Author: Graham Laight
Date: 04:22:41 07/17/00
Go up one level in this thread
I'm afraid I still feel that Junior could have come out ahead (instead of level)in this tournament by beating Bareev and Khalifman - and possibly by not losing with such apparent ease to Kramnik. Continuing the game against Anand might possibly have gained an extra half point as well. I think that Amir has an aspiration to make his program demonstably better than Deep Blue (this certainly comes across in his interviews published on the Chessbase Website coverage of Dortmund (www.chessbase.com) before the Kramnik game). If so, as a (hopefully!) impartial member of the viewing public, I'm afraid to say that I've yet to be convinced. As evidence, I point firstly to the games against Bareev and Khalifman. On both occasions when Deep Blue '97 gained an advantage over Gary Kasparov (who's a better player than anyone at Dortmund was), it parlayed that advantage into victory - whilst Deep Junior twice failed conspicuously to "slam in the lamb". I would also point to the game against Khalifman. Here we see Deep Junior lose to a combination of blocked centre and king attack - classic anti computer methods which have both been well known for a long time. They work because, in this case, nothing short of truly massive search depth is going to help you to make the correct moves. However, for both king attack and blocked centre, Deep Blue '97 demonstrated that it's evaluation knowledge was able to adequately handle the challenge. Indeed, in game 2 in '97, Deep Blue not only handled the blocked centre, it turned it into a win! It took Deep Blue 2 attempts to beat Gary Kasparov, the world's best player - maybe another year of work will push Deep Junior to a position where it can try to win these tournaments, instead of settling for a middling position. But let's not be completely churlish - Dortmund 2000 was indeed a fantastic performance by Deep Junior - and a landmark in computer chess history, since here is both a computer and a program which one can buy in the shops!
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