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Kasparov Wins Game 3 Against X3D Fritz

Vulcao writes "Garry Kasparov just brilliantly won game 3 in the Kasparov vs. X3D Fritz chess match, which pits man against machine. Kasparov created a positional advantage on the queen side with a very strong pawn structure to which Fritz didn't have an answer. The result is now 1.5 - 1.5, and the last game will be this Tuesday, Nov. 18."

434 comments

  1. O_o by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Crazy.

    I wonder how long the humans can keep up with the computers.

    1. Re:O_o by Davak · · Score: 1, Interesting

      The computer monitor alternately displays complete left-eye and right-eye images in time (temporally), each time the monitor refreshes. X3D glasses have high-speed electronic shutters (made with Liquid Crystal material), which open and close at the same refresh rate as the monitor, in sync with the page flipped images.

      When the left image is on the screen, the left shutter is open and the right shutter is closed, so that the image is viewed only by your left eye. When the right image is on the screen, the right shutter is open and the left shutter is closed, so that the image is viewed only by your right eye. This happens so quickly that the brain perceives 3D depth.


      Something as intense as calculations for chess really much push the brain to its "limits." The X3D technology fools the brain into seeing 3D.

      I wonder how much this 50% lack of visual stimuli changes the way the chessmaster's brain works here.

      I don't know if this would help or hurt the human mind trying to perform these calculations... however, I think it can be said that this is not exactly like playing a person face-to-face.

      Our brains do such amazing things... I just wish I could remember where I placed my keys...

      Davak

    2. Re:O_o by hookedup · · Score: 2, Informative

      Uh.. mods might want to check this link again before modding it up 'interesting', seeing as the article isnt even real. Other headlines on that site include "POWER OUTAGE HID MARTIAN INVASION" and "SCI-FI FANBOYS WANT HUMAN RIGHTS FOR ROBOTS".

      Give me a break.

    3. Re:O_o by smiley2billion · · Score: 0

      The Sega Master System (8-bit, before Genesis) had 3d-glasses that worked like this. Here (segamastersystem.com) for pictures of it.

      The effect works great, i spent many hours playing Zaxxon 3d, state of the art for early 90's.

    4. Re:O_o by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Something as intense as calculations for chess really much push the brain to its "limits."

      Sure, but:

      The X3D technology fools the brain into seeing 3D. I wonder how much this 50% lack of visual stimuli changes the way the chessmaster's brain works here.

      No effect whatsoever, because there is no "50% lack of visual stimuli". Anything that flickers fast enough is perceived by the retina itself as a solid unchanging image.

      The "critical flicker fusion rate" that determines "what is fast enough" varies from about 40 frames per second to about 80 frames per second, depending on image brightness, ambient illumination, the particular individual viewing it, etc.

      TV in the US, for instance, flickers at about 60 hertz, but in non-flourescent ambient illumination, most people don't notice. In Europe the rate is 50 hertz, and people frequently do notice. And some people get headaches from computer monitors that flicker even at 72 hertz, especially under flourescent lights.

      I used to regularly get annoyed at PC monitors in conference rooms flickering at 60 hertz, when others didn't notice -- so I'd bring up display preferences and set it at the highest refresh rate. Until it occured to me that I was sabotaging people who needed to interface it to the overhead projector at 60 hertz. Oops! :-) But I digress.

      Movies are displayed at 48 hertz (although only 24 unique frames per second; they are "double-shuttered" to double the frame rate). Cartoons sometimes have as few as 6 unique frames per second (although they are displayed at movie or tv flicker rates) because that's about the threshold for perceiving continuous motion. Lots of issues, lots of thresholds.

      But even if the 3D viewing shows perceptible flicker, there isn't any issue of "50% lack of visual stimuli". Both eyes are constantly receiving information.

      I could imagine that any number of things about this 3D gadget could distract a chess player -- but so does cigar smoke (a trick used to advantage in chess matches early in the 20th century).

      Years ago I used to use similar 3D goggles to play first person shooters like Quake, and it was great. It helped my game. Quake isn't chess, but 3D goggles aren't rocket science.

      You can assume that, if he agreed to use this 3D setup, he was confident it wouldn't throw off his game. He does care, after all.

      --
      Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
    5. Re:O_o by Quixotic137 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I wonder how much this 50% lack of visual stimuli changes the way the chessmaster's brain works here.

      Besides which, why don't they just have a real chess board with a guy sitting there moving the pieces as the computer directs? Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like that would be more like playing a person face-to-face.

  2. The game of Go ? by Thinkit3 · · Score: 2, Redundant

    The ancient game of Go could be played in a virtual environment too. At 13h (nineteen) square, it would be a bit bigger. But there are only three states for each square--black, white, or empty. Go is mentioned in every slashdot article on chess, but that is only because it is in many ways more elegant than chess. And even with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

    --
    -Libertarian secular transhumanist
    1. Re:The game of Go ? by ReyTFox · · Score: 1

      Go is infinitely cooler because you can see board positions develop as the game progresses, while in Chess everything zooms around the board until there's nothing left.

    2. Re:The game of Go ? by Space+Coyote · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I always wonder how long it takes in any chess thread before someone who thinks they've discovered the lost city of gold pipes up about go. And the answers they get are always the same, it's a totally different problem. We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go. A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.

      --
      ___
      Cogito cogito, ergo cogito sum.
    3. Re:The game of Go ? by Pakaran2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't Go proven to be EXPSPACE-Complete?

      Meaning that no computer anywhere is going to be decent at beating a human on a relatively large board?

    4. Re:The game of Go ? by Pakaran2 · · Score: 1

      I've heard great things about it... though I've never been any good at it... I'm not even sure what my rating should be, I think I made 25 Kyo (sp?) on one server.

      Do you have any suggestions for where to learn?

    5. Re:The game of Go ? by Henry+V+.009 · · Score: 1

      Maybe a perfect game of Go has been proven to be so. I don't know, actually. But beating a human at Go is something else. There is no way to construct a proof for how hard it is to beat a human at Go. It might be a linear problem for all we know.

    6. Re:The game of Go ? by cornick · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I just got back from the 15th Mid-Atlantic GO championship about 30 minutes ago where we discussed this. (Images on my site). Apparently the largest GO board that's 'solved' is 5x5. One could imagine building a quantum computer that could solve a larger board using 3 state q-bits (q-trits?) -1 = black stone, 0 = empty, 1 = white stone. Then a simple 361 'q-trit' system could represent a 19x19 board. (And be in a superposition of all states at once). Just a thought, though the quantum computing guys I work with would probably have a fit about what I just said.

