Computers have gotten to the point where they can routinely decimate the best human players at many games, but most of those games can be boiled down to simply analyzing x number of moves in advance and seeing which move(s) result in the highest probability of success. What about games that might use a bit of instinct and intuition, especially in regards to observing betting trends?
We might get an answer soon as computers are going to try to take on a pair of poker champions at their own game: Texas Hold ‘Em.
“Laak will play with a partner, fellow pro Ali Eslami. The two will be in separate rooms, and their games will be mirror images of one another, with Eslami getting the cards that the computer received in its hands against Laak, and vice versa.
That way, a lousy hand for one human player will result in a correspondingly strong hand for his partner in the other room. At the end of the tournament the chips of both humans will be added together and compared to the computer's.”
The big question might not be who wins but what a computer victory might mean for online gambling. Assuming that the computers being used against Laak & Eslami are both serious rigs, it is only a matter of time until bargain basement desktops and notebooks are packing similar processing power. Once that happens, it’d be theoretically possible (and easy) for people to cheat online.