Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Future of Chess: Will GMs be able to draw computers?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 03:01:15 10/19/04

Go up one level in this thread


On October 19, 2004 at 02:56:31, Tony Nichols wrote:

> As far as the future goes...Chess is not a purely mathematical game so humans
>will always have chances against computers.


Not mathematical? Care to explain why you think that, or why you think humans
will always have chances? Exhaustively searching the game tree seems quite
mathematical to me, and seems to leave virtually no chance for humans.


>I think as hardware technology
>progresses we will see changes to match rules. For example; limited opening
>book, limited endgame tablebases, maybe even longer time controls.


So we're going to move to handicap matches? Or do the humans have to play
without their "opening book" too?

We could organize Man vs. Machine foot races against automobiles. We could make
the automobiles use solar powered lawn mower engines and square wheels. Oh how
proud we will feel if we win...


>All these
>things favor the human player. In fact just taking away the opening book would
>eliminate interest in these matches very quickly! Computers do not know how to
>unbalance the position very well. They tend to play very passive openings or
>just complete garbage. When a GM plays against a computer in the opening he's
>actually playing against other GMs. You could a chess program think for a month
>and it's never going to play the first ten moves of the Najdorf!


That's the difference. We humans create these mental crutches to compensate for
our lack of long term tactical vision. You think humans are going to have a
chance because computers don't understand our crutches. That's kind of
backwards, don't you think?

One day the computer will steadily count down the number of moves until mate
while you snicker at how it doesn't even understand the Najdorf. Again, that
logic seems backwards to me, considering a means to an end as more important
than the end itself.



This page took 0.01 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.