      --
      http://www.glue.umd.edu/~cornick/
    7. Re:The game of Go ? by nodwick · · Score: 5, Funny
      I think it's a knee-jerk reflex against an inferiority complex. I mean, sure, they can beat us at chess, but what about GO?

      Kinda like how your average Slashdotter watching the crowd go wild over Barry Bonds breaking the home run record is secretly thinking, "Oh sure, but can he put together a Beowulf cluster of Linux boxes?"

    8. Re:The game of Go ? by tniemueller · · Score: 5, Informative

      This gives a nice introduction to Go and AI and why it is so hard to play for a computer.

    9. Re:The game of Go ? by Lars+T. · · Score: 2, Funny
      And even with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

      Especially with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    10. Re:The game of Go ? by wfberg · · Score: 4, Funny

      We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go.

      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent. Well, maybe with a hole in there for serving.

      A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.

      Less so than Go, since with Go the number of possible moves at each junction in time is larger than in chess - Go on a chess-sized board still features a larger search space than chess. Just like 110 in binary is less than 110 in decimal.

      --
      SCO employee? Check out the bounty
    11. Re:The game of Go ? by ReyTFox · · Score: 3, Informative
      Sensei's Library is an excellent starting place - it's a wiki filled with information and examples. And if you can't follow up on what I posted through Google, this is a good place to look too.

      Playing the game is most necessary - computer programs(GNUGo and Igowin are both worth checking out) can challenge any new player these days, but humans will usually be more helpful to learn from because they play less predictably and if they're polite will review the game with you afterwards to help point out mistakes.

      If you can join a local club, do so. While you can get an online game almost any time of day, it's far better to play with a real board and stones and people you can see.

      Once you have a few months of experience you should be able to understand what's going on in a lot of higher-level games. They are excellent to learn from.

    12. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.

      Actually, no it won't, because it would still have to use a regulation-sized tennis raquet. If it couldn't move the racquet to hit the ball fast enough, it would actually lose all the points, since a tennis player loses the point if the ball strikes any part of their "body".

    13. Re:The game of Go ? by ottothecow · · Score: 2, Redundant

      I would think that if you were playing against a wall shaped oponent, it would be reletively easy to make them hit the ball out to the side or off the edge of the court. Only a moron would lose

      --
      Bottles.
    14. Re:The game of Go ? by jrockway · · Score: 1

      Actually, the computer could win if the axiom of choice happens to be true. Even if that isn't true, a computer could still beat every human on earth.

      --
      My other car is first.
    15. Re:The game of Go ? by reddish · · Score: 1

      Talking about 'Go', does anybody know a place where the rules are stated in a way that is properly formulated to mold it in an algorithm? If I look at the official Go rules, I have a hard time figuring out an algorithm for determining live/dead groups. Most computer programs I've seen take ages to score a position, which is an indication that this is indeed a difficult problem.

      As a side note: chess is defined in a way that is much easier to implement (did that), with the exception of the rule that a game is finished as a draw if a position is reached where no sequence of valid moves can lead to either side winning, For 'insufficient material' type situations (e.g., KBvK) this is all well, but there are many complicated positions where this is not easy to see, e.g.:

      FEN 8/3k4/8/1pBp1p1p/1P1P1P1P/5b2/2K5/8 w - -

    16. Re:The game of Go ? by daffmeister · · Score: 1

      It's not all about the search space, it's also about evaluating the position once you reach the end of your search.

      (that said, I have no idea how hard it is to evaluate a Go position)

    17. Re:The game of Go ? by sholden · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.

      And building a chess program to beat any opponent is pretty simple, by making all the computers pieces queen king mixtures, so they move like queens but the computer only loses if *all* its remaining pieces are in checkmate at once.

      But it's generally only interesting when you restrict the computer to actually following the rules of the game.

    18. Re:The game of Go ? by swordgeek · · Score: 1

      Aside from playing better players than you, the best resource I know of for a 'now that you know the rules' reference is a book called "The Second Book of Go." It should be the best selling Go book of all time, by rights.

      Go find a copy, if you want to learn Go. You'll probably only get half of it the first time through, but it'll last you a long time.

      --

      "People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
    19. Re:The game of Go ? by Craig3010 · · Score: 1

      Fuck that! I can't even beat the goddamn computer at checkers!!!

    20. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      It's a sad world when one has an inferiority complex against a database.

    21. Re:The game of Go ? by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 1

      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.

      Until you just lob it over the 'wall'.

    22. Re:The game of Go ? by evanbd · · Score: 1

      Actually, go boards through at least 6x6 are solved; I think 6x7 is solved too. A group of players from New Zealand, with the help of two Japanese professionals, has produced a proposed solution for 7x7. It is not a proof, but it would seem the "the answer" for 7x7 is known. Even 8x8 or 9x9 go is far beyond our capabilities to solve.

    23. Re:The game of Go ? by sanchz14 · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      >Only a moron would lose
      i am comp-u-comp

    24. Re:The game of Go ? by dakryx · · Score: 1

      Even the best programs so far designed, even on a 9x9 go board cant beat experienced beginners.

    25. Re:The game of Go ? by Moridineas · · Score: 0, Offtopic
      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent. Well, maybe with a hole in there for serving.

      But then it wouldn't be playing tennis--it would be a wall. Not to mention the fact that anyone could easily beat the wall merely by hitting the balls at such an angle that they don't hit inbounds on the "return."

    26. Re:The game of Go ? by terrab0t · · Score: 2, Funny

      Okay, so to summarize the first page of that, if I don't want to be humiliated by a machine, I should challenge it to a game of go.

      Honestly, a friend of mine heard about Deep Blue and wondered why there haven't been attempts to make the perfect machine player at other games and sports. Like wrestling. I bet you could make a machine that would destroy any wrestler stupid enough to tackle it.

      My favorite was the ultimate bowling machine. We actually designed this while sitting in the car talking. You take a ramp, put the ball at the top and line it up so that it points just left of the center pin, and you've got a world champion! Go machines!

    27. Re:The game of Go ? by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      A computer, given enough time/speed/memory, can use brute force method to find a "sure" win way to play Go. Albeit it would take a long while.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    28. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have. It's called a wall.

