Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 03:47:59 07/10/01
Go up one level in this thread
On July 10, 2001 at 06:07:21, odell hall wrote:
>On July 10, 2001 at 05:49:39, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On July 10, 2001 at 05:02:35, Vincent Lejeune wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>>BTW the first round of the match is completed now. ChessTiger 14 reached very
>>>>good 61.5 %. Could someone
>>>>please calculate, how much ELO difference 61.5 % mean compared to the average
>>>>ELO of the opponents?
>>>>Thanks a lot!
>>>
>>>That means a +92 Elo difference
>>
>>
>>Sorry Vincent, but this is not right.
>>
>>A 61.5% winning percentage means approximately a 80.5 Elo points difference.
>>
>>The rule of thumb is very simple: take the winning percentage, substract 50,
>>then multiply by 7.
>>
>>This rule is an approximation (but a very good one) that works only in the range
>>20% to 80%.
>>
>>
>>
>> Christophe
>
>
> Hi Christophe
>
>
>Congradulations on your enourmous successs, I believe i, and others would like
>you to comment on the result of Chess Tiger in Argentina, Please no one will
>think your bragging if you do, you maade computer chess history and i think you
>deserve to bathe in the limelight. Did you expect this result for tiger? Do you
>believe Computers are Grandmasters? I know this is a very controversial subject,
>but please express your honest opinion, Several programmers have already taken a
>stand , what is yours?
Thanks Odell.
First I would apologize for not answering on this subject earlier.
Somebody (was it you?) has posted a message "to Christophe Théron", and I have
unfortunately been unable to answer.
The reason is that I was working very hard on Chess Tiger for Palm (now
released).
About the result in Argentina I must say that I been caught by surprise. I did
not expect much from this event because I expected much more resistance from the
human side! Chess Tiger has been used, when I had recommended them to use Chess
Tiger (but apparently it was not possible to change at the last minute), and I
expected the human players to have less problems against the more quiet playing
style of Chess Tiger. Well... "quiet"... as long as you do not give it an
opportunity to break into your defenses...
Maybe I did not expect much because I have slowly been intoxicated by people who
say that current chess program are not at the GM level. I guess I was about to
believe it, and I had very little data from my program against very strong human
players.
But what we have all discovered is that GMs have weaknesses too and that a
commercially available chess program can easily point these weaknesses out.
Now to be absolutely honest I must say that the GMs in Argentina have probably
been caught by surprise as well. I think that the tournament rating of 2788 is
probably too high (by 10 or 20 points... no, just kidding :).
I believe it is indeed possible for a human player to increase his performance
against computers by learning their weaknesses, but I also believe that there
are limits to this.
If you listen to some people here, they say that with the right anticomputer
techniques it is possible for a 2100 elo player to stand a top chess program.
This is wrong. And do not forget that chess programmers have only started to
program anti-human strategies. Chess Tiger has a "antihuman" mode, but which has
not taken a lot of time to develop. I mean, if beating human players was my only
priority, there are several very important techniques I can think about that I
would have added to the program, and nobody would dream anymore about a 2100 elo
player beating a top chess program. I think that all my colleagues would be able
to do the same.
Specializing in anticomputer strategies might allow one to inflate its rating
against computers by, say, 100 elo points, but that's all.
But the interesting point here is that if it is applied by really strong human
players, then the human side still have some good years. And I like this,
because it means the competition between man and machine is not over.
I think the SSDF elo rating is comparable to human FIDE rating, if you consider
that the human players have not specifically prepared for computers. So in a
sense the result of Chess Tiger in Argentina confirms this.
But as I said it is possible, maybe, for a human player to inflate by 100 its
rating by preparing very hard for computers. So if you take the elo of the best
programs on the SSDF, which is approximately 2650, it means that in order to
equal a top program under tournament conditions you need to be 2550 elo yourself
at least (if the program is running on K6-2 450).
There are lots of 2550+ players, so it leaves a lot of opportunities for the
part of the human kind which uses only his brain to beat the part of the human
kind who has decided to enhance his brain abilities with external tools.
Yeah... Don't forget that it's not man vs computer actually. Who can really
believe that? It's man vs man.
Christophe
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