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Subject: Re: Computer - WorldChampion: which result would satisfy everybody here?

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 17:14:04 10/24/02

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On October 24, 2002 at 17:33:05, martin fierz wrote:

>>Why do you ask? No human world champion calibre player has ever lost 10-0, or
>>even come close to losing 10-0, much less 20-0 or 40-0, so what's the point of
>>even asking?
>
>umm, you are young my friend :-)
>too young to remember the candidate's matches which the one and only bobby
>played and won 6-0, against players who were also "candidates", meaning world
>champion calibre players.

What I meant to say was that no world class human player has ever lost horribly
to a computer. Even if I'm wrong and don't know of a few cases where it has
happened, the norm is that it's usually about even when you have top humans
against top computer chess programs.

I'm not sure if we will ever reach a time when the best computer can beat the
best human 10-0. I suspect that even if we have computers announcing mate in 342
after move 4 of the game, that doesn't mean that a world class GM won't be able
to find those moves to get him to the draw. Sure, we will reach a point where
winning is almost out of the question, but I don't think draws will ever be
impossible, and so I don't think we'll ever be shutout consistently. Dominated,
maybe, but not shutout.

You know more about checkers than I, so perhaps you can answer this better.
Aren't checkers programs better when compared to humans than chess programs vs.
humans? I think I remember Shaeffer saying that Chinook pretty much played
perfect checkers, and even so it was not able to beat the world's best human,
and much less shutout the world's best human. No doubt that a single slip would
cost the game in chess or checkers against programs that play perfectly, but I
think humans have shown the ability, at least some of the time, to play close
enough to perfect to reach a draw.

What do you think?

Russell



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