    29. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Easily fixed with curvature.

    30. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Haha! You suck! I got checkers down pat but that @#^$*@&# computer beats me 9 times out of 10 in tic-tac-toe.

    31. Re:The game of Go ? by syle · · Score: 5, Funny

      "The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I'll never be as good a a wall. I played a wall once. They're fucking relentless...." --Mitch Hedberg

      --

      /syle

    32. Re:The game of Go ? by Hedonist123 · · Score: 1
      Easily countered by putting enough spin on the ball... sorry fella's, I'm going to kick that computer's (read, wall) ass every time, I am the Gary Kasparov of tennis!!! Or something... maybe it's just sad that I'm thinking about this.

      hed.

      --
      http://goldysmom.blogspot.com
    33. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
      (that said, I have no idea how hard it is to evaluate a Go position)

      As someone who is right now having his ass handed to him by the GNU Go Engine, I would answer "much harder than I imagined an hour ago".

      YLFI
    34. Re:The game of Go ? by JamesKPolk · · Score: 2, Informative

      Ladders, one tactical aspect of go, have been proven to be PSPACE-complete. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/lad.ps

    35. Re:The game of Go ? by JamesKPolk · · Score: 1

      Try The Tromp/Taylor rules: http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/go.html

      Life and death do not need special rules.

    36. Re:The game of Go ? by Pakaran2 · · Score: 1

      So basically it's unlikely to be solved anytime soon, for high values of unlikely.

      Thanks

    37. Re:The game of Go ? by Wolfrider · · Score: 0, Redundant

      > We haven't built a robot to play tennis either

      --What the hell do you call PONG, then?! - :b - J.K.
      Waka waka!

      --
      .
      == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??
    38. Re:The game of Go ? by Kytro · · Score: 1

      Interesting idea: How much computing power is available on the internet ? If the entire internet was tasked with playing chess or go, how would it do ? Just a random thought

    39. Re:The game of Go ? by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 0, Redundant
      A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent."

      I once played against such an opponent, and yes he did beat me. I believe the game was called Pomg or something.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
    40. Re:The game of Go ? by halo8 · · Score: 1

      any one know of a good webbased GO game? or freeware game?

      --
      The More Knowledge you have the Luckier you Get- J.R. Ewing
    41. Re:The game of Go ? by millette · · Score: 1

      Hum, you got me thinking... what about a pool player?

    42. Re:The game of Go ? by iannn · · Score: 1

      here's the other question: why don't humans have as much trouble with go as computers do, since the game tree is 10^120 times larger than chess? while the obvious guess is that we use a completely different organizational structure than computers, this isn't exactly a complete explanation.

    43. Re:The game of Go ? by firewrought · · Score: 1
      I use gnugo (for AI) + cgoban (for GUI) for playing against the computer. Quite effective for a Linux-based solution, but many alternatives are out there.

      As a beginner playing on small boards (9x9), I find gnugo very frustrating. I worked up to beating it most of the time before I lost interest in the game for a few weeks. When I returned, it kicked my ass again. :-)

      --
      -1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
    44. Re:The game of Go ? by evanbd · · Score: 1

      That's not true for 19x19, actually. Well, assuming you limit yourself to the available memory in the entire univers, and the time remaining before it ends. Raw compute power is useful, but it has its limits.

    45. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I think it was a joke...

    46. Re:The game of Go ? by millette · · Score: 1

      You probably want to play again real people: http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/ for the most popular game server. If you really want to play against a computer, mail me and I'll see what I can do :)

    47. Re:The game of Go ? by FryGuy1013 · · Score: 1

      I believe the algorithm traditionally used for chess programs is not good for such incredible parallelism like distributed computing would provide. Distributed computing is best for independant modules that can be solved seperately (i.e. see if any of the numbers 1232412000000000000-1232413000000000000 divide 5454934934923283184138231231231253849348096454). The min-max algorithm (i think that's what it's called) requires information about the scoring of following points on the graph in order to determine how well the current score is going to do. It seems almost counter-intuitive that so many computers doing work couldn't make something more effective, but it's true.

      --
      bananas like monkeys.
    48. Re:The game of Go ? by harlows_monkeys · · Score: 1

      I have a precise mathematical formulation of the rules of generalized Go in terms of sets and operations on them, but I cannot find any way to format it that Slashdot will accept, so screw it.

    49. Re:The game of Go ? by mikera · · Score: 1

      I've written a simple Go-playing computer program so can offer some insights.

      Basically, evaluating the position is *very* difficult. You certainly can't use simple heuristics like "number of stones" because certain stones may be guaranteed or likely to die.

      You can't really use localised evaluation functions because stones right on the other side of the board can often affect your valuation.

      There's also the concept of "ko threats" which are valuable even if the opponent has a guaranteed way to protect a group of stones.

      Given all of this, I don't think it's feasible for a human to write a sensible evaluation function for a general go position. I think the problem will ultimately be cracked, but it'll need some proper AI techniques such as genetic algorithms to "learn" an evaluation function.

    50. Re:The game of Go ? by shockwav1 · · Score: 1

      Sure, but then the game is called 'Squash', not 'Tennis'.

    51. Re:The game of Go ? by shockwav1 · · Score: 1

      I think it has a lot to do with narrowing the search space. A computer has to start out by considering every possible move on the board, ranking these initial choices, eliminating the worst of the bunch, then moving on to the next 'round' of evaluations. The initial search space on a 19X19 board is massive. A human, on the other hand, can very easily eliminate a large number of choices (probably over half) in a second just by looking over the board. That allows the human brain to focus on the select few moves still in consideration as 'valid' choices that make sense.

    52. Re:The game of Go ? by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      That is one of the reasons computers suck. Computers--or perhaps the computer engineers--just don't have true parallelism. The reason our brains are better (even though they are slow) is because they operate in parallel while computers (for the most part) still carry out one instruction at a time.

      The "secret" to superior computer AI lies in parallelism. Most of the algorithms, theories, etc devised by computer scientists/engineers/etc aren't really parallel.

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    53. Re:The game of Go ? by Abcd1234 · · Score: 1

      It is interesting, though, to consider WHY humans have an easier time identifying "valid" choices. As was mentioned in another thread here, the human brain is exceedingly good at pattern matching (in contrast to computers, which have historically been pretty dismal). And Go is exceedingly well suited to pattern-matching-based play (I won't try to justify this, but any Go player would likely agree). As a result, good players have an easier time focusing on "interesting" areas of play.

