Slashdot Mirror
Kasparov King No More
soccerdad writes: "After 15 years as world champion, Garry Kasparov has been beaten by Vladimir Kramnik. Kasparov is generally acknowledged as the greatest chess player of all time, but he was unable to beat Kramnik in the 16-game match. Kramnik won twice as white. Kasparov needed to win the final two games to come out 8-8 (which would have retained the title). However, he agreed to a draw in the 39th move of game 15, giving the championship to Kramnik. For detailed match information, check out
FT.com Match Centre."
Of course, now we must see if this Vladimir Kramnik fellow can beat Deep Blue...
It was sad. :( I saw Kasparov getting frustrated in this one move. I heard that he was having personal problems with his life. ABC News.com has the full story and the video (not sure if it is the same one on TV) as well.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Let's see:
Kasparov was beaten by a computer...
then he was beaten by a human...
How would he fare against infinite monkeys?
Or better yet, if Kasparov was so good, imagine... a Beowulf cluster of him...
Or... if Kasparov linked to a commercial library, would RMS approve?
(doh)
My question is has anyone done anything to increase the variety of chess like create more formalistic rules to things like star trek's creation of 3d chess or the like. I havn't seen too much of that out there.
Respond to s
Let's all play CALVINBALL!!
Kramnik vs Tyson.
Bra and panty match
I am become Troll, destroyer of threads
Kasparov lost most likely due to some problems that didn't let him concentrate and prepare fully for the game, but he is still so far ahead, that I am pretty sure he will return very soon. He is natural genius supported with extremly hard work, sometimes I really wonder how much work he put in his preparations. He is the kind of strategic mastermind that none of US generals would like to face in battle :)
If programs would be read like poetry, most programmers would be Vogons.
Representing this story with the Nintendo Joystick is just WRONG :)
Slashdot 's editors are dickheads
In regards to the computer comments, I don't think it's a big deal that he was beaten by a computer; it's just a matter of raw computational power, like being beaten in the 100 meter dash by a car. It's too his credit that he could give it a good run for it's money; GNUchess trounces me quite easily.
--
Service Pack 2. Finally, proof that Windows can confuse even the greatest minds in the world.
-atrowe: Card-carrying Mensa member. I have no toleranse for stupidity.
Prior to this, they'd met 23 times in tournament play, each winning three and drawing 17. To say that Kasparov is no longer #1 is a bit rash; he'll rise again.
-- Anne Marie
Ummm, nerds do like chess. I think the stereotype is at least as valid as nerds like computers, nerds like science, nerds like anime, nerds like sci-fi or any of the other topics covered here. Or at the very least, chess likers are nerds.
Besides, whats not to like? Its deep, thoughtful, strategic. You can play for fun, or really get into it and play competitively.
And this -
Umm... Please dear god, as long as I love - never let me see a bunch of chess fans 'dancing' for any reason...
Think outside the... Hey, where'd the friggin' box go?
In case anyone wanted more information about the backround behind this, The New York Times Online has an informative article about it here (free reg. req.). It turns out that Vladimir Kramnik, the winner of this match, was taken on as a student at the age of 11 by Mr. Kasparov at his elite chess school in Moscow. I still think that Kasparov is the best player out there right now, though. He may have lost this one championship match but being the champion for 15 years allows for a few mistakes. Still, I think that it was very impressive that Kramnik was able to defeat him, where no one else had been.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
I'm curious: How do the best open source programs fair against the deep blue's of the world? How do they stack up on equal hardware against commercially available programs?
The title of greatest does not always go to the latest great player. IMHO, one must also keep in mind the historical perspective. I view greatest as someone that had a major impact on his/her field, and one that set a relative standard that must be met.
Kasparov hasn't been the official FIDE world chess federation champion since 1993, when he broke with FIDE to play against the legitimate challenger Nigel Short.
Karpov regained the FIDE title in a 1993 match and lost it by not playing in the 1999 FIDE world championship. This matter is currently under legal dispute.
Kasparov did not play his legitimate challenger, Alexei Shirov, and attempted to set up a "championship" match with another leading player, Viswanathan Anand of India before hand-picking Kramnik as his challenger here.
However Kramnik is number 3 on the FIDE rating list and so was a worthy challenger, just not the man who deserved the match, Shirov.
but not unexpected. He may be the greatest chess player of all time but I don't think he could maintain that level of playing forever. People seem to become less able to perform intellectual feats as they get older. Kasparov beat Karpov when Karpov was 34. Kasparov is about 37 now. He's getting close to that age where one is no longer so sharp. Here's a good article on aging from Feed.
"sweet dreams are made of this..."
