And, for a specific form of poker, researchers have now done so. But it is possible to figure out strategies that make it very difficult for an opponent to exploit them. It's not possible to solve these in the same sense you can't know the ideal path forward from a given state because you simply don't fully know what the state is. The classic examples here are card games, where some fraction of the cards is typically known only to the player holding them.
(Think of it this way: by looking at a chess board, you know precisely where every piece on the board is.) Lots of games that attract players have imperfect information: players know things their opponents don't. The best a human can hope for is a draw.īut the games computers have done well with are what are called 'perfect information games,' where both players have full access to all the knowledge there is to have about the game. In fact, for two games-checkers and Connect Four-computers have calculated the optimal move for every single possible board combination. Checkers, Chess, and Jeopardy have all seen their champions fall to silicon opponents.
Flickr user Olivier Duperray reader comments 94Ĭomputers have made remarkable progress when it comes to beating their programmers at a number of games.