    54. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Less so than Go, since with Go the number of possible moves at each junction in time is larger than in chess - Go on a chess-sized board still features a larger search space than chess.

      This is not necessarily true. In Go, the number of moves is, at most, equal to the number of empty intersections on the board (and it can be less - you can't play inside a ponnuki, you can't immediately recapture ko, etc). With Chess, the number of available moves can exceed the number of empty squares, because you can have several different pieces that can move to the same place.

      Also, as a chess game progresses, and the number of pieces is decreased, it actually creates more possibilities as the number of available moves increses. A single queen in the center of the board can move to 27 places!

      Now, with all that said, it doesn't really matter if chess is more strategically complex than Go on an 8x8 board; Chess just isn't scalable, and Go is, and that's why Go will always be a more intriguing game.

    55. Re:The game of Go ? by TaliesinWI · · Score: 1

      Go is infinitely cooler because you can see board positions develop as the game progresses, while in Chess everything zooms around the board until there's nothing left.

      Maybe the way YOU play, but anyone who is beyond the rank beginner level at chess will tell you it's considered better/more elegant to win without making the board a killing zone.

      Sure, you can win when it's your king and a power piece vs. just his king, but it actually kinda gets old fast. It's far more fun to figure out how to checkmate the guy when he's still got most of his power pieces on the board.

    56. Re:The game of Go ? by Rubyflame · · Score: 1

      Depends on your ruleset.

      What do you mean by "official Go rules"? Every organization has their own rules. You're probably referring to the Japanese rules, which are vague and riddled with exceptions.

      The Chinese rules are much more simple and precise. The main reason many people tend to prefer Japanese rules is that they allow you to omit certain endgame plays, thus making the game somewhat quicker. AFAIK, all the programs that have solved Go for small board sizes (eg 5x5) were based on Chinese rules.

      Here's the difference: In Japanese rules ("territory scoring"), you get a point for every empty intersection you surround, and a point for every stone you kill. In Chinese rules ("area scoring"), you get a point for every empty intersection, and a point for every stone of your color that remains alive.

      It may seem like these two rules would generate the same scores, and mostly they do. The differences don't really become noticeable until the end. Once all the territories are delineated, both players pass and agree on which stones are considered "dead." That is, stones which have not actually been captured, but which have no chance to survive make their time.

      Of course, the problem is when people disagree on which stones are dead. How can you clearly determine the state of a group? See, the problem with territory scoring is that you can't just keep playing and go ahead and kill the group. If a "dead" stone is inside your territory, you would have to place four stones around it to actually capture it. End result: You have four fewer empty intersections in your territory (because you just filled them up), so you have lost points.

      Whereas with area scoring, you can go ahead and kill the stone - place your for stones around it, and there, it's dead. You don't lose any points, because each stone on the board is worth a point. So you're losing one point for each empty intersection that's filled, but gaining one point for each of your stones on the board, and it balances out.

      The point is, while generally humans will not want to bother to capture all the stones on the board, and just agree on which ones are dead, you don't have to do that if you want to program an evolving computer Go player or something like that, and you need to automate the process. The simple solution in that case is to just have the computer play out the position until all dead stones are captured, and that's where area scoring comes in handy.

      BTW, if you prefer to count the number of captures instead of the number of stones on the board, the AGA uses an alternative to Chinese rules which has the same effect as area scoring: When you pass, you have to give one of your stones to your opponent, as a capture. This is called a "pass stone." Then you score as in Japanese rules - one point per capture, and one point per intersection. This idea seemed weird to me at first, but it makes sense if you think about it. If you have to kill a stone in your territory with four stones, you place your first stone (thus losing 1 point of territory). Now it's your opponent's turn. He can either add another stone (which will, eventually, give you 1 point when you capture it), or he can pass (and just give you the 1 point right away). It evens out, so you don't lose any points when you capture the piece.

      --

      All it takes is nukes and nerves.
    57. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually, I think the search tree used by chess is great for distributed computing. Normally, when you have only a single processor, you would create a tree of all available moves from the current position, all available moves from there, etc.

      Then evaluate the board position at the leaves of the tree, and go up from there to determine the value of every node on the tree. On the nodes where it's your turn, you pick the subtree with the highest value (since that's the move you'd pick from there), and set the current node's value to that. On the nodes where it's your opponent's turn, you'd pick the subtree with the lowest value (since the opponent would play the move which is worst for you). Once you have gotten up to the nodes immediately below root, you pick the best one, and there's your move.

      A distributed version of this would be very straightforward. Instead of going from the root node and evaluating the entire tree, you take each subtree and send it off to a different computer. Each computer would process its entire subtree, and send the board value back to the root, which would pick the best one and go with it.

      Chess supposedly has an average branching factor of around 20, so each time you multiply the number of nodes on your computing network by 20, you can add 1 to the search depth. So if you had 8,000 computers, you'd be adding 3 to the maximum search depth.

    58. Re:The game of Go ? by clarkc3 · · Score: 1

      just hit a lob over it ;)

    59. Re:The game of Go ? by jamesmrankinjr · · Score: 1

      Actually, if you were to strike the ball against the wall in such a way that the return went out of bounds, you would defeat it quite easily. Also, the wall would need to figure out how to generate a serve.

      Peace be with you,
      -jimbo

    60. Re:The game of Go ? by MisanthropeLifeform · · Score: 1

      Inferiority Complex?
      Woo Hoo, I was an early adopter!! - Chess Tiger on my Palm kicked my ass long ago.

    61. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The only people who think go is cooler than chess are those who can't even understand the rules to chess. Go is a good game, and given a large enough board (not 8x8) there are more potential moves than chess, but it isn't more elegant, complex, or sophisticated. Or a better judge of AI

    62. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      so to paraphrase, the answer to why a computer can't play go is because no one knows the rules, got it?

    63. Re:The game of Go ? by rifter · · Score: 1

      Yahoo Games has a good java Go multiplayer area. It is divided into sections by level of expertise. I get beaten quite regularly there by people who appear to be Asian and play very fast.

    64. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With the rule of ko go is EXPTIME-hard but I don't recall seeing any paper saying that it's EXPSPACE-complete. Do you have a reference?

