Since 1969 there have been people living on Earth who have visited another world. It would be a terrible failure of humanity if one day this was no longer true. I am not fond of the Chinese government, but if they send people to the moon, I'll be enthusiastically cheering them on.

One of the best sounds to never hear.

If game theory mathematicians say they've got a strategy which provably can't be beaten, I'll believe them until someone finds a flaw in their method. Mathematicians are notoriously picky about what constitutes a 'proof'. I'm sure they are quite aware of the possibility of an opponent which knows their strategy and adapts to it. (Note that in the rock paper scissors example, knowing the perfect strategy does not let you beat it.)

The article does not specify whether the strategy is deterministic or probabilistic. I expect the latter: sometimes its big lookup table will say "in this situation, raise 15% of the time, fold 85% of the time."

You can better understand what is going on by considering the much simpler game Rock paper scissors. 'Perfect' here basically means the strategy gives you the best possible worst case.

For RPS, the perfect strategy (using the term in the same sense as it is used for the poker bot) is to play completely randomly. There is no way to gain an edge over this strategy, no counter-strategy which will give you more than 50% chance of winning, even if you know your opponent's strategy. (In this case, there is also no strategy which will give you less than 50% chance of winning against the 'perfect' strategy.)

For the poker bot, there is no strategy that will give you greater than 50% chance of winning against it in a two player game. If you know its strategy perfectly (but of course you don't know its cards) the best you can do is to equal that 50% chance (which is what happens if it plays itself.) Unlike RPS, you can can lose to the perfect poker bot by playing poorly. Also, as noted in the article, the perfect poker bot always plays as if it were playing against perfect opposition. A good human player will fleece you faster then the perfect bot, because the human player will notice your peculiar imperfections and exploit them, choosing to play in a way which would be suboptimal against a perfect opponent, but superior against you.

Sigh. Now somebody is going to bring up Ken Thompson's "Reflections on Trusting Trust" in 3... 2... oops, too late.