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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