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Subject: Re: Question for Robert Hyatt about Deep Blue moves

Author: Slater Wold

Date: 21:59:36 10/10/02

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On October 11, 2002 at 00:25:27, K. Burcham wrote:

>
>
>Robert,  I know you are more qualified than most to have an opinion about this
>comparison of Deep Blue to Deep Fritz. I know you have many reasons to have
>formed this opinion. As you know I find the electrical/mechanical machine we
>call Deep Blue very fascinating for its time.
>
>I have heard your comparisons about hardware, software, search depth, memory,
>search methods, etc. that explains some of your reasoning about comparing Deep
>Blue to todays programs.
>
>My question is, separate from all of this technical discussion, do you have
>several moves that you have studied with todays programs that you know these
>programs cannot find?
>What have you found to be the most difficult of Deep Blues moves?
>Would you please post your findings here for others to study?
>
>thanks
>kburcham

I have read just about everything there is to read about DB.  Lectures, thesis,
ICCA journals, everything.  While I'm not Bob, I will take a stab at answering
your questions.


DB and later DBII were massive machines.  DBII had 400+ CPUs designed for the
sole purpose of examining a chess board.  While I believe that the software was
not as advanced as todays, I do have to remind you they did some pretty fancy
extensions (among other things) that cannot be afforded on a PC at this time.

Did DB or DBII ever make a move that cannot be reproduced by a computer now?
Not that I have found.  If you give a certain engine a certain amount of time,
most will always find DB moves.  Some faster, and some slower.  Some a lot
faster, and some a lot slower.

Why?

Anyone can look at the games played against DBII and tell Kasparov was *not* on
top of his game.  DBII was never given the oppurtunity to shine, thus, it never
did.  There are I believe 2-3 positions in DB/DBII's history that still give
some programs a hard time, but nothing that switching PCs or programs won't
solve.

However.

You can look back at Deep Thought and Deep Thought II and pick some of it's
games to compare.  Granted, you will not have a one on one comparison, but you
will have a close one.  DBII was fairly stronger than DTII, however, they are in
somewhat the same realm.

Nolot.

Back in the 90's when Nolot released his position suite, he said that it would
be 10+ years before computers where getting these moves (and lines) right.  DTII
completly squashed Nolot.  At that time, no program or PC could even *dream* of
getting those positions solved.  At present day, *some* programs with good HW
can get *some* of the Nolot positions correct.  AFAIK none do as well overall as
DTII.  And please, try to keep in mind DTII was 2 generations before DBII.  2M
nps vs 200M nps.  (Ok, 150M nps.  Whatever number you want to pick.)

TPR.

DTII was crushing GMs at a time where if you had brought a PC to play a GM,
people would laugh at you.  After the Kramnik-DF7 match, it's looking like
you'll get this same attitude nowadays.


I will leave you with this; why if we have advanced SO much in computer chess,
is the "best" computer chess software on the best computer hardware getting torn
apart by a GM?  Because he got the software in advanced?  Give me a break.
That's part of normal chess.  You study your opponenets before you play them.
You don't think Frans and his crew were going over ever Kramnik game played?  I
am sure it helped Kramnik, but nothing like most people think.


Look at the DT games.  Look at the DF games.  It is clear to me that there is a
pretty huge difference in quality of play.





** All of you anti-DB guys can go ahead and reply all you want.  I've heard your
side 1,000 times.  I don't agree.  So go ahead, waste the keystrokes.  It's your
time, not mine. **



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