Author: Peter Kappler
Date: 09:31:02 07/07/01
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On July 07, 2001 at 09:50:39, Mark Young wrote: >In an incredible achievement ChessTiger defeated all 4 Grandmasters in the IV >República Argentina International Chess Tournament. ChessTiger also chalked up >the unbelievable TPR of 2788 and going undefeated in the tournament. > >So much for computers not being able to cope with the positional understanding >of Grandmasters. Either tactics are more important in chess then positional >understanding, or computers understand positional play better then we give them >credit. Tactics are much more important. We humans tend to over-estimate the importance of positional play, because it's our strength. :) Until recently, I was a member of the "computers aren't GM strength" camp, but it seems painfully obvious that that line has now been crossed. I've followed the debates here, and I find it amusing how much faith the nay-sayers place in the power of anti-computer playing style, as if an average GM can just spend a few weeks working on this skill, and suddenly his strength against computers will increase 200 or 300 points. I think it's more like several months of practice, with a potential gain of perhaps 100 points. (And perhaps even this is nothing special - a GM can realize a significant relative strength gain against ANY opponent (computer or human) if he dedicates a large amount of time to studying their particular weaknesses, pet openings, etc.) Given the recent 2700+ performances by Tiger and Junior, I think the machines will still be GM strength even against proper anti-computer play. And with CPU speeds doubling every 12-18 months, this battle looks hopeless to me. Remember that Tiger's recent result was on relatively slow hardware (866 MHz). Everybody seems to agree that machines are World Champion strength at blitz, and Super-GM strength at rapid (30 min), so why all the controversy over GM strength at standard time controls? -Peter
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