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Ergo Hydra = Bobby Fischer

Fritz chips? Do you really think chess will become that popular by 2010?

Sure, the battles are won in the middlegame - however if you go up against a better prepared opponent you probably will be well-behind by then. If your opponent does nothing but read chess openings for six months prior to the game, while you actually take time to eat and sleep, you probably will lose.

From an interview with Rustam Kasimdzhanov, the new FIDE World Champion:

(On his preparation for the World Championship) Nothing special, I only prepared for the first round against Alejandro Ramirez. I had to work very hard to catch up with opening theory during the tournament. I took each decision round by round and played lines I had rarely played before, since all my opponents were very well prepared.

Of course the new time controls and knockout format favored blitz players and players with good nerves in time pressure but still, opening theory can only get you so far.

Computers are getting better at chess, but so are humans. In fact some people think that computers are getting better no faster than humans.

Crafty may be open source but it looks like the rules won't allow competitors to use substantial parts of another competing program's code. So having the source available to everyone isn't a liability for Crafty.

Mebon

China Communications Corporation ... has been set up in partnership with China Daily, one of the biggest Internet portals in China. The goal is to launch the world's most comprehensive online business database, which will be equipped with a proprietary search engine to provide information on tens of millions of businesses located throughout America, China and the rest of the world. The search engine, which is currently being patented worldwide, uses Artificial Intelligence technology to interpret the meaning of words and provide more relevant and in-depth results than conventional searches.

"Acoona's Artificial Intelligence Technology will elevate Search Engine performance to a new unprecedented level," said Eckhard Pfeiffer former CEO of Compaq Computer and Chairman of China Communications Corp.'s Board of Consultants.

Acoona will launch in the US and China in December 2004.

China Communications Corporation ... has been set up in partnership with China Daily, one of the biggest Internet portals in China. The goal is to launch the world's most comprehensive online business database, which will be equipped with a proprietary search engine to provide information on tens of millions of businesses located throughout America, China and the rest of the world. The search engine, which is currently being patented worldwide, uses Artificial Intelligence technology to interpret the meaning of words and provide more relevant and in-depth results than conventional searches.

"Acoona's Artificial Intelligence Technology will elevate Search Engine performance to a new unprecedented level," said Eckhard Pfeiffer former CEO of Compaq Computer and Chairman of China Communications Corp.'s Board of Consultants.

Acoona will launch in the US and China in December 2004.

Crafty managed to draw Shredder, one of the big-name computer programs, in the first round. That makes it tied with a bunch of other programs in the middle of the pack.

Personally, I'm always excited to hear about the progress that has been made by chess engines. Nowadays, the top programs can compete with all of the top humans, without requiring a supercomputer.

Acutally, a closed-source engine has been banned over accusations of copying. I guess with open-source there's no worry :)

Maybe a bit off-topic, but Turing wrote the first chess machine on paper and played a well known player of his age. He always aimed to be a good player, but never quite got the hang of it. Guess we all have our own skills!

Chess is beginning to look like that. It yields to brute force. And by modern computational standards, not very much brute force. "Deep Fritz" tied 2:2 with Kasparov running on a desktop 4-processor IA-32 machine. Kasparov says it plays better than Deep Blue, which was a roomful of custom IBM hardware. If you haven't been on the cover of "Chess Life", "Deep Fritz", running on a standard PC, can trounce you. And it's only US$110.23.

Chess is also an interesting test case for one of Vinge's paths to superhuman intelligence. Namely, the idea that human/machine interfaces may become so intimate that we will in effect fuse with our technology, becoming superhuman in capability.

Kasparov, for example, has been advocating allowing mixed human/computer teams in "Advanced Chess" tournaments. It seems that the human/machine combination, with the right interface, yields far better chess play than either alone.

Some questions that fascinate me:

• What is the ideal human/computer interface in chess to maximize play strength?
• What are some other tasks or games where the combined human/computer would be much more effective than either alone?

Frankly I find these more useful questions than the old human vs. computer debate.

