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Subject: Re: Interview

Author: KarinsDad

Date: 21:31:31 02/14/99

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On February 14, 1999 at 19:36:44, Jeffrey Azajar wrote:

>Dear Sir/Madam:
>	I’m Jeffrey Azajar, a 4th year high school student at Phil. Cultural High
>School, Manila, Philippines. I’m presently conducting a research paper about
>"Chess: Man vs. Computer". If its okay with you, pls. answer the ff. questions
>and also pls. write your name, designation, and address.
>
>1.  Are you playing chess in your computer? (Yes or No)

Yes.

>
>2.  What is the computer chess’ name? (i.e. Chessmaster 6000)

The entire Chessmaster series, Fritz4, and some minor programs.

>
>3.  How many times did you win and how many times did you lose? Give the ratio
>of your wins and loses.

I haven't won against a chess program on it's best settings since Sargon III.
I'm not a strong enough player. If I put the program at "my level", I win about
1/3rd of the time (usually I blunder tactically).

>
>4.  Which for you is more intelligent in terms of chess based from your
>experience, man or computer? Why?

Computer programs have no intelligence. They do play better chess than most
people since they only error outside the level of their programming and that
level is extremely good. Basically, it comes down to an algorithm that can
consistently perform at a given level since it does the same sort of
calculations each time versus a human which will make good decisions as long as
the position is within his comfort zone. If for example, there is a mate in 8
and a human has seen it before, he may not recognize it immediately, but
something will seem familiar. The computer program would have no clue (in most
cases, some computers are now being programmed to "remember" certain positions,
especially ones that spent a lot of time analyzing in the past) that it has
analyzed a given position before. In totally bizarre positions, humans tend to
not be very good at all since they do not examine a good majority of moves, but
rather a small subset of "candidate" moves.


>
>
>5.  Computers can now analyze more than a million ways in just a second and most
>likely
> a man will be beaten by the computer, does this mean that recent computer chess
>are
> far more intelligent than man?

Their algorithms are better at playing chess than most humans. But they have no
intelligence of their own.

>
>
>6.  Do you think that in the future chess tactics and techniques can be solved
>completely by computers that even a grandmaster could not beat anymore the
>computer because it already know what and where to move the pieces?

Chess will never be solved by computers. Ever. The problem set is too large.
However, they will eventually get to the level that even the superGMs will be
unable to beat them. If you one day have a computer that can exhaustively
analyze ALL positions out 40 ply (i.e. 20 moves for each side), a human could
never beat that computer. However, if you had a different computer that could
exhaustively search out 42 ply (21 moves each), then it would be stronger than
the first computer since it could discover good positions beyond the event
horizon of the first computer. Neither computer could be said to have solved
chess, however, they would be much stronger than any human player possible.

>
>
>7.  Do grandmasters or international chess masters play chess with their
>computer and were beaten by them?

Definitely. Computer programs, both playing programs and database programs, are
a main staple of playing top notch chess these days. Not every GM and IM use
them, but a lot do. And I would hazard a guess that most of those players have
lost to their computer, at least on occasion, if they play them with any
frequency.

>
>8.  For you what kind of opponent do you most prefer in playing chess, a man or
>a
>      computer, why?

A human. It will make mistakes and will not capitalize on my mistakes every
single time. There is also the feeling of competition and success. The lower
level settings on computer programs play a rather haphazard game which is more
bizarre than fun.

Good luck with your paper. :)

KarinsDad

PS. Sorry, but I do not give my name or address here.

>
>
>Thank you for your help. I will very much appreciate it.
>
>						Sincerely yours,
>							Jeffrey



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