Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Why the current interest in Man vs. Machine battles??

Author: Gordon Rattray

Date: 20:52:40 06/09/01

Go up one level in this thread


On June 09, 2001 at 23:16:54, Chris Kantack wrote:

>Perhaps I'm missing something....(hence, this post).  I'm wondering what all the
>excitement is regarding Kramnik vs. Deep Fritz or any other similar match going
>on (with Grandmasters) this year.
>
>As I recall, the 2nd Deep Blue match that IBM had with Garry Kasparov was a very
>specialized machine with many processors especially made to process chess
>positions.   I've heard several times where (the 2nd version) of Deep Blue was
>able to calculate 200 million positions per second.
>
>Now, I've recently read where Deep Fritz (in its recent match against Deep
>Junior) was able to calculate (only) 1 million positions per second.
>
>So now, this autumn, we're to see a match between Kramnik and a computer with a
>"chess computational" speed of only 1/200 of what Garry faced in 1997.

Hardware is only one factor of computer chess ability.  The software itself is
very critical in terms of chess knowledge, search, etc.  I'm not saying that
today's hardware/software combinations could beat Deep Blue, all I'm saying is
that we shouldn't get carried away with speed alone.  Incidentally, I think that
both the Deep Blue and Deep Fritz software was/is very good.

>
>So...like, what's the big deal?    Should be an easy win for Kramnik.
>(Especially easy as he'll have the program in advance to play with to his
>hearts' content.)

I agree.  Kramnik is a great chess player and having the program in advance is a
big advantage.  I think that this has taken away some interest from the match,
but I wouldn't say that there is nothing interesting about computer games
against GMs.  If the GMs slaughter the programs, at least areas for improvement
are highlighted (as has been done up till now).

Gordon


>
>Chris Kantack
>http://home.earthlink.net/~kantack/lcdchess/home.htm



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.