Author: Graham Laight
Date: 02:45:08 01/04/00
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I agree with Bob in one way, but disagree in another. With the old chess computers (which I used to be able to beat!), it was clear (to me) that they didn't properly understand some positions. Even allowing them huge amounts of time didn't enable them to come up with a good move. Even so, it was always clear that their chess would substantially improve in general given extra thinking time. Where I disagree profoundly, however, is in overlooking another vitally important factor: faster computers make better software possible. As clock speeds improve, programmers can substantially improve things like position evaluation and search selection. While on slow hardware, light evaluation and search selection might work best, on fast hardware, this might not necessarily be true. If you take into account the fact that improved hardware leads to the ability to improve software, then I would have thought that the proposition that a doubling of speed would lead to a 60 point improvement on the human Elo scale would be emminently reasonable. Clearly, this is has not been proved - but then again, it hasn't been disproved either. -g
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