Everyone hates humans who are caught cheating at cards, but do computers in fact do this routinely?
I believe they do.
I personally have witnessed computers cheating at Backgammon. And it was obvious. The computer displays the description "thinking" and it does this for a good few seconds, but this is even before it has actually thrown the dice. And it routinely does this at key points in the game. Another obvious cheat is when the computer throws double after double to catch up, overtake and beat you, while you yourself didn't even throw one double during the same period.
And they cheat at Contract Bridge. The advantage the computer has it that it can actually see everyone's hand even though it may pretend it can't. It's amazing how often your computer controlled opponents East and West seem to know what cards they have in their hands, but that defeats the whole point of Contract Bridge and is cheating. How often have I seen a computer controlled West, for example, not play his Ace of Clubs but play a lesser card in the suit, knowing that East can win the trick with the King of Clubs?
And they even cheat at video games. I used to be a fan of video games but had to give up because the computer cheats so much. If you progress through the scenario too quickly and efficiently, the computer progressively makes the gameplay more difficult in an apparent attempt to slow you down. However what I find is that you end up encountering an impossible bottleneck every time that you just can't get passed and can't complete the game. It's really infuriating and caused me to give up playing video games completely.
Does anyone else have experiences of this they'd like to share?