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Subject: Re: SW vs HW in Computer Chess?

Author: Jesper Antonsson

Date: 14:53:30 10/28/02

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On October 27, 2002 at 16:06:27, Knut Bjørnar Wålberg wrote:

>Which actually brings up a question: Is it possible to make a computer program
>that is (much) better strategically than a human?

Strategy is just deep tactics. If we could search the entire game tree, chess
programs would be perfect strategists, and perfect tacticians. We can't search
the whole game tree, but as computers get faster, the deeper search will produce
more and more "strategic" knowledge. In fifteen years from now, computers may
see 6 ply deeper than they do today. They will create attacks and defend in
subtle ways that can be distinguished from "strategy" only by looking at the
score of the PV. The human won't see that the kingside attack that just started
is going to win by force, for example.

>I'm wondering because to me it seems like:
>strategic understanding means grasping a lot of concepts
>=> better players know more concepts and how to utilize them
>=> the best players know and use almost all the concepts
>=> a strategic super-computer should know even more
>
>but how can you implement a piece of knowledge that no human is aware of? I
>guess with *real* AI a computer could bring completely new knowledge to chess.

Endgame tables have already shown grandmasters some ways to defend/win certain
positions, and I've read about some ending that computers can actually win with
table bases, but where there is no pattern that is easy enough for humans to
follow. I don't remember which, though.

>But back to SW/HW. Obviously, if a lot more chess knowledge into a program,
>you'd probably want faster HW as well, so you can still keep up the ply depth.
>
>Knut Bjørnar Wålberg



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