Author: Don Dailey
Date: 08:52:29 04/24/98
Go up one level in this thread
On April 24, 1998 at 03:47:44, Howard Exner wrote: >On April 23, 1998 at 23:36:30, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On April 23, 1998 at 21:13:32, Howard Exner wrote: >> > >>>>IMHO, you should change 6 months to a year to 6-10 years. The Micros >>>>are *not* a factor of two away from playing evenly with GM players yet. >>>>Not even close... >>>> >>>>We already have a PII/400 at the office. Intel says 450 late this >>>>year, and (possibly) Merced next year. We already have machines as >>>>fast as merced... they are spelled "alpha"... no one's *close* to a >>>>GM yet... >>> >>>IMHO you should change "no one's *close* to GM yet" to no one's >>>close to a super GM yet. I believe that the top micro's on this fast >>>hardware >>>play at a weak GM level (2450 - 2550). >> >>at faster time controls, yes. at 40/2, no. not yet... > >Are too :) >> >>an occasional win will happen. but when you see a "top micro" get >>squashed by a USCF master, you *know* it is not a GM. > >Since we are talking elo and 40/2 post such an example of this >"squashing". >There isn't any on record that I've seen. > >>GM's don't lose >>to masters very often... yet on ICC these programs lose to them on a >>regular basis... except that the "operators" won't play such a player >>more than once... > >We've been here before on this topic as it seems to emerge from time to >time. >I know of your arguments that depict weaknesses in computer play and >have >no argument with any of them. I am largely basing my belief on years of >playing over thousands of games. While I am no more than an Expert level >player >I do believe that I can preview a game and recognize good vs bad play. >Not >unlike recognizing high levels of play in Sports while not being able to >duplicate what I am viewing. (as others do also) > >I believe I'm right in claiming weak GM levels of play for the micros. >I could change that belief but have read or seen nothing that can show >me that "micros are not close to GM level. Remember that there are very >many GM's rated 2450 -2500. I'm interpreting not close to GM as to mean >roughly 2350 or so. > >One of your major arguments is still flawed. The one that goes like >"I watched an IM beat Crafty on the servers last night". Those are >definately >not 40/2 encounters. I thought the highest ratings on the servers belong >to computers. Is that so? > >Anyway it's fun to rehash this "how strong are the micros". We will no >doubt >have the same discussion in a few months from now. :) It's probably appropriate to revisit this question every few months since the answer changes every few months (How strong are the micros). By the way, I want to comment on the time control thing. We are picking a typical world championship time control which I think is appropriate. HOWEVER, the assumption seems to be anything much faster is hugely distorted in favor of the computers. I completely disagree. In time controls like the Aegon, in my humble opinion, there is a little, but not a whole lot of difference in the relative strengths of humans vs computers. When you get down to speed chess (game in 5 seconds) there is even more difference but even then I'll bet it's not as much as most of us imagine. Don't forget that computers play TREMENDOUSLY weaker at 5 seconds than they do at 3 minutes. I think this is another example of the human's inability to make fine grained judgements. We see most things as all or nothing (especially if it supports our point of view.) There is only a gradual weakening of the humans with respect to computers which at speed chess finally makes a fairly significant difference. Does anyone have any hard data on how much the average difference is between game in 5 vs 40/2? I'll bet the curve is very sharp too. I would guess that humans do remarkably better at game in 10 than they do at game in 5 and that at game in 1 hour there is very little difference. If you factor out time pressure issue by using Aegon like time controls (fischer clock etc.) I'll bet this difference is even less. - Don
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