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Subject: Shirov's Computer Comments

Author: Howard Exner

Date: 09:42:08 11/11/98


Just read Shirov's article in Chess Life, Nov. 98. This player is
becoming one of my favourites. He annotates two of his games and also has
some comments on chess computers. Quoting Shirov,

"Even though the games are completely different (one extremely positional in
nature and the other very tctical), they had one thing in common; my
difficulties in analysing them with Fritz 5! I entered some of the lines I
calculated during the game into Fritz5 and it proved useless!"

Well so far so good. He in a way is giving Fritz5 a plug by revealing
to the world that he uses it. He also says that in the positions in his game
Fritz5 was useless. That's ok with me also since all computer programs
have a certain blindspot for particular positions.

Shirov continues...

"Yes, the computers can also see many more simple things than the human
GMs do, but can they compete with the best human players in depth? I am not so
sure."

So I am in a sense still agreeing as many magficant human moves are
difficult for humans to find. But now my inteest is peaked as to what the
positions are. The tactical position is this:

6r1/2rp1kpp/2qQp3/p3Pp1P/1pP2P2/1P2KP2/P5R1/6R1 w - - id "Shirov - Krasenkov";
bm Rxg7;

This is a possible variation in the game and Shirov's comments are,

"White would have a forced mate in 14 moves! Don't try to put this particular
position on Fritz5 or any other program, as it would never suggest 33. Rxg7+!
as the stongest move!"

I looked at the diagram and thought to myself I'll bet that Rebel 10
would have a good shot at this as it seems to have a powerfull mate finder.
Sure enough after 2:34 it plays Rxg7 with an ever increasing eval. That on
an AMD K-6 233 in dos with 60 mb hash.

So the moral of the story is not to generalize from one computer program to the
next. Probably safer to say that "some computer programs will not solve
such and such a position". My take is that the programs are as unique as the
programmers who work on them. I think they are entitled that rather than
lumping them all together.

So Ed and other programmers whose program can solve this in a tournament time
setting can email GM Shirov with the news that Fritz5 (or any single program)
does not represent the entire pack. I'm sure some other programs will play
Rxg7 also but I only own Rebel 10 at present so cannot verify this. What
does the rest of the pack play?

Just a small note that the point of my sharing this is not to belittle
Fritz's play - it makes great moves in many different positions. It is more
a sharing that all programs are unique in their strengths and weaknesses
and that one program cannot possibly be singled out as representative of
the whole. It would be as faulty to say, "Rebel 10 finds this position
relatively quickly so the computer programs of today are routinely find
such difficult moves."

Enjoy the position. By the way, I'll enter in the other positional
epd that Shirov was reffering to in a follow-up.



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