      Chess is EXPTIME-complete, when generalized to an n x n board. Of course chess doesn't generalize to n x n boards as naturally as go does.

      Anyhow, these completeness results merely mean that on arbitrarily large boards no computer will solve *all* instances correctly and with a reasonable amount of resources. But there's no evidence that humans can either. A computer merely has to suck less than a human to beat him.

    65. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "experienced beginners"

      Isn't that an oxymoron?

    66. Re:The game of Go ? by FryGuy1013 · · Score: 1

      Ah, but the problem with this is the fact that different move orders result in the same board configuration. Take for instance: [1. e4 e5 2. d4] vs [1. d4 e5 2. e4]. The single-computer would already know that the first one was score +0.005, so then it wouldn't recalculate the score to be .005 for the second one since it knows they are the same board position. Transmitting all the scores for all the moves would be pointless since that would take too much bandwidth to do.

      --
      bananas like monkeys.
    67. Re:The game of Go ? by Pakaran2 · · Score: 1

      Well yeah, that goes without saying.

      In fact, it's fairly good evidence that humans *can't* solve those problems on large boards. There's a lot of problems humans can't readily solve that computers can solve easily (multiplying multiple-million-digit numbers without error, to start with).

    68. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      > == WolfriderV6 == I'm willing to admit that *I just might* be wrong... Are you??

      I'm also willing to admit that you might be wrong. :)

      God, I don't believe I just mouthed off to someone with a 3-digit ID...

    69. Re:The game of Go ? by Dasaan · · Score: 1

      But would it have to transmit all the scores calculated? It'd seem more logical to only transmit the highest scoring move for the "work unit".

      --
      XP is basicly 98 with a lot more extra features to hunt down and disable. --Dram
    70. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      P.S. The above poster (Thinkit) is a well-known troll on rec.games.go. Just making sure that everybody has the right perspective here.

    71. Re:The game of Go ? by qtp · · Score: 1

      Of course, the problem is when people disagree on which stones are dead. How can you clearly determine the state of a group? See, the problem with territory scoring is that you can't just keep playing and go ahead and kill the group. If a "dead" stone is inside your territory, you would have to place four stones around it to actually capture it. End result: You have four fewer empty intersections in your territory (because you just filled them up), so you have lost points.

      This is a non-issue under the Japanese rules as you are under no obligation to play moves that will reduce your score. If the stones in question are truly dead, then the advantaged player needs only to PASS, and the player who is insisting that the stones still live must play to prove thier validity. That is, the opponent must either make his eyes or capture some of your stones for the stone to be alive, and you onle need PASS until it is necessary to prove your opponent wrong.

      the AGA uses an alternative to Chinese rules which has the same effect as area scoring: When you pass, you have to give one of your stones to your opponent, as a capture.

      Where have you seen this? I'm not an expert on the AGA, but I have attended a few events (several years ago) and always observed the Japanese rules and scoring at those events.

      It seems that PASS stones would eliminate the advantage of efficiency that is gained from waiting while your opponent makes wasteful moves.

      --
      Read, L
    72. Re:The game of Go ? by DarkSarin · · Score: 1

      the word is heuristics. Computers stink at heuristics in comparison to humans, which are so good at them that it takes considerably more time to think through an algorithm for us than it does for a computer.

      Personally, I believe it has to do with 3 aspects of the human mind (put into computing terms).
      1. Parrallel. the human brain processes in parallel.
      2. Non-binary the human brain is NOT limited to binary language (in fact, I would guess that it uses a flexible base-n math system if you want to quantify it. The really nice thing is that n may or may not be finite--how does the molecule really communicate its message? There are so many methods that it boggles)
      3. Non-linearity. The human mind can branch and skip whole sectors of input based on very little information. It can also do some wild tricks on how it handles associations.

      Of course, computers do have some serious advantages--one is persistent memory. A computer can always tell if it knows something or not. Sometimes it isn't programmed well enough to do so, but if it were, it has the capacity. Humans don't. We frequently don't know our own capabilities, and that is a big setback.

      (as a side note, next time you hear someone talk about how humans only use 10% of their brain power--LAUGH. Cognitive psychologists have effectively debunked that myth for quite some time)

      --
      "We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully,..." Wherry, R.J. Personnel Psychology (1995)
    73. Re:The game of Go ? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I seem to recall that go on an nxn board is PSPACE (polynomial space) complete in n...

  3. Just goes to show by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    People learn faster than machines.

    1. Re:Just goes to show by spektr · · Score: 4, Funny

      People learn faster than machines.

      No, they just saw this stuff on TV. Once Fritz gains access to the Star Trek archives he won't again be so easily distracted and outplayed by Kasparov using his secret weapon: "how do you feel?".

  4. For those who wish to bet... by r_glen · · Score: 3, Funny
    1. Re:For those who wish to bet... by spektr · · Score: 1

      The fact that the server you're pointing me to can't deliver the page you intended doesn't exactly increase my trust into your ability to judge the probability that a certain calculating machine will do the right thing.

    2. Re:For those who wish to bet... by localghost · · Score: 1

      Wow, it looks like whoever designed that site just discovered mod_rewrite.

    3. Re:For those who wish to bet... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      no_support_gecko.asp? cocksnackers... now i must install the user agent switcher and try again...

  5. I disagree... by zeux · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man".

    Computer chess games deal with statistics and historics of previous games to decide how they will move their next turn. Usually they analyze hundreds of thousand of differents moves, even dumb ones !

    When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.

    I would call that efficiency and if computers where as efficient as human, they would win easily without requiring huge processing power.

    1. Re:I disagree... by yerricde · · Score: 3, Informative

      When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.

      This is called pruning the search tree. Computer chess players do this too; see a description of alpha-beta pruning.

      --
      Will I retire or break 10K?
    2. Re:I disagree... by GauteL · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "...with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man"."

      Well, that is just a stupid thing to say anyway. If a computer consistently beats humans in chess, the only thing that has proved is that it is better than humans in chess.

      Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence.

    3. Re:I disagree... by zeux · · Score: 1

      Yes, of course they do that too, because there are many possibilities for each turn.

      But the human do that much faster and much better and still he doesn't have to think about hundred of thousand moves like the computer chess player do.

    4. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man".

      Okay. In the unlikely event that I come across anyone saying that, I'll be sure to point them in your direction.

