Author: Shaun Graham
Date: 08:04:40 07/25/98
"At 40/2 they are not GM yet, but they are pretty close, and if the human GM doesn't take care, he can get rolled up pretty badly, since the computer is going to be quite attentive toward the least tactical mistake, where another human might miss it entirely. The better they (the programs) get, the harder it will be to attract human GM players to play them." (A quote from Robert Hyatt) He says "pretty close" now, that's not what my memory recalls him saying. Regardless of that however, what does it mean? "Pretty close" to a Shirov? Certainly not. "Pretty close" to a Kaidanov or Gulko? Hmm almost certainly not. "Pretty close" to a Kempinsky, Groszpeter, or Morovic(GMs you have probably never heard of)? Well the truth is that these latter GM's would have (probably) been toasted by Rebel 10 if they had played it 2 40/2 games. Regardless of what statistics say how often would you think Anand fails to beat 2500 rated GMs? And i do mean beat them handily, not a situation where everyone is wondering who is winning as occurred during the Anand Rebel 40/2 games. Now of course the draw that Rebel got could have been luck, it could have even been the 1 out of however many games a "maybe weak IM"(Robert Hyatt, 1998) might have been statistically expected to draw in a match with a GM of Anand's caliber(more games are certainly needed to be definitive). Anands caliber bieng World Champion caliber. To illustrate what i mean by this(World Champion Caliber) i will quote Kasparov reffering to another GM. "I had a big discussion with my seconds over lunch about whether to play my new plan against Shaked. I would have preferred to see another player's face across the board after 13...Rd8--not necessarily Karpov, but ANY STRONG PLAYER. IT WAS lIKE USING AN ATOM BOMB TO SHOOT BIRDS."(Inside chess magazine) The so called bird, that Kasparov is reffering to is none other than the current WORLD junior champion GM Tal Shaked. Perhaps Kasparov is using a bit of bravado(??). Hmm nope Shaked stood no chance whatsoever. Yet we have just been witness to a match where a program (Rebel 10), first drew a game, and then put up an amazingly staunch resistance, so staunch in fact that Anand famous for his speed used as much time as his computer opponent. When we see such a performance against a player of "WORLD CHAMPION CALIBER" by said program we can definitely feel safe in positing the likelyhood that programs such as rebel10/Fritz5 are indeed GM strength. Especially when we can feel certain that if we took the weakest GM and paired him against the mighty Anand the outcome of the match would have indeed in all likelyhood been far far more clear.
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