Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 11:08:06 11/19/00
The chess-playing program USER's perspective: To whom do you turn to get the very best advice regarding how to play from some chess position? Or to get the best information on openings? You do NOT turn to your chess program, at least not for the final answer. Instead, you try to find the answer as given by one of the top-ranked GMs. Why? Because the top GMs are MUCH better at chess than the top programs available to most people. [Most people cannot afford big mainframes.] Also, the chess-playing programs still come up with bad moves much to often for anybody to RELY on the computer's "wisdom." There are still people out there who like to play chess without the help of their chess-playing programs. And many of these people wish to improve their game. After they lose a game, they want to know why. So, they turn to their chess-playing program on their home PC [The strongest possible program is what one wants here!], to the published literature [especially games heavily annotated by top GMs], and if extremely lucky they consult a very strong player in person. But it is not such an easy thing to consult the literature, especially if the critical position(s) which occurred in the games did not get discussed in the literature. For most people, it is also virtually impossible to access top-GMs. One might argue that the average rating of the rated chessplayers are at about the 1600 level and such chessplayers really don't need the help of top-GMs. No need in arguing that point. It's true enough. But . . . it is really irritating to know in advance that your trusty chess-playing software is going to give you bad advice occasionally. The current crop of chess-playing software has not yet met the standard of playing flawlessly at the top-GM level. Obviously. But when that time comes, the need for opening books [based on the games of the top GMs] will disappear and a human will be able to find the best opening moves from their computer programs. We need chess-playing computer programs which are smart enough to come up with opening moves which are as good as, or better than, those produced by the top GMs, without resorting to stored opening books. [Especially true if those books are merely collections of games produced by mere humans.] And we need chess-playing programs which never play dumb moves, or almost never, i.e. dumb only 0.0001% of the time. Until that time comes, there is still a need for improvement in chess-playing programs. Not to play against, but to use for analyses.
This page took 0 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.