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Fair enough. But it's complete-information game, right?
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Yes it is but not everything is known at any given moment. There are possible lines that go out side the scope of what can be known in the “moment.” I forget the particular ending but decades went by before a computer figured that some combination where it’s bishop vs. knight (and what other pieces I don't recall?) is a brute force win in something like 325 moves!
Since the OP put chess and poker and computers in the same sentence I think it’s worth really describing what that looks like. This is what happen more or less in chess and I’ll use poker as an example. First you are not asking if a computer can be programmed to play better poker than a human. That’s question does not exist in a vacuum because you are faced with money, big egos, large corporations, cheating and a drive to get it done without any boundary conditions. Makes no sense… OK… hang with me for a second (I’m tossing in poker for more or less what actually went down in chess)
1st the poker programming team will get a player to flip, they will hire a Chip Reese or someone as part of their team. They will study everything known about every top player, they will invite many (50 to 300?) of the top players in to the world to a million+ freeroll with the only condition that every hole card is captured on camera and you must submit to a brief interview a week after the event. The players will of course come on board, +EV, appearance fees too and what can it hurt it’s only a computer.. muahahaha..!?
Chip and team will start the frame work to build custom algorithms’ to beat key players, private man vs. computer poker matches will be held, again custom algorithms will be used and possibly adjusted as play goes on if the “team” determines anything out of sync. Structure conditions will be studied, we now know that Hellmuth plays 20% less optimally if blinds increase in 30 minutes as opposed to 45 minutes. This entire specific targeted BS goes on at the same time they are actually programming a computer to “play” the game. Possibly a fuzzy logic systems is tested and let run loose online, not as the final machine but to data mind for new information, maybe this fuzzy system learns something “most” poker experts to be true is false. All of his and the computer will have every table, every known situations, every bit of history it its system at all times. It will know to adjust the calling range of a Johnny Chan vs. any Phil, in any given situation and if they are wrong they’ll adjust again and again.... At some point real poker players won’t care because its such a “planned project” that you’ll still wonder if machines play better poker than humans in spite of the fact that the program has won the WSOP three years in a row, or has beaten a Phil heads up... it just won't matter or prove that much.....
Back to chess for a moment, Deep Blue team most likely had human intervention at key points……
Game Over (Deep Blue Film)
The move....