Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 15:31:10 01/25/02
Go up one level in this thread
On January 25, 2002 at 18:22:15, Albert Silver wrote: >On January 25, 2002 at 17:53:39, Dann Corbit wrote: > >>On January 25, 2002 at 17:49:13, Albert Silver wrote: >>[snip] >>>I disagree. Two things: Heinz's study showed that adding plies doesn't linearly >>>add strength. Second, I think the comparison with Kasparov is amiss. Kasparov >>>does far more than calculate plies, and he would bring that with him in any >>>game. You can take a dry middlegame with no magic ruptures or sacrfices, and >>>Kasparov might tell you in a second that it is a draw. Why? Not because he >>>calculated it to the last ply, but because his judgement and vision allow him to >>>make that assessment. I do not believe for one second that perfect play would >>>suddenly change that. The perfect player might know that h4 and an enormous >>>number of useless moves can or will lead to a loss, but that doesn't mean >>>Kasparov will play them. >> >>I think it's hero worship. If you take a 2400 player against Kasparov, and the >>2400 player is going to get slaughtered for the very reasons that you mention. >>If you take a 3200 player against Kasparov, Kasparov will look just as bad as >>the 2400 player did. Deep Blue, the second version, made Kasparov look almost >>human. A computer that searched 500 times deeper would humble Kasparov. I >>believe it would win 1000 out of 1000 games with no draws. > >Really, it's not hero worship. You presented his name, not I. Had you said >Kramnik, I'd have replied the same. I meant in general, about players of that ability. Same for Anand, Kramnik or Fischer [in his prime], I imagine. >In any case, humbling Kasparov and scoring >100% are very different things. Certainly if they play very complicated tactical >postions, Kasparov's chances of losing are going to rise enormously, but in a >quiet position I doubt it very much. A quiet position is not quiet if you can see a tactical trap 30 plies later. Suddenly, there is no such thing as strategy. When you can see clear to the end, everything is not only tactics, but perfectly known tactics. >There are two things I think you aren't >appreciating: first is Kasparov's non-propensity to make fatal mistakes. The key >word there is fatal. You are presuming that not only will the perfect player >will have forced winning sequences at hand at every move, but also that Kasparov >will forcibly make a fatal mistake. I think you are very strongly mistaken about >the number of non-losing moves. In many quiet positions the chances of him or >another player of his knowledge to make a fatal blunder is _extremely_ low IMHO. In this case, a blunder is making an imprecise move that costs you a pawn 30 plies later and the game 100 full moves later. I don't think Kasparov (or any of the others) can see it. >Kasparov and many top players choose these extremely aggressive and double-edged >positions to try to obtain winning chances, not because they are incapable of >playing quieter and solider moves. They are trying very hard to find a way out >of the draw, which means taking risks, and that has been the entire tendency of >opening theory development. The lines that are dropped from GM play aren't >because they are deemed losing, but because they are not deemed to offer good >chances of not _drawing_. > >As to DBII, well, it was worse in many games despite its outstanding depth of >calculation, its win in game 6 is hard to understand, and the one in the second >game wasn't from the position. Kasparov psyched himself out, but wasn't beaten >at the board. Nunn analyzed one of the endgames and showed that Kasparov could >have won forcibly. Even at that, the machine played as well as he did. I guess we'll just have to build the perfect chess playing program and convince Kasparov to play it to find out. I'd hate to be accused of arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin again. ;-)
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