World champs on-line

The University of Alberta GAMES computer science group lets you play a bunch of games online against their computer programs. However, be warned: their programs are very very good (in some cases world champions)! You will lose!

The Second Man-Machine Poker Competition

Last year, the University of Alberta's Poker Playing program, Polaris, was narrowly defeated by top human poker players. The re-match is about to begin! The way they set this up is very clever. The machine plays 500 hands against a human, while at the same time in another game, it plays against a different human with the hands flipped (so the computer gets the hands the other human got, and the human gets the hands the computer got). This is clever because it eliminates any element of luck: both humans and the computer play exactly the same hands against exactly the same hands. Will machine triumph over man? Tune in July 4-6, 2008.