Quantum poker: Are the chips down or not?

YOU slump in your chair and smile as your on-screen bankroll notches up another $1000 first prize. Knocking back the last of your coffee, you check your watch. It’s 3 am. You’ve been playing these tournaments since lunchtime. One more, you tell yourself, and then bed. After all, it’s worth it: this is the game that has made you rich. Well, that’s not quite true. You’re rich all right – but your talents at online poker are only part of the story. You glance down at the quantum processor buzzing softly under your desk as the virtual cards hit the felt once more.

According to one US academic, this fictional scenario will not remain fantasy forever. Steve Bleiler, a mathematician at Portland State University in Oregon, is figuring out what will happen to the game of online poker when today’s computers are eventually superseded by the quantum computing technology of tomorrow.

“The strategies you find in classical poker textbooks work just fine for online games right now,” he says. “But when your ‘Quantum iMac’ arrives you can just take all those poker textbooks and throw them in the dumpster.” [Read more]

New Scientist, 18 May 2009 by Paul Parsons [http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20227081.300-quantum-poker-are-the-chips-down-or-not.html]