Unless your picture has been on the cover of Chess Life, Deep Fritz will trounce you.

I'm sort of surprised there aren't more FPGA-hackers than there appears to be.

even though the technology has advanced significantly since Kasparov was beaten by IBM's Deep Blue in 1997, the odds are not always on the side of brute computational power.

Actually, Fritz has less brute computational power than Deep Blue. Fritz runs on standard PCs; in this case, a quad 2.8 GHz Xeon. Deep Blue ran on custom hardware, with 32 RS/6000 CPUs with 256 custom VLSI "chess processors". It was estimated to evaluate 100,000,000 positions per second.

The point is, Fritz is not a bigger number cruncher; it's better because it's "smarter", which to say, it has a better ability to judge the value of each position and to choose which avenues to explore.

Statistician Jeff Sonas has an interesting article on chessbase.com discussing the history of man vs. machine chess. As for the defeat of Kasparov by Deep Blue, Kasparov had some interesting comments in the Wall Street Journal on that match.

What about a teenager playing blacks. ?

I wrote an email to chessbase two months ago and actually got a response from Fred Friedel (the Chessbase president). I then replied to him about two classic articles I'd seen on chess as I was interested in seeing more of such in regard to the current match. They did some interesting statistical analysis (here's part five of a series, it links to the other parts) but, of course, I'm still hoping for more more more. Here's some of what I wrote in my email:

In replying to my original email you asked if I had any specific thing I miss. I can reply that over time I've seen two really good articles on computer chess. The first was the cover story from Scientific American in 1990:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005CCF 5-D9D7-1CF6-93F6809EC5880000
It was about Kasparov vs. Deep Thought. The second was in 1997 from Byte Magazine:
http://www.byte.com/art/9707/sec6/art6.htm
The thing that stuck in my memory from the second article was this information:
"Hsu told BYTE that his team chose the RS/6000SP because it was the best available IBM system for the job, even though its P2SC processors don't have the best integer performance. Although the P2SC lags in raw integer horsepower, the RS/6000SP largely makes up for it by uniting 32 of the processors in a parallel system architecture with high-speed, low-latency connections."

I would be very interested to see the above sort of coverage of the current chess match. To put it in colloquial terms I'd like to see a big fat writeup of the workings of fritz, how it's design is broken down, how it makes tradeoffs between one kind of technique vs another, how it works with the intel architecture, how it uses null-move ordering, RAM caching, and how it fits into the history of human-chess matches.

Whoa that clicky clicky does my head in.

There is an interesting [related] article on chessbase here about knight's tours. On the main chessbase page, they reference the main article involving magic tours.

Of course, once the cognitive model becomes good enough, the temptation (economic imperative?) will be to offload some of the actual work onto it. This idea, taken to an extreme, is the topic of an excellent short story:

"I was six years old when my parents told me that there was a small, dark jewel inside my skull, learning to be me." (Greg Egan, "Learning to be me", Axiomatic collection)

Back on the topic of augmented intelligence, Kasparov has been advocating allowing mixed human/computer teams in "Advanced Chess" tournaments. It seems that the human/machine combination, with the right interface, yields far better chess play than either alone.

Yep, really old trick. The first reference I can find is from 1769.

Correction: Deep Fritz is multi-threaded, Fritz is the single-processor version. Both are available for purchase here.

It's been done.. sort of. Deep Fritz heckled Kramnik with authentic Shakespearean verse during game 6 of their series and this is said to be the reason he lost. There's a full transcript if you scroll down.

The main problem of chess programming is the very large number of continuations involved. In an average position there are about 40 legal moves. If you consider every reply to each move you have 40 x 40 = 1600 positions. This means that after two ply (half-moves), which is considered a single move in chess 1600 different positions can arise. After two moves it is 2.5 million positions, after three moves 4.1 billion. The average game lasts 40 moves. The number of potential positions is in the order of 10128 (10 to the power of 128), which is vastly larger that the number of atoms in the known universe (a pitiful 1080 [10 to the power of 80]).

