Author: Dave Dory
Date: 23:10:29 06/25/99
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It's VERY ENLIGHTENING to watch a Master or GM who is familiar with playing against computers, just take out the hinge pins from those tiny little silicon gates! As Dr. Hyatt amongst others have noted, most computer chess players really ARE not up to the standards of the human GM's. Even Deep Blue, who had ZERO published games for G.K. to study over, was really quite fortunate to win their abbreviated "match". Props to D.B., and it is (was?) a truly extraordinary piece of hardware and software, but I think everyone also knows it was a lucky little chap, also. The reason you don't see positional sacs in computer vs. computer games is simply because programmers who have tried to introduce this knowledge into their program have found, rather dreadfully, that the program will now sacrifice it's material quite readily, until it has no hope of winning!! The horizon effect has been pushed back, by both hardware and software advances, but it has not been pushed beyond the horizon of a really good chess player - one who's familiar with the program, and has done his/her homework. Efforts to SOMEHOW increase the knowledge of the program, apart from the info in the game tree or end game data bases are (IMO) very challenging. We shouldn't be surprised since we still have to TELL the program how to win many end games, move by move! [ My P.O.V ] What I would love to see is an emphasis on programs that use NO opening book, and NO end game data. NOW we can play the program, and see what the program really knows, NOT HOW SMART THE OPENING AND/OR END GAME DATA BASES ARE!! If the program can't play a good opening, on it's own, it should be made to do so. If the program can't play an ending correctly, it should NOT BE ABLE TO JUST LOOK UP PROPER PLAY MOVES IN A MAMMOTH DATA FILE. It should be programmed to solve endings, on it's own, over the board. ** NOT JUST LOOK IT UP!! ** I know from experience, that most computer chess enthusiasts don't agree, but it strikes me as CLEARLY unsportsmanlike to allow the human no books or printed data (let alone a computer) of any kind, while at the same time, allowing the computer to possibly dig out a great move from some internet resource halfway around the world, or look through millions of move sequences laid out on it's own hard disk. [ Just my P.O.V ] ( program reports soap box safely stored away for later use! ;-) ) Dave
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