Author: pete
Date: 23:43:24 03/16/00
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On March 17, 2000 at 02:18:14, Pete Galati wrote: >On March 17, 2000 at 01:05:34, Vincent Vega wrote: > >>Sorry, math error. > >I never understood the interest in solving the game. In theory, I guess you >could have a computer that can solve the game. But when that's done, and you >set the 2 greatest Chess players down to play a match against eachother, they'll >still be playing at human capabilities, and it'll still be a case of whoever >makes the second to last mistake wins. > >So I'm sure if the interest in computer Chess continues that the game will >eventually get solved, but I don't think that that's very interesting, and >probably it doesn't need to be done all that much. > >Refinements in the programs is what's needed, not the ability to solve the game. > >Pete I suspect it is even worse ; when the game is solved you maybe will have won much less than expected . Let's assume the game is drawn after all white's first moves and by most black answers to them ( which seems to be very likely ). This will continue throughout the whole game : the move which wins a pawn but by some miracle allows the opponent to escape to a draw is just as good as the move which blunders a knight and by some miracle let's _you_ escape to draw . So what you get is "only" a search tree which has been limitted very much ( nice enough ) . Choosing between the moves you still have to build a strong engine ; I think I remember to have read similar things about draughts and the program chinook ( name might be slightly different ) . But now this perfect program will probably still allow a human which for example achieves to swap pieces escape to a draw from time to time . Now imagine a tournament where several top humans and this perfect program play each other round-robin ; it might well be that the machine even then wouldn't win . It seems we already have this problem now ; when two programs which use 5-men tablebases play against each other the draw ratio seems to go up ( anyone ever checked this statistically ? ) .
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