First Kramnik vs DeepFritz, In Progress

An anonymous reader writes "Reigning world chess champion Vladimir Kramnik played the first match in a series of eight against the world's strongest chess computer. 'After the game Vladimir Kramnik said that he was never worried about losing the typical Berlin endgame that arose in his first game against Deep Fritz. The World Champion is the master of this line and Fritz was unable to take advantage of the white pieces.' There is live coverage of the event at the main website." We've mentioned this match a few times before.

Comments

No longer in progress: Draw

[Phouk]

"Kramnik was never worried about losing..." out of context is a bit misleading: Kramnik didn't win either, it was just a draw.

(For those who don't read the articles... ;) )

Re:No longer in progress: Draw

[Mr. PJR]

Would someone please elaborate on this? I have seen this in other comments and do not understand the reasoning

When playing the black pieces you have a disadvantage because black always moves second. Basically, the player of the white pieces has a one-tempo advantage and can to some extent determine the shape of the game (by choosing which variation of the opening will be played). Strong chess players can take advantage of the first move advantage when playing white by forcing black to defend or play an opening which the black player isn't strong at.

With these disadvantages, black's behavior is usually to hold on and try to draw. Then to try and win when he has the white pieces (because the players alternate colors).

Re:No longer in progress: Draw

[xintegerx]

Maybe because owning Deep Fritz is like having a Grandmaster caged up in your own home, one who tirelessly makes near-"perfect" moves?

Wouldn't it also be a great tool for analysis and to check what the best move, in a game you have played previously, would have been?

Wouldn't it improve your game?

People would buy Deep Fritz would use it for training. I've heard this about playing chess:

1/3 of your competition must be the same level as you are (makes for an even, fun game.)

1/3 of the competition should be stronger than you (to challenge yourself to advance and learn--why not learn from DeepFritz?)

1/3 of the practice competition should be weaker than you are (a match where you kick butt and raise your self-esteem after losing to higher competition [DeepFritz])

And, it doesn't take a genius to figure any of the above out (from your sig ;)

Re:No longer in progress: Draw

[haystor]

First, Deep Fritz is the name of the multi-processor version. For only $45 you can get the single processor version. No point in paying double the price to get your butt kicked.

There are a ton of features that make playing against Fritz wonderful. You can set the rating strength that it should play at. Of course, if you aren't an above average player Fritz will still be too strong most likely.

As others have mentioned, analysis with something like this is great. I feed my games to Fritz and look over them again. It really can point out when and how I went wrong.

But, my absolute favorite feature that Fritz has is something caled sparring mode. In sparring mode, Fritz will intentionally make mistakes at times. The difference between this and the average program is that an average program will just make a random mistake sometime. In sparring mode you first have to put Fritz under pressure and into a tactically active situation and only then will it make a little blunder (which you still have to catch). By being rewarded this way, I was able to learn what positions were putting pressure on my opponent and how to take advantage of mistakes. This is a great feature because its training in the middle game, which is much more difficult to capture in notes and books.

Kasparov lost...

[Ulumuri]

Because of unfair playing conditions, and also because he didn't have access to DB before the match. Therefore, matches between Kramnik and Fritz will take place every other day, be adjourned after 60 moves, and Fritz will not be reprogrammed between matches.

Currently, opinion is siding with Kramnik. GMs Nigel Short and Raymond Keene predict a Kramnik win.

The game went as follows:

Deep Fritz(2807) - Kramnik,V [C67]
Brains in Bahrain Man-Machine Match. Manama (1), 04.10.2002
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Nc3 h6 10.b3 Ke8 11.Bb2 Be7 12.Rad1 a5 13.a4 h5 14.Ne2 Be6 15.c4 Rd8 16.h3 b6 17.Nfd4 Nxd4 18.Nxd4 c5 19.Nxe6 fxe6 20.Rxd8+ Kxd8 21.Bc1 Kc8 22.Rd1 Rd8 23.Rxd8+ Kxd8 24.g4 g6 25.h4 hxg4 26.Bg5 Bxg5 27.hxg5 Ke8 28.Kg2 ½-½

Re:Kasparov lost...

