dean 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 Canadian 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 Chess players from Toronto Canadian poker players Academic staff of the University of Alberta University of Toronto alumni University of Waterloo alumni