It is clear that no computer or any other machine will solve the game by looking at all possible continuations. But human beings are also imperfect players. It is only a question of what depth of search is required for a machine to match human strategic skill.

"I think I can say with pretty good authority that he'd say no to [a match with human and machine against human and machine]."

Not only did he not say "no" to it, he more or less invented it. Advanced chess matches have become semi-annual since Kasparov and Topalov first played in Leon in 1998 (a recap by the always-excellent ChessBase team).

Phoooey .. I'll never learn this HTML thang .. Advanced Chess

Chessbase has an interesting interview with Shay Bushinsky, one of the programmers of Junior.

The submitter didn't scour the web properly. You can view the games with professional commentaries with nothing more than a Javascript enabled browser at these links:

Amir Ban annotation
Karsten Müller et al

The submitter didn't scour the web properly. You can view the games with professional commentaries with nothing more than a Javascript enabled browser at these links:

Amir Ban annotation
Karsten Müller et al

One thing people don't seem to realize is that Deep Junior was a hell of a lot slower than Deep Blue, even though the Deep Blue match was over 5 years ago. That's because Junior was running on "ordinary" commodity hardware (8-way Xeon I think?) while Blue was a collection of hundreds of custom ASICs that do nothing but calculate chess moves. End result: Blue could search and evaluate ~200 million positions per second, while Junior as configured in this match "only" did ~3 million.

Nonetheless, Junior was almost certainly the better player. For one thing, the terms of the Deep Blue match were heavily tilted against Kasparov: he didn't get a chance to play against Deep Blue or even examine any games Deep Blue played before the match. For another, strategies of "anti-computer" chess are far more developed today than in 1997, when they barely existed (after all, the only way to build a world-class chess playing computer in 1997 was to build a supercomputer out of custom hardware). Third, Kasparov screwed up much more seriously in the 1997 match--one game he accepted a draw when he in fact had a provable win, apparently because he trusted the computer's evaluation of the position, and on several occasions he made terrible blunders.

Indeed indications are that even the normal Junior program on a decent PC plays the Kasparov-Blue games better than Blue did (except for a couple especially "brilliant" moves on Blue's part).

Not only is Junior (marginally) the best computer program available today, it is by a good measure the "most human-like". That is, it is still makes its share of "non-human" moves (although far fewer than Deep Blue), and still has no clue how to analyze certain positions, but its evaluation function has a much better understanding of position and is thus more willing to initiate complex piece exchanges than the other major programs. This showed up several times during the match, in two outstanding moves in particular (which netted come-from-behind draws for Junior in games 4 and 5).

Kasparov, by taking Junior out of its opening book, was able to exit the opening phase with the initiative in every single game. But in every game except for 1 and 6, Junior managed to draw even. In games 2 and 3, it was by virtue of outstanding tactical defense, which should have forced two draws (except that Kasparov screwed up the end of game 3 and lost). In game 5 it was with a shocking bishop sacrifice counterattack (extremely uncomputer-like) which nullified Kasparov's last turn as white (which is an advantage).

Perhaps game 4 is the best synopsis of the state of Junior's play. Kasparov played the opening perfectly according to plan, and ended up in a classic anti-computer position. Normally you can then just wait for the computer to screw up and then rip it apart. But while Junior did make a couple useless non-human moves, for the most part it played extremely well. Kasparov kept waiting to have an opportunity (perhaps too long), until finally Junior broke open the position by initiating an excellent multi-piece exchange. Kasparov had to settle for a draw.

OTOH, Junior had no idea what was going on in the endgame. Kasparov had a provable draw after move 47, but Junior, having no idea how to evaluate the position (no computer program does), thought it was winning. It played on until move 61 before the embarrassed programmers overruled the program and took the draw.

Overall, it seems that computers still have a ways to go before they can pass the Grandmaster Turing test. And it seems Kasparov really did just chicken out by accepting the draw in game 6. But the fact remains that Kasparov played quite well (for the most part) and simply couldn't convert his advantage in any game after the first. Meanwhile, while it still made a few computer-like moves that stuck out like sore thumbs, for the most part Junior played very solid chess with occasional strong speculative moves that would be aggressive even for a human.

