Author: ALI MIRAFZALI
Date: 12:56:06 09/15/01
Although much has been said about moves like Be4 in game 2 of the second match with Kasparov and h5 in game 5 of the second match because of the great controversy that these moves have generated;the positions that happen after these moves are not a good comparison test for seeing if current commercial programs running on ordinary machines play at or beyond the level of deep Blue.Let me first turn my attention to the first match game 5.At move 29 Deep blue plays29.g3? Kasparov says that after 29.Ne2 Rxe2 30.Qxe2 Qa1+ 31.Nc1 White may be able to hold but the chances are still in Black's favor. Interestingly Fritz6 chooses 29.Ne2 in this position(under 3 minutes 450MHZ). In the same game at move 12 Deep blue plays 12.Rae1 .This is the case of moving the Wrong rook.In the same position Fritz6 plays Rfe1 instantly.There is no doubt that these positions prove that chess Knowelgde is very important for chess programs.Since the Hardware that the deep Blue program was running on was more powerful than anything commercial programs are running on even today ;the question of the Camparison of a top commercial program like Fritz6 and Deep blue comes down to this question:In a series of games will positions that require chess knowledge for the selection of the best move occur more often then positions requireing computational power? From the 2 matches with Kasparov we can safely deduce that Deep Blue did not have much chess knowledge in Camparison with Todays programs.Now let us see an example for Computational Power.In the same game(game5 first match) at move 32 Deep Blue plays 32.f3 Fritz6 (450Mhz) even after ruuning for 20 minuetes plays 32.gxf4 which is worse than f3 because it leads to a faster loss.Although my Statistical Analysis is rather shallow;it seems on the surface that chess positions that require chess knowledge come up more often than positions that require Pure Computational Power.(in this particular game 2 to 1).I am definitely NOT saying that speed is not important for chess programs .What I am saying though is that beyond a certain proceessor speed any increase in the Speed of the Proccessors will result only in a minimal increase of Elo for the Program. There is enough Computational power available on an average home PC as to enable a good chess program to see the immense majority of tactics and deep tactical lines.Now let's go to the second match.In game 1 at move 22 Deeper Blue played 22...g4.Yasser Seirawan says"it was better to play 22...Bg6 ,covering the f5 square and awaiting further developments". interestingly 22..Bg6 is also the move chosen by Fritz 6 in this position(450 MHZ).So we see that Fritz6 making moves reccomended by GM's while we can not deduce the same about Deep(er) blue.It seems that the opinion that Deep Blue is better than the Current Top Programs is more Psychological than based on fact.It seems that some people want to have an Ultimate Program (Standard) by which to measure other programs by.On the other hand it is an interesting question to ask what rateing Deeper Blue would have if it was tested by SSDF? .
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