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Subject: Against Club Players: Are Top Programs Stronger than GM?

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 10:40:56 09/04/98




Hi all:
Many times it has been said here, specially by Bob Hyatt, that there is not
transitivity in terms of strength between programs: If A beat B and B beat C,
that does not means, then, that A surely beats C. This is true and the same is
true, as experience show, in the realms of human players of any category. But
then I wonder if also is true in the  mixed field of programs vs human Vs GM.  I
wonder if the known fact that GM are still stronger than programs in long games
and the also known fact that top programs are far stronger than A and even
expert level players, then that necessarily means that GM are stronger than top
programs in relation with those low level players.
My feeling is that this is a debatable issue. In fact, I even have some
arguments to say that maybe top programs are stronger than GM in that specific
relationship with low level players. Let me explain my point.
What makes a GM a GM and not just a master or IM is specifically his superior
positional grasping of the game. They see, in that field, things that we does
not even suspect. In the most rarified layers of that stratosphere, say, in
games between Karpov and Kasparov, we just don’t understand what is happening,
why one of them resigned or offered a draw; they see things far beyond our chess
understanding.
Nevertheless, it is very unlike that a game between a GM and an expert o A class
player could ever reach a depth where such kind of subtile things becomes
necessary. The weaker player will be finished long before just on the ground of
tactical shots or, more likely if we are talking of an expert player, with
positional pressure of the kind you can meet in a Master or IM level player.
That is more than enough 99% of cases. So, with this low level players, the
knowledge and expertise of GM in the most subtile areas of positional
understanding will stay without use, or, in other terms, will become marginally
useful for the strongest player.
But then, look what happens from the point of view of the weaker player. When he
is playing -in a simul or, like in my case, in my home with a friend GM- he
surely will be defeated, but as much the GM is nevertheless a human being, there
is a likelihood that maybe, maybe, MAYBE  you will be capable sometime to kill
him with a tactical bullet in the head before he can use his superior positional
understanding OR, more probably, that the GM will miss a tactical shot you made
possible due to an inexact move or even an straight blunder and do you will be
let playing with a hope to get something. And you know it. You know you can do
it, that you have the chance. You know that maybe a minute imprecision will be
not detected after all.
But against top programs the feeling is entirely different. What you know from
the beginning is that nothing of all those tactical tricks you learned after an
entire life of chess playing will be useful at all; you know you are not going
to kill the program with a sudden pin, a mate threat in the last file, a double
attack or a 5 to 6 ply pretty combination. Even GM sometimes fall to those
traps, but never a top program. And besides you know thought bitter experience
that the most insignificant imprecision will be duly and severely punished. In
fact, the normal experience we have playing a top program -IF you are not more
that a expert player- is this: you are holding the game, you are playing pretty
and precise moves one  after another, you see lot of threats and keep them at
bay, you even develop certain threats against the program, you get a nice
position and then, sooner or later, you commit even the most microscopic mistake
and immediately the program punish you with a blow and your nice, promising
position, fall like the house of Usher described by Edgar Allan Poe.
It is not so? It is not truth that after many experiences of that kind the
intermediate player I am talking about tends to feel impotent and extremely weak
and, in fact, almost without chance against top programs? And is not that
feeling equal to a awesome feeling to be facing a far beyond stronger player,
far even that a GM but human player after all?
Of course all this is sheer speculation as far many players does not have any
experience of playing GM’s. No way to make a measure of this and prove with
numbers that top programs are, in comparison with weak players, stronger that GM
against he same opposition. All this is just an speculative statement about this
issue, maybe a way to add a new element to the complex field of relative
measurements of strength and ratings.
Fernando



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