If it's unfair in any regard (and I disagree with GP that it's unfair on the merit of physical reads), it's that humans get fatigued and computers do not. Having played poker for stretches of 16+ hours I know that the number of mistakes I make late in the day drastically outnumber the ones I make when I am fresh. And breaks only do so much to counter this fatigue.

I'd have to say that playing poker for long stretches of time is at least as, and possibly more so, than grinding for 12-16 hours writing code.

Even still, it's a stretch to call it unfair. It is brains vs. AI, after all, and that will always be true of brains no matter the task - fatigue is a factor, and this is where AI will have important advantages in the future.

It's not that it's unfair, it's just a considerably different game than human vs. human poker. It would, however, be very interesting to see if the software can reveal exploitable tendencies in the players' behavior that even other top players would be unlikely to discover.