[Ninja Programmer]

Deep Blue was simple a souped up version of Deep Thought II. Kasparov could look through all those games if he liked (he even played a previous match with it, which he won.)

None of the Deep Blue team is strong enough to program a specific strategy in particular to play against Kasparov, except US GM Joel Benjamin. And Joel knows nothing about computer chess programs. He came up with the opening book for Deep Blue and played a few training games to tune its positional coefficients, but there is little else he could do for that team. They could not feed it a specific anti-Kasparov strategy; they had to rely solely on technological advantages.

Kasparov also played in a style that he's never played in the past. It was bizarre, closed, and very passive. Completely opposite to how Kasparov plays normally (he is typically a very dynamic, tactical, and aggressive player.) Even given this choice of strategy, there are many other players in the world who can do that better that he. In any event, Kasparov's choice of playing strategy nullified any specific anti-Kasparov strategy they might have created.

Deep Blue was a very expensive technical experiment by IBM that played 6 games in its life, then was quickly dismantled and never heard from again, except in IBM's advertisements. Them trying to sell their computers based on its ability to beat Kasparov is no different from Intel trying to tell your that the Pentium 4 will improve internet speeds.

Re:Kasparov lost...

[Hater's Leaving, The]

Wasn't he on non-prescription medication for ?migraines? at the time?

Didn't actually _pick up the wrong piece_ (i.e. a mechanical error) during one game?

So yes, he was below par.

However, _not_ letting GK have access to DB's prior games was an asymmetric condition, which breaks the typical protocol for such competitions, and if you force me to use the word 'unfair' for that condition than yes, it was unfair.

THL.

First Post was...

[certron]

1.e4 followed by e5

then
2. Nf3 Nc6

Some notes on chess notation:
http://chess.about.com/library/ble21brd .htm
(it is common to omit the pawn designation, it seems)

Some opening moves (which was this one?):
http://chess.about.com/library/ble50ndx.ht m?PM=ss1 3_chess

The whole match:
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6 4.0-0 Nxe4 5.d4 Nd6 6.Bxc6 dxc6 7.dxe5 Nf5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Nc3 h6 10.b3 Ke8 11.Bb2 Be7 12.Rad1 a5 13.a4 h5 14.Ne2 Be6 15.c4 Rd8 16.h3 b6 17.Nfd4 Nxd4 18.Nxd4 c5 19.Nxe6 fxe6 20.Rxd8+ Kxd8 21.Bc1 Kc8 22.Rd1 Rd8 23.Rxd8+ Kxd8 24.g4 g6 25.h4 hxg4 26.Bg5 Bxg5 27.hxg5 Ke8 28.Kg2 ½-½

Hey, I learned something from the above links.

btw, where does 'DeepFrtiz' the name come from? The team flag looks to be Germany, but where did the name come from? They are using an 8-CPU Compaq machine, also. (Good thing chess opening moves are public domain... otherwise the US Fritz would be making sure they didn't fall into the hands of free citizens! erm. or something like that...)

Gratuitous Star Trek ref

[T-Kir]

...aiming for the draw; whereas the computer would foolishly (if it wins) try to win each successive...

Kind of reminds me of an ep of TNG, where Data lost a game against a Grand Master (when his strategy was to win), but won when he went for a draw (and the Grand Master gave up out of frustration).

Gah!

[CyberDruid]

I am totally serious when I say that slashdot needs a "-1 wrong" or "-1 factual error".

• True - Kramnik is a staunch defender.
• Computers are not big on taking risks to begin with (they hardly ever sacrifice material for instance) and they don't really "play for a win", but if the operators wanted it to play more drawish, that would not be a problem, provided that they are allowed to adjust some positional parameters.
• A 5 min game would be extremely difficult for Kramnik. Quick games are basically just about calculating tactics, since the deeper aspects become hidden behind both sides poor play. A human excels in stuff like planning and sometimes logical reasoning, which both takes some time to do. It is a well known fact that computers don't improve their play much when given longer time (programmers will recognize this problem as "the exponential wall").

