The most important piece of information seems to be missing. What's the stack depth? In the AAAI HUNL competition it's 200 big blinds which is significantly harder to be good at than 100 big blinds which is the standard for online HU play.
I think you can actually build a fairly competitive HU bot for 100bb games with very simple means (rules based with a bit of statistics thrown in, no opponent modelling or advanced features or learning). At 200bb it's a lot harder and researchers that approach it from an "understanding of the game" POV rather than a "pure computation" POV have a tougher time.
Edit: I only know Doug (aka WCGRider). Wish they would play against Ike Haxton, jungleman12, sauce123, Galfond or Durrr
I think you can actually build a fairly competitive HU bot for 100bb games with very simple means (rules based with a bit of statistics thrown in, no opponent modelling or advanced features or learning). At 200bb it's a lot harder and researchers that approach it from an "understanding of the game" POV rather than a "pure computation" POV have a tougher time.
Edit: I only know Doug (aka WCGRider). Wish they would play against Ike Haxton, jungleman12, sauce123, Galfond or Durrr