Renowned for their at times inane if eye-catching publicity, Golden
Palace online casino came up with an interesting PR exercise recently
when they held a contest to recognize the top poker robot, and then
matched the winner with a really good human player.
Whilst it did not generate as much coverage as the historical confrontation
some years ago between IBM's Deep Blue and the best chess player in
the world, Gary Kasparov, it was an entertaining update on the concept.
The World Poker Robot Championship brought together six of the world's
best programmers to compete for $100 000. Created by Hilton Givens
of Indiana, Poker Probot took the top prize after routing its opposition
and was then matched with professional poker ace Phil "Unabomber"
Laak.
The result was a human victory to balance the record books (Kasparov
lost his match with Deep Blue) Cheered on by an audience chanting,
"Humans, Humans," Laak won the 300 hands, three-hour
contest. The Unabomber finally killed off Poker Probot with a game-winning
pair of aces, beating his competitive computer counterpart, who had
a pair of kings.
There was an interesting footnote to the story - Laak won a $100 side
bet that he made with the bot's programmer.