Will a Robot be the Next WPT Champion?

Ah, not yet, but don’t be too surprised if it was to happen at the end of the year.

A couple of smarty pants, Prof. Tuomas Sandholm and student Andrew Gilpin, at Carnegie Mellon University developed the Big Blue of Poker called GS1.  This self learning program knows how to play a game of poker and has kicked the ass of two other pokerbots in heads-up limit Texas hold’em.

GS1 is capable of developing its own poker strategy after doing all the fancy computer calculations in its wired brain.

What I would like to see is the program being able to take on the likes of Doyle Brunson and… Hmmm .. possibly even Phil Hellmuth.  At least Phil won’t be able to annoy the hell out of the program, but who knows.

Apparently GS1 knows when to hold and fold, but how well will it stand up to bluffing?  I’m assuming you’re a poker player…… so you’d probably know how often people can bluff.  Professional poker players aren’t so inclined to bluffing, but don’t always play according to the strength of the hand or their position.

Some people play some hands by their gut feeling.  Others play based on how lucky they feel, and some others just get lucky.  How will a computer be able to simulate these kind of plays?  Not very well I’d imagine.  It’s almost like trying to generate a truely random number isn’t it?

Let’s see how far Sandholm and Gilpin are able to refine their pokerbot before it starts earning millions at poker tournaments.

Read more about it at http://www.itnews.com.au/newsstory.aspx?CIaNID=34706&eid=3&edate=20060711
I’m in the process of reading their research paper to get more authoritative information about this pokerbot.  More updates coming soon!