Significance works the other way round than you described it -- if two players were equal in skill, then a winrate of -91mbb/g or larger would happen 5-10% of the time.
I don't know if Doug Polk understands that or not, but I agree with his criticism and I think his analogy with sports reporting is sound. While "statistical tie" is true in a technical sense, it's not usually how matches are reported, and it's somewhat disingenuous and self-serving to use that language. It would be more honest to say that it's very unlikely that bot is better than humans -- given the advantages the bot had (a gruelling 2-week schedule, and pressure on the humans to get through N hands per day) it still lost by a significant margin.
I don't know if Doug Polk understands that or not, but I agree with his criticism and I think his analogy with sports reporting is sound. While "statistical tie" is true in a technical sense, it's not usually how matches are reported, and it's somewhat disingenuous and self-serving to use that language. It would be more honest to say that it's very unlikely that bot is better than humans -- given the advantages the bot had (a gruelling 2-week schedule, and pressure on the humans to get through N hands per day) it still lost by a significant margin.