Author: France Levesque
Date: 19:20:25 01/11/00
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I am going to make this a little easier, for those just interested in the computer aspect of the interviews; Source URLs: http://www.rediff.com/sports/2000/jan/10anand.htm http://www.rediff.com/sports/2000/jan/11anand.htm Computer Portion Quoted From Interview: Were you also disadvantaged in the beginning? No, I wouldn’t say in general I was disadvantaged. I was one of the first people to get used to the new technology. In 1987, I was only a World junior champion. At that time, there was still quite a bridge to be passed to reach their level. You played against Fritz and Rebel last year. How different was it playing a machine and a human being? I don’t mind playing against a computer once in a while. It is a different experience because you try not to play tactical positions and that’s a disadvantage. Do you have to change your game against the machine? Yes, you change it. You try to play strategic positions, very boring positions because computers are quite helpless in these positions. And, there is no psychology involved in a game against the computers. For the human, it has only negative effects because in almost any position, the first impulse is not to play the natural move. The first impulse is to play an anti-computer move. This is not natural. Against a human being, you wouldn’t do that. You wouldn’t say, I am going to play an anti-Karpov move or an anti-Kasparov move. You try to play only the best move. And, this will produce the best result in the end. But against computers, you are almost always trying to avoid tactics because the odds are against you in this matter. Sometimes, I can save some positions very easily with the computer that I could never save against a human being. Many computers simply don’t understand certain things till it's too late. I have saved many games with computers because they had no clue. I know immediately what’s going to happen in 25 moves, let’s say. Because certain positions are like that you can tell, okay after the next fifteen moves, you can manoeuver and you can wait. But the computer doesn’t know the concept of waiting. It calculates. It can calculate infinitely and get into a position whereas I understand that it can’t escape a trap. A human understands that without any calculation, but a computer, no matter how much it calculates, it cannot understand that. So, as soon as it gets into such positions, you can completely relax. Then, the psychology is working positively. You feel very good and start playing excellently. In general, I think, it is negative because it affects the humans. We have not learnt how to be really cold and emotionless against these machines. May be they should program some emotions also into computers to even it. Clearly, computers don’t win games because they are superior to humans. This is a myth. They win games because of psychology. The human cannot understand how the computer thinks perfectly. The present format of human versus computers is simply unfair. The computers are allowed to access database whereas we are not. I have no access to any database and I have to remember everything. People argue that computers simply use its memory and the database is in its memory. These are questions that you can’t argue but I think it is quite unfair. For instance, if you were to remove the database, you can have a computer ten times faster than it is today. Ten times faster than Deep Blue, easily. If it couldn’t consult its opening book, my result would improve immediately. I think most of the top twenty, thirty players could beat Beep Blue if it wasn’t allowed to consult an opening database. Or, even the opening database is restricted to a certain size. What happens is, their opening database is almost 400-500 MBs of information. It has access to all the games that are played but we have to remember all that. Or, if I am allowed to have a computer with me, okay, I can’t check my thoughts but I can see what was played at any given time. My result would then go up. Also, humans versus computers is being held at very unfair circumstances. I am not saying, unfair in terms of handicap. What I say is, these rules were set when computers were so weak and didn’t matter. Now it is difficult to change them. Did you enjoy the games that you played with Fritz and Rebel? They were okay. As a professional, you have to play many events; you have to accept these challenges. It is satisfying in its own way. Not as satisfying as playing against a human being? It is different, that’s all. Fritz was described as a monster machine and you defeated it. But Rebel defeated you. How different were these two machines? In my opinion, Fritz is far superior to the other one. But the day I played Rebel, I was really in bad shape and we played four games of five minutes and I didn’t play Fritz in five minutes. Of course, if you play five minute games, the odds are heavily stacked in favour of computer. It is a hugely misleading impression that the other program beat me. Before the game against Rebel, the programmer reportedly said, you would beat it comprehensively. If I played the match again, maybe I could win also. In all the normal games, the games of reasonable time limit, I won against Rebel. They try as hard as possible to publicize the fact that it defeated me and they hope to sell a few programs. There is not much you can do about it. I don’t have the time to run ads in the paper all the time. I think, it is just misleading. In the blitz games, computers are already far superior. At least the odds will always go their way. Fritz was said to be calculating well over 4 lakh positions in a second still you defeated Fritz. How can a human brain think faster than that? No way. We do about one position a second! I don’t know what the number means. These numbers don’t mean anything to me. I can’t relate to these figures at all. We have a different way of thinking.
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