Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Distributed Chess Computing Project

Posted by Hemos on from the yet-another-distributed-project dept.

jcarley writes "Just found an interesting project that is looking to capitalise on the power of unused computing cycles to develop a strong chess playing computer. Given the power in single and dual CPU chess programmes these days, if they can find a good way to efficiently parallel the anaysis this could be interesting. "

5 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. Other Distributed Computing Projects by cybrpnk2 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If playing a game (albeit an interesting one) isn't what you'd like to spend your spare CPU cycles on, there's a lot more than Seti@Home out there. Check out the Internet-based Distributed Computing Projects for more options...

  2. How does it work? by GGardner · · Score: 5, Insightful
    This page has lots of paragraphs about distributed computing this, and xmlrpc that, and pretty animated gifs showing binary ones and zeros zipping from one computer to the other, but NOTHING about the actual algorithms or chess going on.

    What is it actually doing? A complete tree-search for all the legal chess moves? That's a pretty big tree! Searching for conclusions to well-known games? Trying to crack into a Norwegian librarian's database?

  3. define possible by frovingslosh · · Score: 5, Interesting
    There are several ways to answer this. The tree of all possiable moves is (very) large but finite, so given infinite (or very very large) resources and time it would be possible to "solve". But the numbers get so large one might come to conclusions like given all the mater in the universe, the solution will not happen in your lifetime.

    One other consideration is, that while it seems likely (from our experience with master and grand master class players) that white has the advantage and thus whould be the likely winner if there is a winner in the solution, it has not been shown that this is the case, it could well turn out that in the "perfect" game black has the advantage as long as he makes no mistakes. It seems far more likely to turn out that the "perfect" game will be a draw, meaning that if either player makes an error and the other can play perfectly from there, the player to not make the error will win. (and error being any move that takes a branch on the tree that leads to a forced loss for the player who made the move). For example, tic-tac-toe can be easily proven to have this type of solution, and chess might has well.

    --
    I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
    1. Re:define possible by GigsVT · · Score: 5, Funny

      For example, tic-tac-toe can be easily proven to have this type of solution, and chess might has well.

      Well, that cinches it, everyone knows if you try to get a computer to play Tic-Tac-Toe against itself it will overload and shutdown, thus averting nuclear war.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
  4. What is the purpose of ChessBrain? by Dr.+Spork · · Score: 5, Interesting
    These guys have quite a bit of documentation, but most of it is about how their network protocol works and how much their servers cost. Great, but it doensn't really answer the natural question, which is: what is the point of all this?

    This is a shame, because there are many exciting things we could do with a global chess computer. The obvious "let's play it against Kramnik or Kasparov" would actually be a lot of fun. With my computer conspiring against the human, it wouldn't be clear who I'd be rooting for!

    However, there are lots of other cool things we could do with this. I assume the code itself is some sort of open source--so maybe, we could set up a team tournament, where Team Slashdot plays Team AnandTech. The various teams could also do tweaks to the code to give themselves an advantage. Or, on a larger scale, we could play a America vs Europe game, where continental patriotism would encourage you to contribute your clock cycles to victory.

    Another obvious modification that is not mentioned in the documents is human intervention. This sort of computing power would be great if you want to investigate a certain line of play, but this in combination with the human intuition of Grandmasters should be able to coax the computer to give privilidged analysis to certain lines over others. Otherwise, the computers would crank away on the unpromising lines just as much as the ones that might realistically be played.

    It is this, the sort of human-directed chess machine that has the potential to show us some of the greatest chess games ever witnessed. This is some exciting stuff. ...

    Well, potentially. However, the intentions of the ChessBrain authors is so far totally mysterious, and I think that's a shame. They seem like nuts-and-bolts people, and these distributed projects need "vision" people to attract a lot of CPUs. I don't have many clock cycles to spare, but I know I'd have a hard time resisting if I could contribute to my continent's victory over our transatlantic enemies. Apart from that, working out a system where this chess super-computer could serve as a tool to augment the play of teams of Grandmasters (or vice versa) would be genuinely interesting from a research point of view, as well as being perhaps the most exciting chess event ever.

    Anyway, if ChessBrain doesn't turn into any of these things, I hope another distributed chess project does.