Author: Christian Kongsted
Date: 15:59:29 09/03/01
Go up one level in this thread
Dear Uri, For me it is interesting to hear about your correspondance play because I have been playing correspondance chess myself. I dont see what satisfaction you can get out of only picking one of the computer programs moves - dont you want to use your own creativity? Sometimes when I have been playing correspondance chess, I can feel that I am playing against a computer program. It is not that difficult to spot, it is not very interesting either, and my opinion is that the players that trust their computers to much wont get very far against good, positional (human) players. I am very impressed by the new Junior 7, which I consider the best program commercially available, but this program also has problems sometimes, f.ex. to hit the right plan in a closed Kings Indian/closed French (or positions like that), and endings that require not only calculation, but also planning and understanding. Tactically, it is simply amazing, I have to admit that... My impression is that the strongest players are those that use their own intuition to find the right moves, and after that - check his analysis with a program. If correspondance chess is only a matter of picking which program that is playing, and who lets the computer think the most time, then I think the idea is dead (sorry). But I dont think it is - yet. I have been playing a few over the board-tournaments lately and used different computer programs to analyse the games afterwards (Junior 7, Shredder 5.32 and sometimes Hiarcs 7.32, I also have Fritz 6 but dont use it much) It was not a surprise for me that they were able to spot many tactical opportunities, but in some positions they really dont get what is going on positionally, even if they get a lot of time. Of course I cant state this as an objective fact - I just believe that if I play against an IM or GM and we use a lot of time and have a common understanding about the positional factors in the positions, then there has to some truth in it... In the Deep Blue-Kasparov match it is obvious to many chess players that the computer made some complete nonsense and tempoloss moves in game 1 of the 97-match. The program was _extremely strong_ and played fantastic chess in some of the other games, but it complete failed to understand the positional aspects in the early phase of game 1. Therefore I wouldn't trust it, and I wont blindly trust todays programs, even though I know considerable impromevements have been made in positions understanding The strength of the program vary to much, depending on the position they are set to analyse. They can play like 2100 in one position and 2800 in another, and this is what Deep Blue did as well...
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.