    5. Re:I disagree... by zeux · · Score: 1

      Yes that's exactly what I mean, but you wouldn't believe how many people do actually believe that 'stupid thing'.

    6. Re:I disagree... by Pakaran2 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Well, the thing is a chess computer can ONLY play chess - a human with the same degree of intelligence can do many other things. Kasparov could have become a doctor, a lawyer, a programmer, or a Go player. Or he could have developed a different aspect of his intelligence and been a poet.

      I think computers need true intelligence before they're equal to humans, no matter how well they play one classic board game.

    7. Re:I disagree... by nodwick · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I agree that just because a computer can beat a human at chess, that's not a basis for saying that they're "more intelligent" than us. Intelligence incorporates things like creativity, self-improvement, etc. which are not demonstrated by a chess program.

      Having said that, I have to disagree with some of the points in your post.

      Computer chess games deal with statistics and historics of previous games to decide how they will move their next turn.
      How is this different from human players? Most good chess players I know spend a large portion of their time studying historical games from the grandmasters, just like chess programs do. They even call the procedure of optimizing the program parameters "training".
      Usually they [computers] analyze hundreds of thousand of differents moves, even dumb ones ! When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.
      I'll assume you mean that they analyze hundreds of thousands of move sequences, since you can only control at most 16 pieces and the number of moves you could make are much fewer than a hundred thousand. Computer chess programs actually proceed in a very similar fashion to human players - they consider the moves that could be made and discard the least promising ones. For moves whose "scores" are very close, it will look ahead more moves, always pruning the sequences which lead to poorly scored outcomes. They don't continue to analyze sequences which "score" poorly and hence are unlikely to yield a winning result.

      The fact is that chess programs have become very good at homing in on promising move sequences and pruning out poor ones. That, combined with the relatively small set of moves on a chessboard, has led chess programs to make great gains over the past few decades. Your argument would be more applicable for Go (had to toss that in there somewhere!), where programmers still don't have a good understanding of how to "score" positions, and hence computers have performed poorly for precisely the reasons you mention: that they are unable to prune out the bad moves and focus on the good ones.

    8. Re:I disagree... by Pyro226 · · Score: 1
      I agree with you. I would also like to make this comment before someone starts a thread about how robots are going to take over the world (although this is slashdot and that will happen anyway). Even in a few years when computers will be able to easily beat human players, actually moving the pieces on a real board, even if the pieces are large, designed to be easily picked up by robotic arms, and weighted to resist falling over, will still be above the computers.

      On the other hand, launching nukes doesn't require physical dexterity, just access codes. Time to build a bomb shelter.

      --
      This message is encrypted with Quad ROT-13 to protect the author's copyright under the DMCA.
    9. Re:I disagree... by Valar · · Score: 1, Insightful

      But WHY do we reject the moves? Certainly, there is some sort of evaluation going on there, even if it happens very quickly. One thing to consider is that the human brain shows a lot of the qualities of a massively parallel computer. Just because you can only concentrate on a few things conciously, doesn't mean that you don't have 'processing power' going into doing other things. In other words, humans use huge processing power too, it is just of a different kind.

    10. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence."

      I agree. The ability to construct grammatically correct sentences is a much better indicator.

    11. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man".

      Ha! Computers were created by man. Therefore a computer is simply an extension of man's intelligence. Crap, I won't even consider this statement for any computer that has done anything less than independently creating a human.

      Heh.

    12. Re:I disagree... by Comatose51 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Let me rephrase what McDermott said many years ago when people brought up the same argument. If a computer can beat us by calculating all the moves, so what?

      Just because an airplane does not flap its wings to fly like a bird does, is it really not flying? On the contrary, airplanes are better fliers than birds.

      AI isn't about emulating humans but about matching humans in mental capacity. How it will accomplish that is up to the researchers.

      --
      EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
    13. Re:I disagree... by hawkestein · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence.

      Well, it used to be, back before people really thought about how to build a chess program. One of the problems with AI is that we don't really know what "intelligence" is. Every time we are able to write a computer program to solve a problem that we thought required intelligence, we conclude, "Oh, then that can't be what we meant by intelligence" rather than "The computer has now achieved intelligence."

      --
      -- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
    14. Re:I disagree... by venicebeach · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yeah, it's funny that when the human wins it is seen a victory for humanity. It could just as easily be seen as a loss for humanity, since the humans weren't able to build a computer that could beat a person at chess!

    15. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      "On the contrary, airplanes are better fliers than birds."

      That is the most untrue thing I've seen in a while? What is the last airplane you know that could dive straight at the ground at over 100 mph and lift a mouse into the air?

      Condors can surf the air for many hours without even beating a wing.

      Eagles can skim the surface of the water and fish while flying.

      Many birds reproduce while tumbling in free fall and come right out of it and fly away at the last second before hitting the ground.

      I've never seen an airplane do any of this. . .

    16. Re:I disagree... by Comatose51 · · Score: 1

      How are those things even relevant?

      When was the last time you saw the bird blow up a tank or strafe a convoy??? Those abilities work off the platform of flying, not inherent in flying itself. Can a bird get up to Mach 1? We have different planes with different capabilities. Furthermore, even different birds have different capabilities. But, just because planes do not flap their planes, are they not flying? That's the point of the post.

      --
      EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
    17. Re:I disagree... by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      The chess program is only as good as the programming that went into it. I would be very surprised if that chess program was written by only one person, so in truth the human is playing against a group, who have the combined knowledge of thier chess intelligence plus the whole history of chess they can reference. And of course they have analyzed all the games the opponent ever played to see if a tendency has developed that can be countered. It's intelligent as it is was designed to be by the developers. Even hueristic programs have to be programmed by someone to learn and adapt. The whole problem with chess playing computers has been one of the CPU power to build the huge state space quickly and efficient pruning algorithms to manage the space and cut it down to a size that can be managed AND gives good results. It's an interesting area but by no means is a chess playing computer going to pass the Turing Test.

    18. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I've never seen a plane do it. That is the point. Humans control the plane. Birds control themselves. They are much better fliers that planes are.

    19. Re:I disagree... by p2sam · · Score: 1

      that's true... everytime the AI people came up with better intelligent capabilities than humans, the humans re-defined intelligence. Now is chess, next is go... what next?