There are certain types of positions that computers play much better than any human can or ever will. In such positions, computer find weird, unepexpected moves that just happen to succeed for that particular arangement of pieces. These moves seem to come out of nowhere. It is for that reason that when the position is open and complicated even the best players sweat even the most obvious of moves. The tiniest inaccurracy can lead to sudden death.

It was wide-open piece play with king safety issues for both sides. This sort of thing fits a computer like a tailored Armani suit. A human will never win these positions against a computer. NEVER. You can only lose. It simply sees everything. Unless you already have a forced win on the board it is time to start looking for a way to draw before you fall into something nasty.

The Week in Chess: TWIC

It's big, it's commercial, it's Chessbase

There's commentary on the five earlier games (sixth to come I suppose) and some entertaining speculation at ChessBase, makers of Junior.

Junior had some very interesting plays, and it's a shame the programmers won't share what Junior was thinking. I understand their position, but that doesn't keep me from hoping. Especially during game 5: "Junior was happy with its position." is a bit lackluster considering what went on in that round.

Well, I found it:

http://www.chessbase.com/games/2003/x3d1.htm

There was a good attendance and a great deal of media coverage today for game one, particularly considering it was a national holiday in the USA. (Well, almost.) Kasparov had the white pieces in game one, which is an advantage. (Interestingly, the Deep Junior team won the drawing of lots and could pick which color to have in game one (and 3 and 5), and chose to start with black.)

He completely dominated the game, it was a total stomp. He played 'real' chess instead of the dubious anti-computer style he used against Deep Blue in the 1997 match. Anti-computer chess involves trying to reach positions that computers don't play well instead of just making what you think are the best moves. Deep Blue showed that computers are pretty much beyond being vulnerable to these tricks nowadays, although every once in a while you'll see a strong program play like an idiot in a position it doesn't understand.

Kasparov prosecuted his advantage very quickly. In the press conference afterward he showed how much he had learned about playing computers. One key, he said, is that a computer doesn't understand results or practical chances, it only understands the evaluation of the current position. So instead of trying to swindle a way out of a bad position like a human Grandmaster would, by creating maximum chaos and hoping the other guy makes a mistake, a computer just tries to find the 'least-worst' move all the time. This is the only effective way for computers to play chess, but in inferior positions it often makes them look completely docile, if not pathetic.

He won't be able to do this in all six games, of course, and he'll probably lose one just because a human can't play error-free chess for so long against a strong opponent and computers punish errors ruthlessly. But game one showed he's prepared to the gills, as usual, and along with the fact that he's the strongest player in history should give him a decisive edge.

You can watch the games live with my commentary (and that of other commentators on-site as I relay their words) at many places on the web. Most of it is directed toward the level of the casual fan, not the chess expert. The company I'm working with, ChessBase, publishes Deep Junior and just about every other top chess program. (The program Fritz just drew an eight-game match against the world's #2 rated player and current world champion, Kramnik, in October 2001 in Bahrain. I was the webmaster and commentator on that match as well. I think I prefer the cold here at home in NY to the Bahraini humidity.)

As for the Deep Blue versus the current micros debate, that will be eternal as long as Deep Blue is in pieces. It was obviously much more powerful, but that doesn't mean it was a better chessplayer. We only have six games as evidence of its strength. They were good, but they weren't godlike and Kasparov said at the opening press conference that when you go over those games with Deep Junior it's clear that it plays better in just about every moment. (Except for two, which are the moves Kasparov has always suspected were the result of human interference. But that's another kettle of conspiracy.) Deep Blue was far, far ahead of its competitors in 1997, but computer chess programming has not stood still for the past six years.

It's also worth noting that what constitutes a huge advantage in computer-computer competition does not always translate into play against humans. A processing power advantage of just 10% between two identical programs will cause a lopsided score, but even a fourfold increase in processing power usually only means an extra 30-40 rating point gain against open competition. That is, one more win out of ten games.

