Poker champion Phil Laak has a good chance of winning when he sits down this week to play 2,000 hands of Texas Hold'em - against a computer.
It may be the last chance he gets. Computers have gotten a lot better at poker in recent years; they're good enough now to challenge top professionals like Laak, who won the World Poker Tour invitational in 2004.
But it's only a matter of time before the machines take a commanding lead in the war for poker supremacy. Just as they already have in backgammon, checkers and chess, computers are expected to surpass even the best human poker players within a decade. They can already beat virtually any amateur player.
"This match is extremely important, because it's the first time there's going to be a man-machine event where there's going to be a scientific component," said University of Alberta computing science professor Jonathan Schaeffer.
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