Author: Pekka Karjalainen
Date: 02:29:14 08/05/01
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On August 04, 2001 at 14:03:09, Roy Eassa wrote: >I've been interested in computer chess since I first heard of it in the '70s. I >didn't realize until fairly recently how many other people are interested (this >forum is great -- thanks ICD). > >What makes this topic so powerfully interesting to so many people? That a simple box, relatively speaking of course, can play this game that takes a great deal of concentration, practice and effort from a human to play well. We're used to machines being stronger and faster than us, but smarter, as in playing a thinking game better, is new and interesting. I think that the status of chess, king of games as it is called, plays a role too. A few years back the computers got good enough to beat the world champ in Othello, but it was hardly front page news. Contrast this with Deep Blue & Kasparov. (Though I think it was big news in the Othello players' community.) Maybe there is also a desire among us fishes to see the big grandmasters humiliated. That certainly explains certain kinds of posts that appear frequently in this forum. A computer that plays world-class chess is certainly great equalizer in a sense, especially if it is affordable by a man on the street. Even if you are a GM, is it such a big deal anymore if a top of the line PC can be a GM too? (FWIW, yes, I think it still will be. What do you think?) I think there is something of that in most of us. Do we want to see those big GM guys come down to the level of the rest us, at least in the sense that they will get beat by the comps like the rest of us? I have mixed feelings about the whole issue myself. I wonder how it will feel when computers start to beat *me* in my favorite game...? They already did that in chess since the eighties, but I'm only a patzer (and always will be). > >Have any of you ever played with 'bot-type PC/Mac applications (and I'm sure >they have such things on the web now), wherein you create a virtual robot using >a simplified programming language, then let your robot fight it out in a ring >with other peoples' robots? With a relatively tiny investment of programming >time, you can get some of the fun of "creation for competition" you get from >writing chess programs. And the competitions themselves are generally very fast >and fun to watch. You can run many of them and determine robot skill rankings >pretty easily. > >But somehow it's just not the same as computer chess, is it? I am sure you can find people who will swear by 'C++ robots' or whatever different versions of the game are now called, and spit on computer chess. To each his or her own. Of course, personality and parameter settings in chess program give some people a lot of the same kind of satisfaction. Twiddle with 'em, make 'em play each other etc. Pekka K.
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