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Subject: Re: Speculation, Hydra

Author: Zappa

Date: 15:51:30 06/28/05

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On June 28, 2005 at 18:33:26, K. Burcham wrote:

>
>
>Well it seems maybe things have changed.
>Has Hydra been given a huge amount of chess knowledge that Nimzo did not have?
>I assume that this chess knowledge came from several 2500+ GM.
>
>Or maybe I must now say that the top 20 Chess programs of today, if they played
>on Hydra hardware can beat a 2700+ GM most of the time.
>
>What about BamBam, Anaconda, Movei, etc...can these beat 2700+ Super GM on Hydra
>hardware?
>
>Wonder how much code was changed from Nimzo to Hydra that is strength related,
>or do we say it is only the depth?
>
>In other words if we have a 1000 game tournament with:
>Hiarcs 9, Crafty, Diep, Pro Deo, Shredder 9, Deep Fritz, Chess Master, Junior,
>Fruit, Chess Tiger, Gandalf, Hydra----and they all play on 3 gig AMD vs 3 gig
>AMD with same hash---what would the result be?
>
>kburcham

I really don't think the Hydra match shed any new light on the strengths of the
computers for three reasons:

1. Hydra played very few extremely impressive moves.  Commentators that were
following the match found that 99% of its moves were predicted by Shredder,
Fritz, Junior, or even my humble Zappa.  There was no evidence of incredible
tactical ability or positional knowledge.

2. It's well known that computers are strong in open positions.  Adams played to
open the board in every game - and paid for it.

3. Adams didn't use his serious openings.  For example, 4. g3 in the sicilian
etc.  I don't blame Adams for this; he wants to save his novelties for wins
against Kasparov or whatnot.

The conclusions I draw from the match are that Hydra is clearly among the top
programs today (with Fritz, Junior, and Shredder), and that Adams is one of the
worst anti-computer GMs around.  But I don't think Hydra is significantly better
than other top programs, nor do I think humanity is impossibly behind the
computers at this point.

anthony



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