Nine Games Computers Are Ruining for Humanity
source: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17145-nine-games-computers-are-ruining-for-humanity.ht...
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"If we ever manage to build a working quantum computer, the first killer app might be online poker. Thanks to the counter-intuitive rules of quantum mechanics, players will be able to use mind-boggling strategies like betting and folding simultaneously (see Quantum poker: Are the chips down or not?).
Poker wouldn't be the first game to have been revolutionised by computers. Artificial intelligence researchers have taught computers to play a wide range of strategic games well enough to compete with skilful human players – and in a few cases, they've beaten them convincingly...
Checkers:
We first reported on a computer that could play checkers, also known as draughts, way back in 1957, and researchers have continued to improve their computerised adversaries ever since. They may have been more successful than the checkers fans would have liked.
By the 1990s, the world's best checkers-playing computer program was Chinook, developed by computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer. Initially, Chinook wasn't good enough to take the laurels from human world champion Marion Tinsley, but thanks to continuing improvements it went on to win the world championship in 1994 and was "retired" in 1996 in order to give the humans a chance.
But then Schaeffer delivered a killer blow. In 2007, he proved that the game always ends in a draw if neither player makes a mistake, and released an updated version of Chinook that cannot be beaten. This is one case where the complaint that computers have taken the fun out of the game really might be justified."
Read about the other games like chess, poker, and tic-tac-toe at the link.
Poker wouldn't be the first game to have been revolutionised by computers. Artificial intelligence researchers have taught computers to play a wide range of strategic games well enough to compete with skilful human players – and in a few cases, they've beaten them convincingly...
Checkers:
We first reported on a computer that could play checkers, also known as draughts, way back in 1957, and researchers have continued to improve their computerised adversaries ever since. They may have been more successful than the checkers fans would have liked.
By the 1990s, the world's best checkers-playing computer program was Chinook, developed by computer scientist Jonathan Schaeffer. Initially, Chinook wasn't good enough to take the laurels from human world champion Marion Tinsley, but thanks to continuing improvements it went on to win the world championship in 1994 and was "retired" in 1996 in order to give the humans a chance.
But then Schaeffer delivered a killer blow. In 2007, he proved that the game always ends in a draw if neither player makes a mistake, and released an updated version of Chinook that cannot be beaten. This is one case where the complaint that computers have taken the fun out of the game really might be justified."
Read about the other games like chess, poker, and tic-tac-toe at the link.
