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Subject: Re: "Terrible defeat by Rebel?", Part II

Author: Otello Gnaramori

Date: 00:05:46 02/22/02

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On February 21, 2002 at 19:09:14, martin fierz wrote:

>On February 21, 2002 at 18:23:30, Otello Gnaramori wrote:
>
>>On February 21, 2002 at 17:18:52, martin fierz wrote:
>>
>>>>i would say, computers today resemble a manic-depressive supergrandmaster in
>>>their results - not in their play. there are many positions which they do not
>>>understand. they can achieve the same performance as a grandmaster quite often,
>>>and yet they are totally clueless in whole classes of positions,
>>
>>Very few indeed nowadays and especially found in endgames, but there are
>>tablebases for that...
>
>no. not very few. everything closed. everything involving trapped pieces too.
>dann corbit recently posted a position asking "which program can see that this
>position is dead lost?". i think none could. there was not much response to that
>post by all the guys with the fast machines and the good programs :-)
>i could see it easily - with my lousy 2200 rating. the concept of "this piece
>will never move again" is not in the programs AFAIK. i have written one of the
>best checkers programs around, and it is grandmaster-like in performance without
>doubt. yet i know that it has serious weaknesses when trapped pieces are
>involved. i don't know how to explain the concept to the program :-(. i can (and
>have) put in lots of special cases - but a general "understanding" which does
>not rely on thousands of "if then else" rules would be much better. chess, of
>course, is much more complicated than checkers.
>tablebases only work with very few pieces, and it is unlikely that we will see
>larger tablebases than 6 pieces in our lifetime (i claim - is it true?).

I can indicate a page of computer chess tests included that with the above
"never concept" that are solved nowadays by the stongest programs :
http://www.multimania.com/albillo/cmain.htm



>
>>
>>which even
>>>human beginners can understand.
>>>people like me say that computers are not grandmasters, because they have
>>>completely different capabilities than a grandmaster - they reach the same ends
>>>by *totally* different means. i'm not saying they play worse performancewise.
>>>but they are something different. you cannot compare apples and oranges :-)
>>>
>>
>>If that is your point the match between Human and comps are nonsense for you ?
>
>not at all: they are very interesting. humans and computers use totally
>different approaches to get to the same result, play chess well. it's
>interesting to see how they try to lure each other on their "home ground". you
>can see that LvW is playing the french defense against rebel, something which i
>think (?) he doesn't play often; in the hope of keeping the position closed. i
>believe that the game of chess between humans and computers is not decided by
>one side playing better chess than the other, but rather by which side succeeds
>to get his type of play. closed position, rebel loses. tactics, LvW loses. so
>it's a kind of "meta-game", where you aim at a certain type of position. i like
>to watch the meta-game. LvW obviously knows what he is trying to do (unlike the
>chess tiger in argentine games, where IMO the opponents were not well prepared),
>but he is not succeeding as black. up to now, i would have thought that a
>well-prepared grandmaster (prepared at meta-game strategy, not chess-wise) would
>still beat a computer. but it looks like i might be wrong :-)
>
>aloha
>  martin

So you are a believer of anti-computer strategies, but keep in mind that also
Rebel was using an anti-human strategy...

w.b.r.
Otello





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