I've spoken with Deep Blue's architect and other members of the IBM team on several occasions. Their egos are almost as big as Garry's! Hsu's book on the building of Deep Blue is almost as partisan as Kasparov's comments. They are both very competetive people. Personally I don't think there was any human interference in the DB match, but IBM's secretive and heavy-handed behavior needlesssly created a great deal of circumstantial evidence and suspicion.

You can follow my reports and photos on Kasparov-Deep Junior at ChessBase.com and I'll also be posting bits and ends at my site ChessNinja.com.

There was a good attendance and a great deal of media coverage today for game one, particularly considering it was a national holiday in the USA. (Well, almost.) Kasparov had the white pieces in game one, which is an advantage. (Interestingly, the Deep Junior team won the drawing of lots and could pick which color to have in game one (and 3 and 5), and chose to start with black.)

He completely dominated the game, it was a total stomp. He played 'real' chess instead of the dubious anti-computer style he used against Deep Blue in the 1997 match. Anti-computer chess involves trying to reach positions that computers don't play well instead of just making what you think are the best moves. Deep Blue showed that computers are pretty much beyond being vulnerable to these tricks nowadays, although every once in a while you'll see a strong program play like an idiot in a position it doesn't understand.

Kasparov prosecuted his advantage very quickly. In the press conference afterward he showed how much he had learned about playing computers. One key, he said, is that a computer doesn't understand results or practical chances, it only understands the evaluation of the current position. So instead of trying to swindle a way out of a bad position like a human Grandmaster would, by creating maximum chaos and hoping the other guy makes a mistake, a computer just tries to find the 'least-worst' move all the time. This is the only effective way for computers to play chess, but in inferior positions it often makes them look completely docile, if not pathetic.

He won't be able to do this in all six games, of course, and he'll probably lose one just because a human can't play error-free chess for so long against a strong opponent and computers punish errors ruthlessly. But game one showed he's prepared to the gills, as usual, and along with the fact that he's the strongest player in history should give him a decisive edge.

You can watch the games live with my commentary (and that of other commentators on-site as I relay their words) at many places on the web. Most of it is directed toward the level of the casual fan, not the chess expert. The company I'm working with, ChessBase, publishes Deep Junior and just about every other top chess program. (The program Fritz just drew an eight-game match against the world's #2 rated player and current world champion, Kramnik, in October 2001 in Bahrain. I was the webmaster and commentator on that match as well. I think I prefer the cold here at home in NY to the Bahraini humidity.)

As for the Deep Blue versus the current micros debate, that will be eternal as long as Deep Blue is in pieces. It was obviously much more powerful, but that doesn't mean it was a better chessplayer. We only have six games as evidence of its strength. They were good, but they weren't godlike and Kasparov said at the opening press conference that when you go over those games with Deep Junior it's clear that it plays better in just about every moment. (Except for two, which are the moves Kasparov has always suspected were the result of human interference. But that's another kettle of conspiracy.) Deep Blue was far, far ahead of its competitors in 1997, but computer chess programming has not stood still for the past six years.

It's also worth noting that what constitutes a huge advantage in computer-computer competition does not always translate into play against humans. A processing power advantage of just 10% between two identical programs will cause a lopsided score, but even a fourfold increase in processing power usually only means an extra 30-40 rating point gain against open competition. That is, one more win out of ten games.

I've spoken with Deep Blue's architect and other members of the IBM team on several occasions. Their egos are almost as big as Garry's! Hsu's book on the building of Deep Blue is almost as partisan as Kasparov's comments. They are both very competetive people. Personally I don't think there was any human interference in the DB match, but IBM's secretive and heavy-handed behavior needlesssly created a great deal of circumstantial evidence and suspicion.

You can follow my reports and photos on Kasparov-Deep Junior at ChessBase.com and I'll also be posting bits and ends at my site ChessNinja.com.

This is the link to the PGN file. This has a java applet where you can replay the game.

