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Ever since IBM's Deep Blue crushed Gary Kasparov in 1997, humans have been losing ground to computers, right? Not exactly. Machines can kick our butts in chess, but we can still win games like poker. Nonetheless, the competition is fierce across the board.
| THE CHALLENGER | THE SCORE | THE SCIENCE | THE NEXT SHOWDOWN
| SCRABBLE | Maven, written by Brian Sheppard. It whupped Scrabble champion Adam Logan in 1998. | Computers can far out-score the best human players. | Like chess, brute-force computing triumphs here because winning depends on the ability to crank through the options on the board. | Sheppard has laid down an open challenge to any Scrabble champion. So far, no takers.
| POKER | Poki, a program out of the University of Alberta, has never taken on a top champ. Poki's developers have their eye on David Sklansky. | Despite a boatload of computer poker games, it's still amateur hour for the computers. | Reading a bluff is tough for computers, but AI experts are building programs that bluff based on probability. | Nothing on the horizon. Not one player is entered against Poki at this year's Computer Olympiad.
| GO | Goemate, by Chen Zhixing, Guangzhou, China. An earlier version called Handtalk fell to a pro player in 1998. | Humans are on top here by far. The best programs can't even beat good amateur players. | Pure computer power is part of the problem. Humans use familiarity and intuition to play smarter and, most important, faster. | Go players will take on the top programs in July at the Computer Games Conference in Edmonton, Alberta.
| BRIDGE | GIB, developed by Matt Ginsberg at the University of Oregon, is considered one of the best. | Humans still rule. But expert programmer Stephen Smith says we're only a few years from a bridge champ succumbing. | Bridge is part logic and part hunch. Programmers are using evacuation planning algorithms to efficiently evaluate play options. | Experts will warm up on computer programs in August at the World Bridge Championships in Montreal.
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| A New Spin on the Wireless Web
| Humans vs. Computers
