Computers Win Another One - All your games are belong to us

We've all heard about the computer's victory over humans in the game of chess. Eleven years ago, the reigning chess champion Gary Kasparov lost handily to IBM's Big Blue. But the game of poker has remained in the humans' column, until now. As the author explains in this article, poker is quite a bit more complicated than chess, and the human brain has been better at it than any computer. No more.

A computer system called Polaris outperformed some of the world's top players last weekend at a human-vs.-machine competition in Las Vegas.

The score was computer 3, humans 2, with one draw.

Bowling's team launched Polaris five years ago as a project in artificial intelligence. At first it did well against amateur players but couldn't beat professionals. Last year, it narrowly lost a match against two poker pros in Vancouver, British Columbia.

This year, a stronger version of Polaris — one that learns how to adapt to an opponent's strategy in midgame — triumphed over seven top-ranked humans drawn from the online poker-training site www.stoxpoker.com.

Read the original article.

Singularity & The Price of Rice is updated often; the easiest way to get your regular dose is by subscribing to our news feed. Stay on top of all our updates by subscribing now via RSS or Email.