Author: Steve B
Date: 11:09:32 01/20/05
In his 1997 book"Beautiful Mates:Applying Principles of Beauty to Computer Chess Heuristics",Ben Wallis attempts to program a computer to play chess more like a "Human" clearly the way current computer programs play is nothing like the way humans play current day programs rely chiefly on brute speed and the ability to analyze and evaluate millions of nodes per second while the algorithms employed to evaluate the positions are of course important ,the sheer computing power and speed of current day hardware is chiefly the reason for the very high ratings achieved within the last decade an example of this are the last two Kasparov matches against Deep Blue in the first match Deep Blue using 40 processors lost to Kasparov by a margin of 2 points(although it did defeat him in the first game) in 1997 Deep Blue Employed 512 processors and as we all know defeated Kasparov Defining "Human" like play is not so easy based upon a previous study by Margulies who assembled a panel of 30 players who were rated over 2000(Elo), several concepts of "human like" play were created one such concept was "Beauty" shown this position : [D] k7/P1r5/K7/3N4/8/8/8/8 w - - 0 1 90% of the rated experts preferred to deliver the mate by checking with the Knight at B6 rather then taking the Rook on C7 the idea of "Using the least amount of Force "was then included in the concept of "Beauty" Reuben Fine seemed to agree with this idea when he critiqued Margulies study the book goes on to establish several different ideas like this all in an effort to describe or define human like play clearly no computer today is programmed to evaluate a position with "Beauty" in mind in the end Wallis programmed a computer to solve mating positions using several "human like" algorithms such as ..deliver mate with least amount of force" the program was then subjected to a series of mating positions and the results were compared to see how closely it compared to the panel of experts an argument can be made that Wallis program exhibits more human like play then that of todays programs (or at least solved mates more like a human player) i do not know what became of his program or if even was ever released the funny thing about all this is.. if i were White in this position and i was playing a rated tournament game..i would snatch that rook off with my knight and slam it down on c7 with as much fanfare as possible..not forgetting of course to bark out...MATE! now i am certainly no computer..but then again..i am no rated expert either :)) Best Steve
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