I got it for Christmas many years ago, when I was still into tournament chess. Not that I was a great tournament player--I could never break a 1600 rating, which if you know about tournament chess isn't a very good rating at all--but I enjoyed it a lot. Of course, I was about 13 at the time, and unless you're a prodigy you're not going to be great at chess that young; so that might be a good excuse to use for my poor rating. :-)
Anyway, the set I got for Christmas and still have was, I think, made by The Franklin Mint as an authorized *Star Trek* item. It was very attractive, made from clear and blue glass, with gold-plated pieces. It came with some detailed and cumbersome rules. We played it a few times, but it proved rather uninteresting compared to real chess.
See, the reality is that chess doesn't need to be "improved." It can't be "improved," and more variety would be a detriment instead of an improvement. As it stands, chess is complicated enough that you'll probably never play the same game twice in your life, even if you play in tournaments every week. I've known plenty of people with Master and International Grand Master ratings who've been playing chess their whole lives and are never bored with it. It's just not repetitious; there's practically infinite variety.
There are so many practical and useful variations just of the opening moves, that chess is incredibly interesting and never truly mastered. Tournament players usually have two or three openings that they use most of the time and study extensively, but they'll try new things whenever they feel like it or when an opponent's unusual strategies force them into something different.
Chess also has such a rich history and wonderful traditions that it could never be replaced by anything new. There have been many, many, many variations on chess created in the last century; the reason you've never heard of them is that chess players view them as a curiosity and distraction, but not as anything useful. After all, regular chess is complicated enough for people to devote their whole lives learning about it and still not master it; things like four-player chess, three-dimensional chess, etc., just distract from those studies.
One of my favorite things about chess is its history--dating back a thousand years in the Middle East for early variations, modern chess was codified in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and in the nineteenth century it became the first real international sport. Most people today don't consider it a sport, but before the modern Olymics, before baseball and basketball and football and soccer were even invented, there was a structure in place for the best international players to compete with one another.
One of my favorite bits of chess lore is of one of the greatest players of all time, a very rough-and-tumble English gentleman. In the 19th century the world chess championship was set distinctly apart from the rest of the chess world; the title holder could see fit to accept or decline any challengers to his title, as he saw fit, and if the challenge was accepted the champion could decide the time and place. Unlike the timed matches common today, championship matches in the 19th century could last for days or weeks, with the players working for ten to eighteen hours straight before breaking for the night, even having their meals at the board. It's been a long time since I heard this story, so some of the details may be lacking, but on the whole it's a fairly accurate account...So anyway, this particular Englishman decided that the championship match would be held...in his favorite pub, during the busiest time of the evening when people would be laughing and singing and getting ever more drunk around them. The challenger arrives, and takes his seat across from the vaunted champion, a man who he's been warned is very, very intimidating, with an intensely jovial Falstaffian presence. They make some small talk, and the challenger notices the empty glasses in front of the champ. The champ calls the serving girl over and orders another, and the challenger orders a drink as well. They get the board and pieces set up, and they're settling in for a long night when the serving girl brings their drinks. The champion, seizing the opportunity to further intimidate this challenger who's awed in the presence of the storied world champ, grabs both drinks from the serving girl's tray and drinks them both voraciously, slams the glasses down, and proclaims in chess-speak: "You left your drink *en pris*, so I took it *en passant*!" The challenger was so intimidated that he resigned immediately.
Now, who would want to mess with a sport so ancient, noble, and complex, as chess?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, *The Annals*
Back in my day, everyone knew who the real chess champion was. Capablanca was he! Capablanca didn't study fancy schmancy hyper-modern openings. He just say down and beat anyone he played, for 8 full years, he didn't lose a game! Until some young mathematician whippersnapper named Reti came along and hosed him with that fancy schmancy hyper-modern hogwash.
I may be an angry old man who rambles too much, but you need to understand that real chess players use the King's gambit and occupy hte center with their pieces.
Thank you, I need to go to bed.
-vax computer, vi, lynx. 'nuf said
Many people consider Khalifman the "real" champion, because his title is sanctioned by FIDE, the world chess federation. Others think the FIDE Championship has been devalued since they went to a single-tournament championship. Its detractors call it "speed chess," and not without justification. I get the sense that most people still think Kasparov is the most legitimate champion, mainly because he keeps showing himself to be the best player in the world.It's rather shocking to see Garry lose -- it just doesn't happen. Until now.
I'd really like to see Kramnik play Khalifman for the Undisputed Championship of the World. It's like boxing. Of course, FIDE has these knockout championship tournaments every year, so Kramnik would probably be unable to play a match before the new FIDE champ is determined. Most people don't give Khalifman that much of a chance to repeat because he's considered a fairly middlin' grandmaster, rather than one of the elite. The older system, a three year cycle of grueling matches, always selected players who had proven convincingly they are the two best players in the world (the champ didn't have to go through the cycle. He just waited for the candidates' match winner.). The new knockout system seems to make chance a much greater factor, and Khalifman's victory seems to support that theory.
