Author: Paul Richards
Date: 15:21:03 05/24/99
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On May 24, 1999 at 17:50:16, Chuck wrote: >I feel if the GM assessment of the position at the points in question is that >White is lost, and us normal chessplayers with all of our computing assistance >can't come to agreement with this assessment, then the most likely cause is >we and our computers have a lot to learn; I would not automatically assume that >the Grandmaster is wrong. Some people have blind faith in their computer >programs. Well...I understand the sentiment, and perhaps GMs annoy me in that I can't believe my brain is so much worse at this stuff than theirs is. ;) But I think GM's are superior strategically to computers, and inferior tactically. So while GM Rohde could confidently say that white misplayed, I do not believe that at move 20 he would forsee 26. Bg2 leading to a possible draw. Obviously he did not see it, or he would not have claimed that white is lost at move 20. Humans are simply not capable of looking at every legal move at every ply. They can say that a game is strategically won, but a computer may yet find a tactical refutation that holds on, even in a strategically bad position. An easy example was one of the Israeli Olympic team members in the recent matches against Junior. A human player might have given up, but Junior ran away with his king and managed to weasel out of the attack and turn it around. Even Kasparov had to comment on what that says about pure calculation. Usually the correlation between strategic things like open files to a vulnerable king position and winning tactics is strong, and this is why humans have developed these strategic points about chess. These are principles that guide us through tactics that are too deep to calculate, but at the end of the day chess is still tactics, and you can't count a computer out too soon.
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