By Lynette F. Cornell

Chances are, you didn’t win the Mega Millions. (But if you did, hello, new friend!)  Even after taxes, winning any chunk of the $355 million up for stake is not a bad way to start off the new year. But gambling is no sure means to a stable financial future, unless, of course, you can heavily improve your odds. Barring an all-power good luck charm, gambling is mostly odds and humans aren’t terribly good at working them, but perhaps robots might be a good sit-in. Leave it up to MIT to find out.

Beginning this week, MIT students in the independent learning course 6.912 MIT Pokerbots Competition have one month to program a completely autonomous robot to compete in a computerized poker tournament. Python is the official language for the competition, but the organizers are considering the possibility of allowing other languages as well. No word yet on what type of poker the bots will be playing, although the competition website indicates that it will be announced.

In comparison to the Mega Millions kitty, the $20,000 prize for the competition winner seems rather paltry, but the intangible yet very real bragging rights more than compensate for the difference. A fair number of MIT students seem to think so. Registration closed Monday with 73 teams, ranging from one to four  members, throwing their chips in the ring. If the competition was based on name, the winner would likely be team #45, also known as “ultraviolet catastrophe.” But since it isn’t, I guess we’ll just have to wait until the tournament, which will be open to the public on January 27. Better slip an ace up your sleeve if you want to stand a chance against these new players, because I don’t think robots bluff.