Jared Moya
August 22nd, 2006, 01:03 AM
Alberta team studies artificial intelligence with poker-playing computer
EDMONTON (CP) - If the crew of 2001: A Space Odyssey needed to defeat evil supercomputer HAL, they should have challenged it to a game of poker.
KRISTINE OWRAM
Unlike IBM's Deep Blue, a computer that was able to beat world-champion chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997, even the world's best poker-playing computers would flop against the top human players.
That's because computer scientists have not yet figured out how to write programs that can make informed decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information, said Jonathan Schaeffer, chair of the University of Alberta's computer science department and Canada Research Chair in artificial intelligence.
"The skills that make human poker players really good are skills that don't seem to match well with what computers can do," said Schaeffer. "Computers aren't particularly good at learning, for example, or reasoning by analogy."
Schaeffer was part of the team that designed Hyperborean, a poker-playing computer that recently went undefeated at two tournaments hosted by the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.
In the first tournament, four computers played 40,000 hands of limit Texas hold 'em against each of their competitors. Each program was given seven seconds to make its next move and the computer that won the most money won the tournament.
In the second competition, the computers played 12,000 hands of poker against each of their opponents but were given a total of 60 seconds to make their decisions to encourage a higher level of play.
To ensure that no one computer got lucky, each side was given the opportunity to play its opponent's hand after each deal.
http://technology.sympatico.msn.ca/News+and+Trends/ContentPosting.aspx?newsitemid=29356021&feedname=CP-TECHNOLOGY&show=True&number=5&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc
EDMONTON (CP) - If the crew of 2001: A Space Odyssey needed to defeat evil supercomputer HAL, they should have challenged it to a game of poker.
KRISTINE OWRAM
Unlike IBM's Deep Blue, a computer that was able to beat world-champion chess player Garry Kasparov in 1997, even the world's best poker-playing computers would flop against the top human players.
That's because computer scientists have not yet figured out how to write programs that can make informed decisions based on incomplete or inaccurate information, said Jonathan Schaeffer, chair of the University of Alberta's computer science department and Canada Research Chair in artificial intelligence.
"The skills that make human poker players really good are skills that don't seem to match well with what computers can do," said Schaeffer. "Computers aren't particularly good at learning, for example, or reasoning by analogy."
Schaeffer was part of the team that designed Hyperborean, a poker-playing computer that recently went undefeated at two tournaments hosted by the American Association of Artificial Intelligence.
In the first tournament, four computers played 40,000 hands of limit Texas hold 'em against each of their competitors. Each program was given seven seconds to make its next move and the computer that won the most money won the tournament.
In the second competition, the computers played 12,000 hands of poker against each of their opponents but were given a total of 60 seconds to make their decisions to encourage a higher level of play.
To ensure that no one computer got lucky, each side was given the opportunity to play its opponent's hand after each deal.
http://technology.sympatico.msn.ca/News+and+Trends/ContentPosting.aspx?newsitemid=29356021&feedname=CP-TECHNOLOGY&show=True&number=5&showbyline=True&subtitle=&detect=&abc=abc