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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.

11 of 198 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kramnick will win it by Mr.+PJR · · Score: 5, Insightful
    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.

    I have to utterly disagree with this statement. Blitz games are quick games, such as a time limit of 5 minutes per side per game Blitz games are where computers are strongest, where their tactical ability, coolness under pressure, and lack of obvious mistakes shine through.

    In quicker games, even weaker chess programs can anihilate strong human grandmasters. It's the longer games where humans are able to hold their own.

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    It is the last resort of the fading intellectual: to accuse your public of stupidity.--Sullivan
  2. John Henry was still a steel-driving man, though, by janeil · · Score: 2, Insightful
    And Kramnik is still the current champ, win or lose to Deep Fritz. I'm always surprised when people make a big deal out of a human chess player, even the champ, losing to a computer program. The program thinks for basically millions of man-years for each move, moves the pieces around on the board to see what happens, and feels no fatigue or pressure. Of course the programs will eventually beat any and all humans, big deal! My Dodge Caravan can run down the fastest sprinter, too, so what? Are the Olympics now somehow pointless?

    I give credit to Kramnik for taking Fritz on, I hope he gets big $$$ at least. It'll make big news if he loses, and not much if he wins, so it's hard for him to come out much ahead except for a payoff.

    As for human dignity (see the web site) I can't imagine how we lose or gain any, geez, the machines don't even gloat. And, we can still unplug the machines. Seems like the human programmer of Fritz keeps the human dignity balance covered.

  3. Trivial by heikkile · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Chess is a trivial game - computers beat most of humans most of the time, and even on the top level it is a very close call. Given the speed computers advance, it is only a matter of time before no human can beat a computer in chess.

    Machines have beaten man in many trivial games (tic-tac-toe. 100m sprint, weather prediction, etc). They have also failed in several "obviously easy" challenges (speech interfaces, AI, ...)

    Before they play GO, I will not worry about my job.

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    In Murphy We Turst

    1. Re:Trivial by Chicane-UK · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Hm.. well you have to bear in mind that on challenges such as basic games and 'the 100m sprint' there only needs to exist a certain number of rules for a machine to compete / win. But when you talk about things like AI and speech interfaces.. well thats a whole new ballgame. Speech took mankind thousands of years to develop - and even now I would say we dont use it as effectively as we could.

      And the less said about AI the better.. I dont think you can really apply rules and reasons to intelligence!

      --
      "Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
  4. Re:Kasparov lost... by damiam · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Deep Blue was fed all of Kasparov's previous games, so it knew exactly what to expect and how to optimize its strategy. Kasparov had never seen a game played by Deep Blue. It's common among grandmasters to review that past games of your opponent to look for their weeknesses. Kasparov didn't have this chance, which put him at a disadvantage.

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    It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
  5. Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    You were doing very well up until you gave Go no more than 20 years before it is cracked.

    If you use current strategies and scale according to Moore's law, then Go on a full sized board is literally safe for centuries. This is easy to verify. On a 19x19 board the branching factor is several hundred and naive evaluations only show up many dozens of moves later. Consider a mere branching factor of 100 with advantages being recognized a dozen moves later. That takes 10**24 which is roughly 2**80 evaluations. With Moore's law you improve by a factor of 2**80 in about 120 years. To brute-force several dozen moves forwards you will need literally centuries.

    That is assuming that Moore's law lasts that long. Which classical computing can't without breaking physical laws. (Quantum computers could do it, in theory. But there are considerable issues there.)

    Until a completely different strategy can be identified, top human players will continue to have nothing to worry about from computers in Go for the forseeable future.

  6. Flash by Britz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Those suckers use Flash 6 to show the live match. Only Win32 and Mac Flash Clients are available at Macromedia. *nix only goes up to Version 5x

    Let's boycot them!

  7. Re:I dont' have time now, by legLess · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Blockquothe the poster:
    Is it still true that in Go, computers play with a 14-move advantage and still lose to people who aren't even world-champion?
    Oh, yes. Computers go programs are not serious opposition for anyone other than a weak to mid-level amateur. Here's a quick run-down of the go handicap system, for those not in the know: for each point of rank, or strength, difference in the players one stone of the weaker player's is placed on the board in a a predetermined position. Rank goes from 50 kyu (can't spell "go") through 1 kyu to 1 dan, then to 9 dan, then 1 dan to 9 dan professional. Thus a 5 kyu would give a 15 kyu a 10-stone handicap, and in theory, a 9 dan professional could give 68 (20% of the board) stones to someone who'd never played the game - and still win.

    So when the poster says "14-move advantage" he means "14-stone handicap," which is huge. It's worse than that, though. A couple years ago, a dan-level player (a woman, not that it matters) beat the current computer go champion after giving it 27 stones. I can't find a bloody link right now, so you'll have to take my word for it.
    Go is a game in which, because at each point in the game, it is unclear what groups of stones are alive and what are dead, pattern-based thinking is much more important.
    Go is all about pattern recognition. The game is huge - easily the most complex game that people have created (where "life" is not defined as a game :). The board is 19x19 - 361 places to play - and all the stones have equal value. It's not possible for a computer to look 1% as far ahead in go as in chess.
    Would Karpov (and perhaps Kramnik) have made a better Go player than chess player?
    Who can say? They're very, very different games. I've played go for years, and every now and then I play chess with my brother. It feels very cramped, legalized, and formal. Go flows like a river.
    --
    This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
  8. Re:Kasparov lost... by jasonditz · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Kasparov beat himself.

    I'm sorry because he's a great player and all, but all this crap about how unfair it was is pathetic.

    Look over those matches. Deepblue didn't play spectacularly, Kasparov just played miserable. He used openings that he has never used in tournament play and just generally slopped his way through obscure theoretical lines.

    Hell, I could've beaten him if he'd played like that.

  9. Re:No longer in progress: Draw by invenustus · · Score: 2, Insightful

    How is it fun to play against a machine that's so strong you can't possibly win?

    That raises another point, actually. It hasn't been proven that the "perfect chess game" doesn't exist. It's possible that someone could publish a book that consisted of an opening move for white, and the response to every situation that black could create from there, which would lead to mate for white every time.

    If that happens, the whole game of chess is going to become pointless, because anyone with that book - or enough of it memorized - is going to be unbeatable. Sure, you could throw the book away, but as you played, you'd know that what you were doing could be flat out wrong - no better than not blocking your tic-tac-toe opponent when he/she has 2 in a row.

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    grep -ri 'should work' /usr/src/linux | wc -l
  10. Re:No longer in progress: Draw by ponxx · · Score: 2, Insightful

    > That raises another point, actually. It hasn't been proven that the "perfect chess game" doesn't exist.

    Indeed it can be proven that a "perfect chess game" does exist. In fact it is quite obvious that it does. Chess is a finite problem (due to rules about repeating a position 3 times being considered a draw). The question really is whether the "perfect game" results in a win for either color or in a draw.