Human player beats poker robot

Renowned for their at times inane if eye-catching publicity, Golden Palace online casino came up with an interesting PR exercise recently when they held a contest to recognise the top poker robot, and then matched the winner with a really good human player.

Whilst it did not generate as much coverage as the historical confrontation some years ago between IBM's Deep Blue and the best chess player in the world, Gary Kasparov, it was an entertaining update on the concept.

The World Poker Robot Championship brought together six of the world's best programmers to compete for $100 000. Created by Hilton Givens of Indiana, Poker Probot took the top prize after routing its opposition and was then matched with professional poker ace Phil "Unabomber" Laak.

The result was a human victory to balance the record books (Kasparov lost his match with Deep Blue) Cheered on by an audience chanting, "Humans, Humans," Laak won the 300 hands, three-hour contest. The Unabomber finally killed off Poker Probot with a game-winning pair of aces, beating his competitive computer counterpart, who had a pair of kings.

There was an interesting footnote to the story - Laak won a $100 side bet that he made with the bot's programmer.