Any online poker pro will tell you that 120,000 hands is nothing. You can win over the first 120,000 hands and lose over the next 120,000 hands or break even. This is because the margins are low and the variance is very high. Someone winning 2 big blinds per 100 hands (with 80 bb variance) will win between 7901bb and -3141bb 95% of the time.
Also, it appears they are playing a tournament, which increases the variance significantly. I actually think tournament play is less suited to measuring AI performance than a cash game, because you're basically playing a series of different games as the tournament progresses that may not be generalizable because the decision math changes based on blinds and stack size unlike a cash game.
> To ensure that the outcome of the competition is not due to luck, the four pros will be paired to play duplicate matches — Player A in each pair will receive the same cards as the computer receives against Player B, and vice versa. One of the players in each of these pairs will play on the floor of the casino, while his counterpart will be isolated in a separate room.
This technique won't work for the same reason mentioned above. Hands in tournament poker are necessarily not independent events.
