[David Steele]

"However, it is a game of complete information, and thus it can be played by a computer using brute force, which is essentially what DeepBlue did in winning the match."

Usually in AI/CompSci, when some progress is made, a lot of people then denigrate the method as "nothing more than ....." Todays modern chess programs use very sophisticated ideas that took years to develop. Before computer chess was very strong, many said the same things "never never never..." See Hubert Dreyfus for ex.


But what about poker? Can a computer compete effectively against a human in a game of deception and incomplete
information?

Of course computer poker will not just use game trees ( brute force as you call it ). They will use statistical structures, Bayesian nets for example to make good decisions. They will very accurately build up a model of their oppositions play and exploit that.
Poker has incomplete information but that information is incomplete for humans as well so no big deal.

Practically speaking, humans may not be able to beat the best computers now, I don't know ( ask Darse Billings maybe), but if you are saying theoretically, they can NEVER beat the humans, you have failed to identify a single reason for this.

Perhaps you think we have some God given skill to play poker that is not theoretically possible in computer. I am sure you can start a thread in SMP forum and get 100 responses as to why exactly God made poker only playable by humans but allowed Computers to reign supreme over the much more beautiful game of chess. My feeling is that if similar time and money is spent working on computer poker, the programs will have success comparable to chess.

D.