ChuckleBug
Kasparov is a chess player, not a salesman. As such, the important thing is that he is good at chess, not that he has a "perfect people personality". At that level of chess, you need a strong ego to survive. World chess champions are infamous for their personality and psychological quirks.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
That's why (just a little OT here) the game of GO is such an excellent model for computational game theory. I lost the bookmark, but I've read a great paper once on why chess was relatively easy to program, but CompSci's spend a good amount of time working on good GO implementations. One reason is that any single moment in chess can be summed up (in general) by a point count of pieces on the board, or in other words, used in part of a branching equation. Piece count is irrelevant for GO, and the game state at any moment is hard to summarize in any sort of neat numerical way: the shifting "influences" on the board don't translate very well.
This isn't to say there aren't GO programs out there, the GnuGO is pretty good. It's just a very difficult problem to solve, which hasn't received as much attention from the computational set...
Check my Go-related blog for beginners: DGD
Last time (2 years ago)
:)
I join yahoo.com 's games & play chess.
& then i choose somebody & play with him.
what i do is, run xboard ppl versus computer.
Then copy his step, as my step on my xboard.
Then what xboard run, i copy as my step agaisnt
people at yahoo.
I win
hahahahaha
p/s: I'm using dual CPU 200Mhz pentium PRO.
-- Hasbullah bin Pit (sebol)
Kramnik used to be a student of Kasparovs, so they have undoubtedly played quite a few matches :) :
;
Official games
Since their first clash in 1993, Kasparov and Kramnik have met 23 times in serious tournament play in games played at classical time limits. The score stands at three wins apiece with 17 draws. The full story game list is here.
-- gunzip-howto.tar.gz
There is an established international federation that deals with the ratings, and runs the international tournatments, FIDE. The FIDE world championship is a big tournament, no mumber 1 contender stuff, anyone can play. It starts with local tournaments, then tournaments like the british championships, then on to a zonal tournament and interzonal tournaments. Eventually you are at the knockout stage and most non GMs are out already. Finally they battle there way down till one is left - he then plays the current champion. In short, the FIDE world championship is a monster of a competition and anyone who wins this is a very worthy champion.
The current FIDE world champion is Alexander Khalifman, who won in Las Vegas last year. Kasparov did not play as he has set up his own chess organisation (the name escapes me, PCA or something) a few years back whilst have huge disagreements with FIDE. Basically a lot of other top GMs followed Kasparov to this new organisation with the promise of more money, less FIDE bullshit etc.(leaving Khalifman who is a good player, but not the best in the world) as world champion.
My view is that if there is a problem with the main organisational body, fix it, dont just ignore it and form your own body to satisfy the control freak inside you. The situation is akin to Michael Jonson saying he does not like the Olympic Committee and so running the "Michael Johnson Olympics", where he chooses his opponents, and indeed chooses the number 2 contender rather than the number 1 contender to race against.
In any case, he is almost certainly the strongest player of all time, and I would not be surprised if he won "Gary Kasparov's World Championship" back next time. As for the real world champion, who knows.
It may be that Kramnik beat Kasparov, but can/could (have) Kramnik beat all of Kasparov's previouse oponents?
If Kasparov does not retire, there is a good chance that he will be champion again. Even if Kramnik is never defeated by Kasparov, others might beat him, and Kasparov might beat them.
As has been said, Kramnik had a unique advantage.
Thad
Thad
1) There are many more possible moves in every position. Something like 300 (vs 30 in chess).
2) A game of Go lasts much longer than a game of chess, typically around 300 moves (150 ply).
3) There is no simple way to estimate the value of a given position. It needs to be analyzed carefully. Some pieces may be an asset (alive) or a liability (dead). Sizes of loosely defined territories are hard to estimate. All this depends on the configurations the pieces can achieve.
4) There is no clearly defined winning position (checkmate). Instead you need to secure more territory than your opponent.
5) The game consists of several almost independent battles which anyway affect each other.
6) It is all a matter of balance: Greed vs security; actual territory vs potential; possibilities of future gains... All these are difficult to define so that a program understands them.
So, the huge branching factor and expensive evaluation makes the game hard for computers, while humans are strong in isolating local fights, balancing things, and keeping a strategical overview.
GnuGo is one of the stronger programs, and I can beat it with maximum handicap. I am just a middle-level club player (5 kyu). I do not expect go programs to beat me within the next 5 years, maybe 10.
In Murphy We Turst
There have been many, many, many variations on chess created in the last century; the reason you've never heard of them is that chess players view them as a curiosity and distraction, but not as anything useful.
