Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 14:27:37 10/11/02
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On October 11, 2002 at 17:09:55, Uri Blass wrote: >On October 11, 2002 at 15:00:05, Roy Eassa wrote: > >>I have very gradually come around to the idea that what makes a chess computer >>good against other chess computers may be quite different from what makes it >>good against strong human chessplayers. >> >>Some years ago, PCs were slow enough that the chess author had no choice but to >>write the program to maximize the search, or else even moderately strong humans >>could win simply by tactics. But I think now, with PCs over 2 GHz, just 25% of >>the computer's power is more than sufficient tactically against humans. Against >>other computers, every ounce of speed must be used to search deeper, as in Fritz >>or Ruffian. But against humans perhaps the great majority of the power of the >>CPU needs to be used exclusively to play anti-human chess: avoid locked >>positions, avoid allowing certain types of attacking formations, "understand" >>many, many types of positions better, etc. Such a program would likely perform >>very poorly against the likes of Fritz but could perform much better than Fritz >>does against top humans. > >I disagree. > >I do not think that a program with a lot of knowledge is going to perform >poorly against Fritz. > >If knowledge can help kramnik to beat Fritz I see no reason to assume that it >cannot help a chess program. > >The problem is simply that the programmers do not know how to teach programs the >relevant knowledge. > >Uri I agree with Uri [I think] except in one detail: It is not clear to me what Kramnik has going for him. Being only an amateur chess player myself, I cannot even intelligently speculate as to what skills, knowledge, and OTHER assets Kramnik "brings to the table." Specifically, I'm not so sure that "relevant knowledge" is the whole story. A "Kramnik" may not be that simple. It may take more than "relevant knowledge" to accurately characterize a "Kramnik." The actual games [especially the current Kramnik vs DF match games] seem to be the main clues. Commentary made by the likes of Kramnik could also be taken into consideration, . . . but the top GMs, themselves, may not know why they perform so well at chess. I guess design of an anti-human computer capable of whipping the likes of Kramnik may not be a trivial task. [Understatement.] The REBEL websites quoted in this thread were very interesting, but the REBEL programmer may not yet have hit upon the absolute best way to whip Kramnik. The urge to modify an existing design is most understandable. After all, a lot of work went into producing the current crop of chess engines. But will a "mod" be sufficient? How badly does the chess programming community want to whip the Human World Chess Champions of the future? Would it just "be nice" or what? How strong is the motivation? Bob D.
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