Austin Parker in 2007

The Department of Computer Science, as part of the CS Mentoring Series, presents a talk by Austin Parker '02 Ph.D. Candidate in Computer Science University of Maryland - College Park How Computers Play Poker: Algorithms for Imperfect Information Games

Among the areas where computer science has met the most success in the face of the greatest pessimism is the area of computational game playing. It was at one time thought that computers could not play serious games such as chess as well as any human. While that has been proven false -- computer chess programs are generally considered better or on par with even the best human chess players -- it is still the case that expert humans outplay computers in many popular kinds of games such as bridge, kriegspiel, and poker. Many of these games share the property of being imperfect information games, or games where some information is hidden from the opponent. In this talk we will examine state-of-the-art techniques for playing the imperfect information games of bridge, kriegspiel (an imperfect information variant of chess), and poker.