No, the reason you've never heard about them is you haven't been listening. First of all, chess itself is a variant. Likely the original "chess" was what we now call Chaturanga, which dates back to 7th century India. This evolved, as variants continually cropped and died out, but occasionally replaced chess itself. Soon Chaturanga became Shatranj, and so on. Rules were changed or added, one by one. Pawns became able to move two spaces instead of one on their first move. En passant was introduced. Castling began as well. The Indian pieces were replaced with European medieval figure representations. And so forth.
But it doesn't stop at historical variants... there are literally thousands of chess variants played regularly around the world. You can find many in the wonderful book The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants or on The Chess Variant Pages. Many variants can be played online at chess servers like The Free Internet Chess Server (telnet freechess.org 5000), The Middle East Wild Internet Server (telnet chess.mds.mdh.se 5555), The Internet Chess Club, etc.
Chess Variants I have played and enjoy:
Standard, Blitz, Lightning, Quantum, Hourglass, Bughouse, 3 Board Bughouse, 4 Board Bughouse, 5 Board Bughouse, Aerial Bughouse, Crazyhouse, Suicide, Atomic, Wild 5, Wild 10, Kriegspiel, Progressive, Magnetic, Fairy Tale, Alice, Fischer Random, Random, Thai, Shogi, Xiangqi, 3 Player Chess, 4 Player Chess, Cylindrical, Infinite, Capablanca's, Mutation, Absorption, Inverse Capture, Rifle, Kamikaze, Extinction, Take-All, Rotation, Marseillais, Stealth, Hostage, Insane, Ultima and Command.
Many of these variants were created by world class chess players to add another dimension to the game. For example, Fischer Random was invented by Bobby Fischer to eliminate opennings from the game. Capablanca created Capablanca's Chess. The list goes on and on.
My all time favorite chess variant is bughouse, wherein you have two boards side by side and a partner who plays the opposite color from you... you pass your partner the pieces you capture and he does likewise, then as your move you may place one of these pieces on the board instead of playing a normal move with the pieces already on the board. It is a very social game and is much more fun than chess itself.
Check out my webpage for more information on variants, chess servers, and other chess stuff: http://www.cs.rit.edu/~cem9314/chess/.
I still don't understand why we hear on and on about the hardware, when the real victor was the code -- anyone know who the programmers were on the Big Blue vs. Kasparov project?
They were the real heroes, not some chunks of silicon...
I skateboard, snowboard, dj, rave and hang out with a shady assortment of friends...
The best part is usually when you're faced with a new professor and the guy figures you're going to be one of the students that doesn't come to class all term and you end up getting one of the top marks in his class! hahahaha...
If someone is too concerned with what others think of them then in my opinion they have too much time on their hands...
UBU
In the elimination matches for the '72 world championship, Fischer beat Taimanov 6-0, Larsen 6-0, and Petrossian 6 1/2-2 1/2. Playing black, he won routinely. No one else has dominated like this.
is too serious to be entertaining, and too frivolous to be taken seriously.
It is also the greatest waste of human intelligence found outside the advertising industry.
(From Martin Gardiner's "Dr Matrix")
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
And, its not so much that skills deteriorate, but the drive to stay on top wanes. There is a whole lot of studying that goes on. Opponents moves, new changes in opening theory. As well as the development of your own novelties to be used in tournaments. It is the ability to constantly be advancing on all of those fronts that deteriorates.
t
IBM was pretty slick in all of this. First, they were going to keep building a computer until they beat him. The did on the second attempt. Do they allow a rematch? No, the dismantle it and run off. This computer they built was designed and prepared to beat only Kasparov. Garry was not allowed to ever see a previous game played by Deep Blue, while DB had thousands of his games for preparation. If IBM didn't get the terms they wanted, they could have scheduled the match with Karpov, the FIDE champion.
He was beaten by gamesmanship well before he lost on the chessboard. There is no way you can learn all about your oppoenent in the course of a 6 game match.
t
This is perhaps redundant, but I want to put the Deep Blue better than Kasparov debate into perspective. Deep Blue analyzes millions of moves per second, Kasparov meanwhile analyzes a very small fraction of that figure. The fact that a human player can beat Deep Blue even some of the time tells us more about the human mind than it does about the state of the art of computer science. Gumshoe
And "real" games aren't the least bit redundant? How many times do you need to slide down a snake or climb a ladder until it becomes boring? How many times must I Pass Go and collect $200 before I want to implode my own head? And don't even get me started on Sorry!
And what's a more laughable obsession? Playing computer games, or being so obsessed with making fun of people who play video games that you actually go far out of your own way to do so?
J
I don't know the chess etiquette, but in Go it would be poor form to keep fighting if the loss seemed to be inevitable. You'd be seen as wasting the other guy's time, and hoping for a silly mistake - not a polite thing to imply... In Go one should resign in such a position. Of course there are (practically) no draws in Go, so offering a draw (in one - deciding - game might be equivalent to resigning...)
In Murphy We Turst