So THAT's who "Anonymous Coward" is...
Links to real time moves here or here.
Javascript play-by-play of the first game.
NYT article condensed(nice human/computer strategic advantage diagram).

So THAT's who "Anonymous Coward" is...
Links to real time moves here or here.
Javascript play-by-play of the first game.
NYT article condensed(nice human/computer strategic advantage diagram).

So THAT's who "Anonymous Coward" is...
Links to real time moves here or here.
Javascript play-by-play of the first game.
NYT article condensed(nice human/computer strategic advantage diagram).

Pretty slow due to /. right now, but you can get it here

Before the match, the system is Kasparov + database-laptop + additional grandmasters + computers. But during the match it's just Kasparov with no auxiliary support.

Kasparov himself has developed a new format for chess playing, Advanced Chess. In Advanced Chess, each human player can bring a computer right into the tournament with them.

Ahh, ONE person who understood.

First some clarification: I am a very poor otb (=over the board) chess player, my highest rating ever was about 2000 as a 19-year-old. I speak exactly two languages, English (my first) and German, but both of them proficiently enough to write and publish in. I am a computer chess expert but not a programmer. Garry has been a close friend since 1985.

In my news blurbs on the main ChessBase page I try to make every item at least theoretically amusing or interesting to visitors, even if they are not chess players. Quite a daunting task, you must admit.

Initially I wrote "Michael Jordan tried it with baseball - it, er, did not work out." An Italian visitor drew attention to the "typo". So I changed it to "it, well, didn't work out". But then I remembered this incredible turn of phrase used by American kids these days. I had recently discussed the exact meaning and usage with an American colleague, Rudy Chelminsky of Wired et al., who abhors it's current prevalence. Rudy also introduced me to the really crass form: he was like "Never ever use it, Fred!"

So I changed it again. And apparently it worked. Look at the number of posting here dedicated to one word. That's good Fleet Steet technique - get them to look twice. And I learnt a new technical term: valley girl speak. I wondered why the Fullbright students here in Germany never use it. They're like all from New England!

Currently the world's number 15 human, Ilya Smirin, is playing against four of the world's top programs (info). He is well acquainted with the style of computer play, understands the strengths and weaknesses of the machines and prepared carefully for this match. In most of the games he has outplayed the programs, but is only one point ahead in the seven games played so far.

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the last game of the series. One has to be repeated after a very unusual incident: Deep Junior was winning but the Internet connection broke down and the computer could not process Smirin's move. So the operator offered him a draw. Smirin refused, saying he did not deserve to share the point. Instead he offered to resign. The Junior team refused because the program had not demonstrated the win. So they decided to repeat the game (info).

Currently the world's number 15 human, Ilya Smirin, is playing against four of the world's top programs (info). He is well acquainted with the style of computer play, understands the strengths and weaknesses of the machines and prepared carefully for this match. In most of the games he has outplayed the programs, but is only one point ahead in the seven games played so far.

Tomorrow (Sunday) is the last game of the series. One has to be repeated after a very unusual incident: Deep Junior was winning but the Internet connection broke down and the computer could not process Smirin's move. So the operator offered him a draw. Smirin refused, saying he did not deserve to share the point. Instead he offered to resign. The Junior team refused because the program had not demonstrated the win. So they decided to repeat the game (info).

it seems that most people here don't seem to understand why computers are capable of playing chess at the level that they do. computers have the advantage of both opening books and table bases that have every possible position with 6 or less pieces on the board. if you take away those away all you have left is a fancy calculator that begins to over heat as it gets trashed. computers have no understanding of the principals that even the lowliest club player has. take a look at some of the recent man vs machine games which are going on now! look over the games , excellent openings and brilliant endgames but planning in the middle game???

Kramnik says that the Fritz 7 program on a laptop is producing some better moves than Deep Blue did against Kasparov. That's how much progress there's been.

Chess programs are now so powerful that unless your're a rated master, you can be trounced by a palmtop. Even the palmtop programs are now achieving draws against grandmasters.