from Amazon
Monday, August 18, 2008
Man v Machine
Poker bots are about to eliminate crime as a byproduct:
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. Our brains are so hardwired to see patterns, it’s devilishly hard for most of us to generate random behavior.
Indeed, take a minute and try to write down a random sequence of 200 heads or tails. If you actually flip a coin that many times, there’s a very large chance (98%) that there will be a run of at least 6 heads or 6 tails in a row. But very few people can bring themselves to produce such runs in trying to be random.