Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 07:58:47 07/21/00
Go up one level in this thread
On July 21, 2000 at 03:08:09, Ed Schröder wrote: >On July 20, 2000 at 20:54:31, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On July 20, 2000 at 15:38:10, Ed Schröder wrote: >> >>> >>>Yeah..... let's talk about chess! DT losing in Hong Kong 1995 and never >>>trying to get the world champion champion title when they had the chance >>>to proof that Hong Kong was a mistake. Perhaps it was no mistake? >>> >> >> >>OK... Fair enough. How many WCCC events or WMCCC events did _you_ skip? >>Why? I believe you said you got tired of the book wars. But you could >>have still competed, right? And maybe done poorly if your book was busted? >>And sales would have suffered? > >The list of main events Rebel participated can be found on: > >http://www.rebel.nl/r8-r9.htm > > >>Remember that after the Kasparov match, IBM wasn't going to do _anything_ to >>taint the incredible public relations coup they obtained by beating the world's >>best chess player. The marketing guys would have gone ballistic had Tan allowed >>DB to enter a computer chess event where any possible outcome except for 100% >>wins would have resulted in lots of chess-thumping "I beat Deep Blue..." > >This is not correct. We were promised a DB Internet version everybody >could play. Where is it? > You have to sit back and think about the following: (1) Hsu was _always_ open. He competed in nearly every computer chess event he could, as did I. He and I are very similar in several respects, one of which is that we both like to compete with our "creations". I _do_ compete all the time. I don't make the WMCCC event because it is too expensive, and it comes right in the middle of a term where I am teaching and missing over a week of classes is not reasonable, IMHO. But I _do_ play on ICC all the time, where anybody can play or watch. If Hsu had the choice, he would too. Do you know the "thing" with the best-ever win/lose ratio on ICC? Hint: Scratchy -- the handle for deep thought. (2) Hsu worked for the largest computer company on the planet. They didn't work for him, he worked for them. Along with all the agreements an employee must make about intellectual property rights, and so forth. And when he beat Kasparov, the marketing division was ecstatic. And the marketing division _runs_ IBM, as it should. And _they_ made the decisions about what could and could not be done after the match. From a purely business perspective, it makes _perfect_ sense to not play again. Because there is _nothing_ they could do but do worse than they did against Kasparov. To imply that it was Hsu/Campbell/etc is 100% incorrect. They worked for IBM and were obligated to do what they were told. Whether we like it or not. I'd love to have DB on the internet. But it isn't our decision. Nor Hsu's... > >>I don't what happened. But it was certainly predictable. I have no doubt >>that they would be an overwhelming favorite in any computer chess event. But >>Hong Kong can happen again. All it takes is a communication failure and a >>restart at the right instant and <blam> you play a bad move. Hong Kong proved >>it _could_ happen. > >>And IBM marketing would _not_ allow that chance to be taken. > >A little bird told you or IBM? I big bird at the top of the DB project... > > >>From a business perspective, they would be utterly stupid to play in any other >>event, until the long-term 'buzz' from the 1997 match fades into the past... > >If you think you are so superior (as they claim!) I would like to show to the >world. I also believe that if you make such claims you are obliged to proof >it. If your boss says "NO", he probably means "NO". Would _you_ defy management, go out and play in a tournament and lose one of those odd games, and then have to face the legal action where IBM could _prove_ you cost them millions of advertising dollars? Be realistic. In _any_ company like that... IBM... Cray... SGI... DEC... the marketing guys _rule_. It is good business for it to be so. Because the goal is to sell machines, not advance science. Even if the goal of the individual employees is not the same. > >The IBM pages are full of claims, here is one: > > "Over the years, Chiptest evolved first into Deep Thought, then > into Deep Blue, the most powerful chess-playing computer ever > constructed." > >This was written in 1997 while another program was world-champion >in that period (1995-1999) nota bene beaten in a direct confrontation. >I call this kind of information misleading, softly speaking. It isn't misleading at all. It was certainly factual. Could Fritz search a minimum of 200M and a max of 1000M nodes per second? If not, then IBM could, and clearly that was the most powerful machine around that played chess. Power doesn't mean "best chess player" although they could easily make that claim as well and experts in the field wouldn't dispute it. > >Tell me why should I believe the IBM propaganda and everything else >they say. Heck I even have started to doubt the never questioned 200 >million NPS as just being good for their sales. Doubt what you like. Just notice their search depth of 17-19 plies in the middlegame and ask how they did that if they weren't going at 200M nodes per second and beyond... The hardware details have been described in various journals. 480 * 2.2M nodes per chip says (to me) that they _really_ could have claimed a much bigger number and been just as honest as any other SMP programmer around. They claimed only 20% of their peak number, where everyone else reports their peak... Doesn't sound exaggerated to me at all... > >IBM has been caught on lies and false interpretations (the match being >scientific, promising Kasparov to give him full explanations after the >match) and more of such. Why should I trust any information that comes >from a source that has proven itself being unreliable providing misleading >information. > Were the log files not released eventually? Would _you_ give Kasparov _anything_ after the way he behaved during and after the match? I wouldn't... > > >>>What about DT not seeing a simple tactics on tournament time control (!!) >>>every chess program sees within 10 seconds? >> >>You do remember Hsu's explanation? That DT _had_ found the right move in >>that bad book line (g3 I think, I am not sure). And a communication failure >>caused them to restart and it moved before it saw the problem with the move >>it played? That has happened to me. It is part of the game. And they lost >>because of it... > >Any chance you can back this up? > >Are you suggesting 16. c4????? came from a hardware or communication >failure? Hsu reported this himself. He said that DT had liked c4 for a while, then changed away from it, then came back to it, then failed low and found g3. They had some