On a side note: In this game Kramnik drew easily because he could do some logical reasoning that no computer has ever done. He understood that in the final position, the computer could manoeuver around as much as it damn well pleased, there were simply no legal moves that could ever threaten anything. A computer will have great difficulty understanding this, since the calculation of variations will not show this simple visual fact.

In my opinion Deep Fritz will never beat Kramnik in a Berlin Defence. The team could try to deviate earlier, perhaps by closing the position with 4.d3, but this will also be easy play for Kramnik. They could also skip the Ruy Lopez altogether and play 3.Bc4 (Italian) or 2.f4 (King's gambit) instead, but these moves are not so common among the extreme elite. Kramnik would probably equalize comfortably against these moves. IMHO the team should try either switching to 1.d4 (at least for one game, to see where it leads) or just try to head for equal but tactically complicated positions after the King's gambit or the Italian, mentioned above. Playing 1.c4 or 1.Nf3 would probably be unwise. Kramnik knows these waters extremely well and could probably easily steer the game to a dull and totally safe position.

My money is on Kramnik, he will probably not lose a single game.

How many people can beat the computer?

[Discoteck]

Finially a /. post about chess@!! I was wondering when you geeks would get around to it. :)

Can anyone recommend some good chess strategy books? I found this link but it does not give a very good indication of what book would be better than others. I guess it would have to depend on what I want to read about since it is a game of strategy.

So I was interested in how many readers are able to beat the computer when playing say the ChessMaster 7000 - 9000 series? I was interested in buying a chess game that teaches you tactics and strategy. I had heard good things about the ChessMaster series. Are there better titles out there? I think for what they offer it is really good. You can look at most of the famous past chess games to see how the professionals think about the game, well I guess if you could understand them I guess you would be wasting time with the game.

I used to play Kunfuchess online alot until I was forced to connect on a dialup modem. It is a pretty addictive version of chess; anyone who likes chess and hasn't tried it, should.

While surfing for links for the loyal /. readers I came across a couple that might prove useful.

http://www.wolffchess.com/php/home.php3

Once you register, you can improve your chess with hundreds of Web-based exercises, specifically designed to complement my book, The Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess.

http://www.chessclub.com/

Come join us! Register a name, install our easy-to-use software, and then use that to connect to our playing site. You can try it for free! With over 25,000 paying members from all over the world, Chessclub.com is the longest running and most vibrant chess community on the internet. You can play games and get a rating, watch grandmasters play while discussing the game, take lessons, play in tournaments, play in simultaneous exhibitions, try chess variants like bughouse, crazyhouse and atomic, play chess programs of all levels, and much more.

Of course there are always the game sites that offer chess onlne. It is one of the more popluar classical games that are available by most any site. Here are some that I found.

http://games.yahoo.com/

http://www.pogo.com/

http://www.station.sony.com/

http://www.playsite.com/

http://www.gamespyarcade.com/

and the list keeps on going... I know that I forgot a couple but if you want to play online these links will be more than sufficent to get you going.

Re:How many people can beat the computer?

[Scarblac]

Can anyone suggest some good chess strategy books?

"How to reassess your chess" by Jeremy Silman is probably the most-recommended chess strategy book, but it's not for beginners, more for somewhat advanced club players. A cheap, all-round good book to start with may be "The Mammoth Book of Chess", by Burgess and Nunn. Go to Amazon for reviews by people and sample pages, they're good for that sort of thing.

Of course there are always the game sites the offer chess online.

The best for Slashdot geeks should be FICS, at http://www.freechess.org, with its command line interface and geeky audience (usually 400+ players online). The best Linux client to play there is eboard.

Incidentally, SCID is a *great* GPL'ed chess database, originally for Linux but also ported to Windows, that makes Chessbase obsolete as far as I'm concerned.

Hope this helps.

Re:What happened...

