Bridge: At the Tournament Table, Learning by Doing
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Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., gives an annual gift of sorts to its students.
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(InfoWorld) - A poker-playing robot may help find the answers to some of the most intractable challenges in the business world, such as optimizing e-commerce and auction applications. Programmers have historically tried to teach computers to play chess, setting up the iconic 1996 match between IBM's Deep Blue computer and human champion Gary Kasparov. But poker provides a better test of artificial intelligence (AI), says Tuomas Sandholm, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University: While chess players can see all the game pieces, poker players face many hidden details, like what cards the opponent has been dealt. Sandholm specializes in the correlation between strategic behavior and computational complexity, and runs his own company, CombineNet, which develops algorithms to optimize procurement for companies like H.J. Heinz. He put his latest technology to the test in July when he brought his poker-playing robot, called GS2, to compete in a Boston tournament sponsored by the American Association for Artificial Intelligence. What's the greatest strength of GS2's technology? About 26 million possibilities exist for poker hands in the second round of a Texas Hold 'Em game -- too many for a computer to analyze: GS2 uses an algorithm that reduces the number of possibilities, to consider just 2,465 strategically similar hands. GS2 has not beaten a top human player yet, but Sandholm continues to refine. "The research problem is how to come up automatically with better and better strategies," Sandholm says. "The computational and combinatorial complexity of solving the game makes this enormously challenging."ADVERTISEMENTMAKE SOA REAL WITH IBM WEBSPHERE PODCASTStreamline processes and maximize efficiency within a proven service oriented architecture. Take back control of your business processes with IBM WebSphere.
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Everyone makes mistakes at the bridge table, even experts.
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Regulation of online betting on the cards
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The chess match between Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue in 1997 was the showdown of man vs. machine: the world's greatest chess player verses the world's greatest chess-playing computer.
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Dating, negotiating, fragging and making money.  Play and its consequences.
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Irregular hors d'ouevres, scheduling mishaps, and the stockbroker's eternal dilemma.
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Some computers can beat grandmasters at chess. Others can compose music.
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Apart from the fun of watching the play during matches broadcast live over the Internet at www.bridgebase.com, it is also interesting to read the remarks by commentators.
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Tycho:  Mario Hoops 3-on-3 is impressive in many ways, as I've suggested: certainly as a technical showcase, it's nice to have in your bag.  As a catalogue of Japanese aggression toward gamers, it's clear now that future generations will refer to these advanced cups as a deeply scandalous exhibit.  I have seen a Goddamn ninja weave a dark circle, disappear with a burst of leaves in some strictly Hattori Hanzo type shit, and then phase back into the physical plane to haunt our mortal hoops.
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For those of you anxiously anticipating the results of the PHP programming competition put on by The Programming and Management blog, Nick Halstead has posted an update to help keep you up to date.   The judging of the PHP competition is taking a lot longer than I first thought! I started with 40+ entries which I reduced down by trying them one by one (very slow!) some of them quickly stood out and I got the list down to 12 entries. [...] I then went through those top 12 and re-tested more thoroughly trying out further words/dictionaries plus quick checks for robustness and quality of presentation. This then left me with 6 entries which I would then email out to the other Judges.   The final judging of these last six is dependent on how each of the judges rank the applications overall. Nick also includes some of the comments made by the judges already about the applications they're reviewing.
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Cisco(R) (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced the availability of "The Subnetting Game," a new educational game designed to help make the highly technical topic of subnetting easier for students to learn.
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Take advantage of cards instead of it being the other way around.
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The PHPClasses.org website has posted their review of a Packt Publishing book covering PDO - "Learning PHP Data Objects" (by Dennis Poppel).   In Learning PHP Data Objects, the author, Dennis Popel, examines this new system and explains how to begin using PDO in development as a replacement for typical database drivers. The book is an excellent introduction to the data abstraction layer. It also provides essential insight into the inner workings of database interaction with PHP.   The review talks about the contents of the book, what PDO is/how it's used and how well the book hits the mark for its target audience.
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There are a lot of bridge proverbs that we learn, proverbially, at our grandmotherâs knee. Bridge has survived because we can rarely use the words always and never in those maxims.
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Knowing a little bit more than the next guy is the name of the game on Wall Street.
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Serve logica del sistema.Basta rinvii sulla competitivita'