Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 14:17:36 12/13/00
Go up one level in this thread
On December 13, 2000 at 13:35:29, Pete R. wrote: >On December 12, 2000 at 16:19:27, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>I would totally disagree. You won't _ever_ find a GM that is willing to >>sit down and play a game against a totally unknown opponent. Because they >>like to prepare for the opponent directly. Preparing for a computer is >>simply another type of preparation. And saying that doing so is not legitimate >>means that _no_ GM game is legitimate, since they do this for each other all >>the time. >> >>The real problem is that GMs that are not in the top 100 give programs fits on >>ICC all the time. I won't mention names, but it is common. Because they tend >>to play the opponent, which is perfectly normal. I don't think a GM would care >>_which_ computer he has to play, but he would certainly want to know that he >>is playing a computer (I think computers are more similar than most would give >>them credit for being). > >I agree that it's normal to play the opponent, however this is a much larger >advantage in the case of playing against a program because there is such a stark >difference in their strengths and weaknesses. They have a choice to face a >machine gun or a pea-shooter if they can steer the play to certain positions. >GMs play simuls all the time, I would agree. But these games are nothing more than "skittles" games... IE they are not played in a tournament where winning wins money... > so it is not the case that they always know their >opponent. In that case they simply rely on their "pure chess strength", if we >can define such a term, meaning just the sum of their positional knowledge, >tactical ability, and experience, including familiarity with opening lines. >While knowledge of the opponent is important, if you remove that knowledge, >there is still a spectrum of pure chess strength, and the top GMs will still be >the top GMs if they didn't see their opponents in a match. That would be easy to >prove with such a match, and I doubt anyone would disagree that there would be a >strong correlation of the results with current ratings. I believe that if a >computer participated in such a "blind" tournament where players simply move >pieces on a screen, its strength would be very obvious. I don't dispute that >there would be a larger difference if the players knew they were up against a >machine, but that's the difference between actual intelligence and a piece of >silicon. I'm simply defining chess ability as something separate from the extra >advantages of preparing for a specific opponent. If your hypothesis is (a) a GM would likely do better when playing a computer if he _knows_ he is playing a computer; then I would agree. I would add that (b) a GM would likely do better against _any_ opponent if he knows who he is playing beforehand. I also believe the inverse is true. If the GM didn't know he is playing a computer, he would almost certainly do worse. By the same token, if a frog had pockets, he could carry a gun and not have to worry about snakes. :) > >It would also just be funny to have Kasparov give a simul somewhere, where a >number of people get moves fed from a computer, and see how he does. :) This has been done somewhere. I don't know if it was Kasparov or someone else. But whomever it was, he got pissed about it...
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