[WiKKeSH]

Though this doesnt mean that Deep Fritz has ever played Deep Blue, I got this info from Deep Fritz's player stats http://www.brainsinbahrain.com/about/more_stats.ht ml:

1995: Won the world computer chess championship in Hong Kong, ahead of Deep Blue

computers better at blitz

[hayne]

dh003i wrote:
its not a 5 minute game. Don't expect a computer to ever win a blitz match, because computer's just don't have the insight to play well in those circumstances, which is where human innovation shows through.

Actually, the exact opposite is true. Computers regularly beat even the best human players at fast time controls (blitz) since the humans are much more prone to making mistakes when they don't have time to think a lot. This is not merely my opinion - I think you will find few people who are familair with computer chess who would think otherwise. For example, here's what Robert Hyatt (author of Cray Blitz & Crafty) said in 1999( rec.games.chess.computer )

So today, game/30 is no longer safe and the computers are probably better there. Game/60 is also becoming more difficult for the humans, although I think they can do pretty well at this time control. But at 40/2, where there are no "blitz" time controls at the end, the GM players begin to show exactly why micro chess programs are not yet GM-level players at this time control. They simply know "too much" it seems, and they are able to exploit weaknesses they see while the programs are usually quite oblivious to what is going on...

Re:Kind of pointless...

[Anonymous Coward]

It will only be a matter of time until the advances in positional chess algorithms and the brute force of very fast computers make it impossible for humans to beat computer programs.

Actually, the branching factor in a chess game is so huge that a small increase in computer speed (say, doubling the processor speed) doesn't make much of a difference. You're better off trying to improve your algorithme, like the creators of Deep Fritz did. Deep Blue could search 200 Million moves per second, and Fritz can only search 2 millon, but (at least according to Kramnik) Deep Fritz is a better computer.
Besides, the speed of computers isn't increasing as much as it used to. With the lousy sales on the latest Pentium, do you think Intel is going to want to come out with another one twice as fast? That's going to be a problem for those who rely on the expected increase in brute power of computers to beat the next chess champion.

Re:I dont' have time now,

[Scarblac]

i do need to go, but here are some things for children of this post to do:
I'm not a child of your post, but I'm a drunk chess player.

Look up some refernece that talked about how Kasparov's playing style is perhaps less suited to showcasing humanity's superioty to computers than Karpovs's was.
Kasparov is lethal when he has the initiative. He wants complex, tactical, attacking positions, and he's better at them than any human. Unfortunately, these positions tend to depend on calculation, which is what computers shine at. Karpov, like Kramnik, is more about prophylaxis, which is preventing any active options the opponent may have.

Although it must be said that at top level, all these players have a universal style. You can't become the world top player with a purely positional or a purely tactical style. Give Karpov a position that calls for a tactical solution, he's likely to play it. Put Kasparov in a quiet, strategical position, he'll usually know exactly what to do.

The differences show, mostly, in the choice of openings. They like different setups. Karpov choses the Caro-Kann (1.e4 c6) vs 1.e4, which is a very positional, defensive opening. Kasparov goes for the throat with the sharpest lines of the Sicilian (1.e4 c5). [if you're not a serious chess player, please believe me, that one square further makes a huge difference].

Kramnik plays the Berlin (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6). An opening that gives White a positional advantage - just not enough of an advantage to win. It typically leads to an endgame that's better for White, though, in the hands of grandmasters, not yet winning. And he knows it well. There's no way a computer will understand all the subtleties in these quiet positions, Fritz isn't going to beat him here.

On the other hand, Kasparov actually lost to Judit Polgar, the world's highest rated woman, in the recent Russia vs Rest of the World match. Kasparov had a huge plus score vs Polgar beforehand, but he was tired, thought he could get an easy draw in that line just like Kramnik does. But he couldn't (a report of the match, including comments on the Polgar-Kasparov game, is at Chess Cafe). He just doesn't have the feeling for defending those worse, yet not yet losing, passive positions.

So the difference in style in small, but it's certainly there. And Kramnik's is much better against computers.