sort of network/communication failure while it was still Fritz's move. They discovered this apparently when Fritz moved and they couldn't talk to their program to enter the move. They reconnected, but were not using a client program that would keep DT running. So on the comm failure, the program was terminated. They restarted the program, and it moved pretty quickly. You can certainly email Hsu or Campbell and ask about the details. I think this was discussed in r.g.c right after the tournament, but I am not sure. It might have been mentioned in his upcoming book as well, again I am not sure and don't want to re-read the whole thing to look. > >DT lost because of missing a simple tactics, just 10 plies deep >and that on tournament time control while every program will see >in a few seconds. Even after a restart 16.c4?? should have been >rejected within a few second **IF** the machine is the tactical >beast you want us to believe. If it missed simple tactics, wouldn't it have lost games right and left? I can think of several reasons why they might take a while to see that c4 is bad... a program bug -- we all have 'em. An operator error on the restart. This happened to me in Jakarta where someone pulled the plug on our machine in the middle of a game, and when the thing was restarted, the time control was entered wrongly (I wasn't there). I lost round one because the operator blew the time control thinking he was talking about 40 moves in 90 minutes, but he entered 40 moves in 90 hours. There are too many things that could have gone wrong in that game right after a restart... But since that was one of two games they lost over quite a period of time, I don't conclude they were tactically missing things right and left. On the contrary, they were generally seeing things (at all the ACM events I attended) that were leaving their opponents and spectators gasping... Again, ask Mike Valvo. He was the TD at all the recent ACM events. Maybe you will believe him? > >So now we have 2 cases from practise DT/DB being caught not being the >superior beast followed by 2 explanations from the IBM camp (bug, hard- >ware failure) assuming your informations are correct. > >Especially the 16.c4??? excuse is an extremely poor one given the fact >16.c4 is about a very simple tactics. > Being the best, and being "perfect" are not the same thing. I think it funny that one bad move, in one very rare game, is used to mark DT as inferior. In spite of the 50 other victories against the best computer programs in the world. In spite of their having a trophy case so full it is bursting at the seams... > >>But remember, that was one of exactly two games they lost to a micro program >>since 1988. Pretty tough to follow such a dominating performance... > >This argument has been already successfully weakened by Chris. DT winning >from 5 Mhz 6502 and 386/486 machines is not exactly something to be proud >on. When it had to face a simple Pentium-90 things went wrong. After that >they just disappeared still claiming being the best. Not very conving. > As I mentioned before. DT evolved each year. Remember the speed analysis I gave about how they had gained over a factor of 3.3 against rebel since they first came on the scene. And that includes 3 years of inactivity by them, while we continue to get faster and faster hardware each year. And they are still 3.3x faster when you compare 1988 DT to 1988 Rebel, vs 1997 DB to 2000 Rebel. It will take 2 more years for you to get back to the same speed ratio with them you had in 1988. If Hsu did his new chip, he would gain about 30X more, which would mean he has widened the gap from 1988 to today by a factor of 100... Falling behind by a factor of 100 in 12 years is pretty bad. I can extrapolate what those two curves are doing, and it looks bad for the one getting left behind. Note that _I_ am behind too... > > >>> >>>What about the DB-GK position Uri posted recently DB being dead wrong >>>not seeing a giant material loss? >> >> >>The fishy PV problem? That is common in their output and doesn't bother me >>a bit. They can't get the PV like we do, so they have to probe around in 32 >>processors to get the various "best moves". And they occasionally get nonsense, >>which is not totally unexpected... > >Nope. I am talking about Rd1?? see my other posting. I thought you or someone else had reported that they had a gross bug that was found after that move was played. Dealing with a C macro that expanded in a way that badly broke something in a particular circumstance? Again, one bad move and we dismiss DB? In that case, we must have dismissed Rebel, Crafty, Deep Junior, etc. _years_ ago because they all make _horrible_ moves. Remember "f4"??? :) It happens. It doesn't mean the program is weak. > > >>Didn't bother me as the score was reasonable, as was the move they played in >>the game. >> >> >>> >>>What about the 3 games Chess Tiger played last year in Paderborn against >>>the Internet version of DB-JR versus Tiger running on a slow 150 Mhz? In >>>case you forgot the score was 1.5-1.5 >>> >> >> >>Against a crippled version using almost no time to search, with no repetition, >>no 'state' of the game, etc? I get thumped all the time on ICC when I run up >>a new version with a serious glitch. Or when something else is running so that >>I get 1% of my CPU for a couple of moves. Does that mean my program is weak??? >>On the quad??? >> >> >> >> >>>Not to speak about the 3-0 Rebel scored against this DB-JR Rebel running >>>on a simple 333 Mhz notebook. At least these games were real, real in the >>>sense 6 games were published and many people have watched them live. I was >>>not shouting 3-0 only at least I could produce the evidence. How about >>>these supposed 40 games? I have never seen one. >>> >>>Well... this is what you get when you hide, do not play, shout 36-4 and >>>provide no evidence. >>> >>>Ed >> >> >> >>They didn't hide from 1988 to 1995. Where were you then??? > >- 1991 Vancouver: world champion micro's >- 1992 Madrid: world champion all classes >- Various first places on SSDF >- Overall best computer at AEGON (man vs machine) > >Good enough ??????? > >Ed You miss the point. They weren't hiding? Where were you then? Didn't you see them at each of the ACM events? Or see their results? Did you see them at all but the 1992 WCCC event? I wasn't asking where _you_ were competing. I was asking where _you_ were when they were competing at every computer chess event they qualified for. I don't think you can say they were "hiding" when they were at every ACM event I attended, and I didn't miss any that I can recall. They were at the 1989 WCCC event in Alberta and at the 1995 WCCC event in Hong Kong. Hard to say they were hiding when they attended more events than anybody else...
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