Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Poker Bots No Limit Texas Turing Poker
Poker bots, software programs that autonomously play in online poker games, are getting a lot better. Casinos fear that they may drive human players away, either because the poker bots are much better players or because people will shy away from this form of online betting because they believe they have no chance against a computer opponent.
(Take a look at your hole cards)
Ian Ayres (author of the new book Super Crunchers (highly recommended, BTW), believes that computers are getting almost as good at poker as they are at games like chess and checkers. He writes
In the very near future, online poker may become a suckers’ game that humans won’t have a chance to win. Bots are quite scale-able and it will be virtually impossible to prohibit computer or computer-assisted online playing......it’s because poker is a game of skill that humans’ chance of winning are undermined. Unlike checkers, the key to poker is to predict whether other players are bluffing. On the Internet (without the possibility of visual cues), computers are probably better at predicting a rival’s hand from his or her past play. But computers are much better at confounding the expectations of their human opponents. Computers can play randomized strategies much better than we can.
Alan Turing, the English mathematician and cryptographer, formulated the Turing test for machine intelligence; if a human judge engages in a natural language conversation with a human being and a machine, and cannot distinguish one from the other, the machine passes the test.
One strategy the casinos might employ is to put the human element back into poker. For example, it might be more fun (for humans) to participate in a n-way video chat with the other players. That way, a person might have a better chance of seeing what he's up against.
Not all human players are concerned about poker bots. One of the people who commented on Ian's article in the New York Times remarked:
HU NL Hold’em [heads up no limit - ed] will never be a game dominated by computer software. My human opponents are thousands of times more sophisticated than any Bot could ever be, true randomness and intuition can not be programmed into a series of responses. Limit Hold’em is to NL Hold’em as flipping coins for money is to betting on sports. The level of complexity is staggering. Anyone who seeks to prove differently can design a Bot to my specific play style and see if they can beat me.
Sounds like the game is on.
From Poker bots on the rise via boing boing.
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 11/14/2007)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 2 )
Related News Stories - (" Culture ")
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.' - Edmond Hamilton, 1948.
'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...' - Frank Herbert, 1964.
Musk Proposes Sites For Martian Cities
'...its streets were of remarkable width, with few or no buildings so high as mosques, churches, State-offices, or palaces in Tellurian cities.' - Percy Greg, 1880.
Who First Thought Of A Tin Foil Hat?
'We had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect.' - Julian Huxley, 1927.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Robotic Barber Programmed With a Number of Styles
'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
Humanoid Boxing Robot KO's Opponent - It's A Knockout!
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
Caterpillar Electric Mining Loader Not Yet Ready For Moon
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
Centipede Robots Down On The Farm
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
Anthropic's Claude AI Creates Legal Citation From Whole Cloth
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
Students Vie For Lunar Regolith Mining Robot Prize
'About time you got here,' the astronaut said.
'They Erased My Memory' Says Ariana Grande
'...using a neutralizing electronic impulse.'
Solitary Black Hole Wanders In Space
'...the Hole is something like a vortex or a whirlpool?'
Spaceplane From Virgin Atlantic
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
DARPA Wants 'Large Bio-Mechanical Space Structures'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
Robot Hand Creeps Along, Separate From It's Owner
'The crawling... object was V-Stephen's surgeon-hand...'
Taikonauts Exercise In China's Tiangong Space Station
'Joe got out the gravity-simulator harnesses...'
Korean Exoskeleton Suit F1 Helps You Put It On
'Better late than never.'
Have AI Researchers Given Up On 'Bio-Babies'?
'You couldn't have the capstone without the pyramid to hold it up.'
Bunker Busters and Bore-Pellets
'The first revelation of the new Soviet bore-pellets.'
'Spikeless' Brand Swizzle Stick Detects Spiked Drinks
'the unobtrusive inspections with tiny remote-cast snoopers...'
