Online Poker Meets the Planet of the Apes

I'm sure everyone at one time or another has seen a painting of a group of gentlemanly canines engaged in an anthropomorphic game of poker as created by Cassius Coolidge in his wonderful series of poker playing dog paintings. But check this out, the artists whimsicality was not entirely removed from reality. You may be nave enough to think that chips and chimps cannot play together as a team and it sounds more like something out of a Douglas Adams novel. Should you ever play online poker with a player who has an ape photo for his icon, it may not have been just a player with an odd sense of humor, the dude that took your money by his excellent play may really be a poker playing primate. I kid you not. Apes can do a lot more than wield tools in this twenty first century of technological advances and "intelligence explosion" they can also beat you at online poker.

Primate Programming Inc has established that great apes (sharing 97% of their DNA with us) make efficient IT specialists. Individuals are employed by PPI, undergo training and offer their services to PPI clients for peanuts. A later PPI discovery was that the same employees, for purposes of pastime or secondary sources of income, are capable of being taught to play online poker, evincing particular talent for no-limit Texas Hold'em.

No-limit poker appeals to these employees because of their natural bent for playful (and sometimes serious) displays of aggression. PPI tells us that is this quality that makes them outstanding bluffers. Aggressive bluffing in no-limit games allows the player to bet it all at any time. This rule of the game requires edgy, aggressive behavior and the rather rare skill to bluff.

Since there is no way to identify the poker players online due to its anonymous nature, no one knows if their opponents are human or something other than human. That player who started off betting small and showing his lame cards to all, the one who much later bet large, had everyone call, then gleefully showed aces was probably one of the non-humans. The players had no idea he then jumped up and down, pounded his chest and demanded a banana.

Not coincidentally, the primate-payers were initially hired as computer programmers. They actually develop programs by themselves as a side line to playing poker. PPI has not yet revealed the content of these programs. Certainly, though, they could go for a career in professional online-poker playing. They don't seem to want to pursue this career choice, however. When they leave the office, they are very apt to neglect all their training and go back to climbing fences and eating bananas. Even so, if they are paid regularly, given three squares a day and a boyfriend or girlfriend, David Sklansky and Ed Miller may have to update their No-limit Hold'em instruction books very soon.

For the past several years, Norm McAuliffe, a Yale biology Phd and the scientist heading the research team behind the discovery of programmer apes, has been investing money and effort into a Primate Poker Inc, "hiring" profitable ape-players to play for money in rotating shifts, 24 hours a day. He has been quoted as saying: "I'm completely committed to this business model. It is reasonable to say I am "all in"."