Author: Duncan Roberts
Date: 07:27:54 10/19/04
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On October 19, 2004 at 10:00:20, Tord Romstad wrote: >On October 19, 2004 at 02:56:31, Tony Nichols wrote: >> >>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! > >I've never quite understood this argument. If you somehow removed a GMs >memory of opening theory and allowed him to think for a month, he will also >not play the first ten moves of the Najdorf. GMs play the Najdorf because >they know the theory built by the work of hundreds or thousands of players over >several decades (or, for several other openings, more than a century). When >human players are allowed to stand on the shoulders of giants, why is it not >fair to allow computer players the same? > >Some people argue that it is unfair because the computer has perfect and >practically unlimited memory, and can remember all lines ever played in the >Najdorf. But on the other hand, human players have other advantages. A GM >playing the Najdorf has an enormous amount of knowledge of the plans and >the tactical and positional motifs of the opening. He knows where to place >the pieces, which pawns to advance, and which pieces to exchange. He has >detailed knowledge about the typical endgames resulting from the opening. >The computer has none of this knowledge, and has to work everything out on >its own from the moment it leaves its opening book. > >It is true that when computers grow faster and stronger, it might be >interesting to play human-computer matches where the computer is handicapped >in some way. But it seems ridiculous to me to regard such matches as more >"fair" than the traditional format. Computer and human players simply have >very different strengths and weaknesses. Taking away some of the computer's >strengths while allowing the human to keep all of his does not make the game >more fair. > >Tord the opposing argument is some people say tablebases and opening theory is not computer's memory of other's work, which would be legitimate but looking things up in a book, which a person is not allowed to. (although I think Hyatt said you can get round that) I think kasparov's preferred way to make things 'fair' is for the human be allowed access to any opening books the computer has. what is your opinion on a human having access to his own computer databases.? (the fact that he may be a bit slow to access it compared to the computer is his problem and does not make it intrinsically unfair.) duncan
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