Poker News: In a match of wits between man and machine last week, a software program running on an ordinary laptop computer played a close game but lost to two well-known human poker professionals. Play online poker

The contest, which was billed as the "First Man-Machine Poker Championship" and which offered prize money totalling $US50,000 ($57,000), pitted Phil Laak and Ali Eslami against a program written by a team of artificial intelligence researchers from the University of Alberta. They gave it a name probably no gambler would ever choose: Polaris. Read poker blogs

Poker is thought to be a more difficult challenge for software designers than, say, chess. Computer scientists have to develop different strategies and algorithms to deal with the uncertainties introduced by the hidden cards held by each player, as well as difficult-to-quantify risk-taking behaviour such as bluffing. Play route 66 poker

Jonathan Schaeffer of the Canadian university's computer science department launched the poker-playing research effort 16 years ago. He said the advances being made in the development of poker-playing software are likely to be more applicable in the real world than chess research. Play $500 match poker bonus

The version of poker used in the match last Monday and Tuesday at the annual meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence was Texas Hold 'Em heads-up no-limit poker, a two-player game. After four rounds of 500 hands each, lasting about four hours, the player with the most money would be the winner. Play strip poker

Poker News Source: theage