      And the thing is... who cares? AI is not about philosophy, it's about automating intelligent capabilites. We'll let the speculations to the philosophers (or slashdotters).

    20. Re:I disagree... by Lord_Dweomer · · Score: 1
      " But WHY do we reject the moves? Certainly, there is some sort of evaluation going on there, even if it happens very quickly."

      Well, I for one reject them because I don't know where half the pieces are able to move, but thats just me.

      --
      Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
    21. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I disagree with people who say that, too. Of course I have yet to meet such a person.

      You are selling the chess programs short. For one thing, they do analyze a great number of moves, but the good ones (like X3D Fritz) have heuristics to narrow the field. For another, by not rejecting some "dumb moves" the good programs are able to discover excellent moves that look dumb, moves that humans usually fail to recognize. The final thing, echoing what others have pointed out, there isn't a computer on the planet that has the processing power of the human brain. In the great chessplayers' subconscious minds lies considerable brute-force computing.

    22. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence.

      Absolutely. It's just one thing. For instance, if a computer were able to punctuate your sentence better than you did, that still wouldn't make it more intelligent.

    23. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I agree. The ability to construct grammatically correct sentences is a much better indicator.

      Better still, the ability to differentiate between grammar and punctuation.

    24. Re:I disagree... by groomed · · Score: 1

      AI isn't about emulating humans but about matching humans in mental capacity. How it will accomplish that is up to the researchers.

      The problem with that concept is that then we might never know whether we're dealing with intelligence or not. So far, the only example we have is ourselves. In order for us to recognize something as intelligence it will have to remind us of ourselves. By your definition, the refrigerator in your kitchen might be extremely intelligent -- it just has no way of letting us know.

    25. Re:I disagree... by Chess_the_cat · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I play a lot of chess and I can tell you I've never once in my life 'pruned a search tree.' Humans just don't play that way. When a human rejects the vast majority of possible moves he's not even considering them. Pruning a search tree--what a computer is doing--entails actually exploring each move on the tree as far as it can. Then it assigns it a numerical value and orders the moves. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to instantly spot whether a move is worth exploring or not. Whereas I would be able to eliminate a move like moving my knight back to its original square within the first three moves, a computer would actually have to examine the tree that a move like that would generate (barring an opening book which in my opinion is not an example of chess playing at all.) At any rate, programmers love to think that since a computer does something one way, and computers are 'electronic brains' then the human mind must work the same way. Newsflash: brains are not digital computers.

      --
      Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
    26. Re:I disagree... by the+uNF+cola · · Score: 1
      When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.


      So can a computer. It's called dynamic programming. Problem is, we can do it faster. Some algorithms are in the realm of O(n^3)'d and others still in the realm of n^2'd. Our minds have some sorta uber-analysis taht says, "ok, that's stupid. doing this or anything like it is MOST likely stupid. let's try the smarter ways first."

      Probably due to lack of spacial awareness or something, but computers just suck when it comes it... at least now.
      --

      --
      "I'm not bright. Big words confuse me. But Wanda loves me and that should be enough for you." - Cosmo

    27. Re:I disagree... by bug-eyed+monster · · Score: 1

      If you compare a chess program to human mental capacity, I'd say the computer and its chess program are equal or better at being trained for something. Basically, the computer has been trained by a group of programmers to play chess really well.

      But if you feed the computer the rules for poker, can the computer put two and two together and eventually learn to play poker with relative success, without specific training by programmers?

      To me that's one requisite for intelligence, the ability to play a reasonable game with nothing other than raw rules and some practice.

    28. Re:I disagree... by cduffy · · Score: 1

      To me that's one requisite for intelligence, the ability to play a reasonable game with nothing other than raw rules and some practice.

      Quite a lot of AI techniques work this way -- genetic algorithms, neural networks (presuming some iterative training based on review of its actions, etc). The real trick is coming up with a "goodness function" which can be used for training -- once the machine has a function that it can seek to optimize, one can pretty much just let it go and figure out how to actually do the optimization itself given examples to watch and/or practice trying itself. Right now, though, that goodness function pretty much has to be written by hand and is very specific to what the AI in question is trying to do.

      I'm fairly sure us humans (presuming, of course, that you're one) have a "goodness function" too -- though it's not a single number but a set of neurochemicals and other brain state -- and that we tend to learn to take actions which maximize this function (via receiving praise from others, satisfying basic needs, curiosities, etc). That said, coming up with a good general purpose one that could be used by a computer is no doubt far easier said than done.

      All that said: I spent more time back at university in AI classes than most (and under some very good professors), but I by no means claim to be an expert on the subject; my knowledge is quite heavily weighted towards theoretical as opposed to practical content.

    29. Re:I disagree... by cca93014 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      After studying AI and Cognitive Science at University, the best definition of Intelligence that I heard was:

      "Only intelligent beings can make stupid decisions"

      It kind of encapsulates the problem with AI really nicely; whenever you try and define it, all you are really doing is pushing the definition requirement into another area.

      People have been arguing this since Plato, and IMHO have not made much headway since. If anything computer models have only confused the issue. Until this problem is solved, you cant create AI? How can you create something that you cannot adequately define?

      Having said that, neural networks and emergent behaviours are cool ;)

    30. Re:I disagree... by nathanh · · Score: 1
      I disagree with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man".

      And I've yet to find anybody saying such a thing.

    31. Re:I disagree... by Jesus+2.0 · · Score: 1

      I would be very surprised if that chess program was written by only one person, so in truth the human is playing against a group, who have the combined knowledge of thier chess intelligence plus the whole history of chess they can reference.

      I don't think that's entirely accurate.

      I'm pretty confident that it would be significantly easier for me to write a chess program that is better than me at chess than it would be for me to become as good as that hypothetical program.

    32. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not even that. It would only prove that a team of humans can beat a single human in chess, using highly specialized tools. This bizarre shift to "The computer is doing it!" is completely bogus.

    33. Re:I disagree... by be-fan · · Score: 5, Informative

      Its not so much a matter of computers doing things one way and humans doing things another way, but a matter of both being bound to the rules of computational theory. There is a large solution space, and both humans and computers have to decide what parts of the solution space to search and what parts to ignore. They have to do this, even if they do not do this in the same way. That's all that pruning the search space really means.

      Now, just because you don't do it conciously doesn't mean you don't do it. Your brain does an incredible amount of processing behind your back. Think about visual processing or auditory processing. All of that goes on completely outside of your concious thought.

