[thechainsaw]

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I don't expect to see a computer program that can play well at a table of humans anytime soon. If someone did that, it would be a major breakthrough in machine intelligence.

In an important sense, I think that means no one has any idea how to build a poker machine that can compete with good humans.


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I am not sure that this follows. There is a difference between knowing how to do something and actually doing it. You can solve chess in about 5 minutes, and program it in less than a day, but current hardware would be too slow to run it in a tournament setting, so the work invovles speed optimizations and cutting corners, but people know HOW to do it.

In poker, we just dont know how to do it, or at least we are unsure. I think that's the important distinction with the idea of incomplete information. Addionally, just because no one has done it so far, does not mean that no one knows how to do it. To say no one has "any idea", based this observation, I think is a non sequitur.

The same computer vs human argument always is posed in bridge, and the argument that no one has built anything anywhere decent yet always comes up. But imho, if you were a programmer good enough to solve bridge, you probably wouldnt be writing bridge software.