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Humans Hold Off the Machines... For Now
Murr writes "The six game match between Gary Kasparov and the Deep Junior program ended in a draw today. Kasparov won game 1 and lost game 3 to a blunder, while the other 4 games were drawn. While the quality of play was not outstanding, after the recent matches of Kramnik and Kasparov against commercial programs running on (high end) commodity hardware, it's becoming apparent that chess programs are getting quite competitive with top human players."
I watched this last night on ESPN or ESPN2.
The reason Kasparov gave for the match, and the championship ending in a draw was that it was better to draw than to lose.
He claimed that while a human player would have the memories of past moves and past games to deal with, the computer would not. The computer simply makes the 'best' move for the given situation, and then waits to do the same thing again. The human player would consider moves he/she made in the past, compare the situation to others they may have had, second-guess the moves they might have made, and so forth.
It was interesting to see Kasparov attack, and then ask for a draw (which was denied) and then, two moves later, end the game in a draw.
Ever Onward, Forward Bound
1. Until very recently, end games have been the weak point of computer programs. Not withstanding end-game databases, which allow them to play a few endings perfectly, they have trouble making plans if there are more than a half-dozen pieces on the board. Recently, they've gotten a lot better, but they are still far from perfect.
2. Openings should be a strong point for computers, but Gary got an advantage in the opening in *every* game in the match. As you point out, the problem for computers is that humans look at their opponents openings, try to figure out weak points, and prepare traps for their opponents. Computers don't do this yet.
3. As you say, in the middle game, computers display a strange dichotomy. In quiet positions, they make stupid moves. E.g., in a couple games with Gary the computer played h3 (P-KR3), a move that had nothing to do with the game and weakened the kingside. On the other hand, they are deadly tacticians. Once Gary commited to an attack, things became tactical and the computer was very tough to beat; it found lots of weird-looking defenses that just barely worked.