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    34. Re:I disagree... by KD5YPT · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually I would disagree against the statement that human and computer are doing essentially the same thing. For one, computer will actually simulate every possible move to ensure there will be no mistaks. Human mind, on the other hand, once they have a general strategy in mind, they only focus on critical pieces. This is also the part where human make mistakes, since mentally, a human cannot possibly anticipate every possible move and prune it. Consciously or sub-consciously.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    35. Re:I disagree... by spencerogden · · Score: 1

      Isn't your post called "setting up a straw man"? I haven't heard anyone compare chess playing ability in a computer with general intelligence.

    36. Re:I disagree... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      However, the problem I see with a Go program is that it's moves are quite limited (it's more then chess, granted). Once a computer have enough time, memory or hard-drive space. It can use brute force to calculate every possible move to the end game, prune out all the sure lose branches, lower the preferences on move that will give the opponent an "active" roll at defining outcomes (in another word, try not to make moves that will rely on opponent's mistakes). And finally, store the entire data tree into a massive hard-drive, and the computer got the best rule book for Go to paly by and win constantly. Of course, assuming someone is willing to run a computer for that long and invest in a computer with Tera-tera bytes of memory.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    37. Re:I disagree... by twiddlingbits · · Score: 1

      If all you are at chess is someone who knows the basics, yes I agree. But it takes someone pretty advanced to program strategies and deep look aheads (i.e. search space pruning) I seriously doubt they do it by brute force computing of all possible moves. I'm a pretty good programmer but I wouldn't know how to program the computer to give up this piece in favor of having a possible tiny strategic advantage 25 moves later. Early in my career I worked in AI, and we always used experts to tune systems for the best performance, and I'm sure they do that today as well. I suspect once the match is over a lot of the details of how that program was developed will be available. I suspect a team of programmers and very good Master chess players developed it. We shall see.

    38. Re:I disagree... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      A different reason we reject moves, not because our mind was processing every possible outcome, but because our mind "access" from its past experience, judging from the pattern on the board, and automatically weed out any moves that from experience that just won't work. Also, once we made a move before that was very good, sometimes the mind would just decide on that move without doing any further processing. Of course, I do agree that no matter what, humans uses MASSIVE processing power when solving complex problem. How else do you think master chess players loses on average of 20 pounds during major tournaments?

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    39. Re:I disagree... by spazzm · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "Humans just don't play that way. When a human rejects the vast majority of possible moves he's not even considering them."

      What you counsciously think your brain is doing and what your brain subconsciously is actually doing might be two different things, you know.

    40. Re:I disagree... by Now15 · · Score: 1

      > "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man"

      It's the other way around. If Kasparov wins, it means that man is a better computer than a computer. :)

      --

      Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
    41. Re:I disagree... by tomstdenis · · Score: 1

      While I suck at chess....

      Before I do even start my turn I check what pieces I could move [regardless of the risk]. Then I look for the pieces I can move that jeopardize the opponents pieces the most [e.g. rank them by their value]. Then I assess the top by the risk to me....

      This is "pruning" . I suspect that many others play along the same lines. What does vary greatly is peoples ability to rank [more accurate] the value of a move [e.g. the risk] as well as lookahead further.

      Clearly the more accurate the model and the further you look the better you will do.

      Tom

      --
      Someday, I'll have a real sig.
    42. Re:I disagree... by p2sam · · Score: 1

      While I'm not a chess player, nor even an AI person... just because you could not understand the mechanisms behind your decisions in finding a proper move, doesn't necessarily mean that they are not the same for any particular AI chess program.

      Also note the Turing test does not care about the mechanisms for generating apparent intelligent capabilities, only the result matters.

    43. Re:I disagree... by xenocide2 · · Score: 1

      First, I must admit I'm horrible at chess. I've beaten other human players at it, but I suspect that doesn't make me not horrible at it, since I have also never defeated a computer opponent. Plus I actually moved my knight back once. =/

      Now, its interesting that you say that you eliminate moves instantly because they're moving backwards rather than forwards and in fact never consider them. But how many people consider moving a pawn first, outside of the opening game? Very few, but they're probably grand masters (or possibly not too bright). Chess is an odd game, in that its possible to lose the game without losing more than one (or two if you count the king) pieces, and pretty early too. Of course, you'd have to suck pretty bad to lose to the four move checkmate. So on one hand, winning through slow attrition is not nessecary, and may not even work. But on the other hand, your pieces afford you some degree of protection, since the victory was credited to a superior pawn formation. I suspect most people focus on whittling their opponents down too much, but there's a benefit to having to think about less pieces (hopefully less than symmetric).

      How do we even know that moving a piece to a certian place won't do us any good? In the case of your knight, we know because we just moved it forward. Because you just moved it a short while ago, you have some memory about where it is and isn't useful. Combine that with a knowledge of opening moves and the game of chess, and you'd more likely focus on moving it forward, or moving another piece.

      But basic game tree search works pretty well about reasoning, despite your admonitions. You don't prune a search tree, perhaps, but you still consider a few options, examine what you think your opponent will do, and perhaps form a plan based on that. Thats the basis of game tree search, and some of the reasoning I go through. Rather than examine every individual move's consequence, I focus on the back row pieces, the stuff that feels like it has more impact.

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    44. Re:I disagree... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      There's alway the brute force approach that uses the following rules.
      1. Brute forcefully play all the game to the end, stop each move when the same previous board state is met (make one move, check all past moves, if duplicated, stop).
      2. Prune out all moves that a computer can make that ensures a loss.
      3. Mark all branches that a computer can make that ensures a win (basically, look for series moves that regardless of opponent actions, computer will win).
      4. Make moves by computer that will allow opponent make a move that will lead to a computer loss as the least preferred moves (in another word, place any moves by computer that will give its opponent a statistically better chance at winnning).
      5. Make moves by computer that will diminish oppoenent's chance of winning at preferred one.
      6. After any subsequent game played, if the computer wins, raise preferences for moves that were used in that game. If the comptuer loses, lower the preferences for moves that were used in that game.

      Of course, although this might make a computer extremely good at chess, you're talking about massive hard-drive spaces to store all those outcomes, and VERY, VERY large processing power. (Millions of cray computer perhaps).

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    45. Re:I disagree... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      This goodness function has a name, it's called conditioning. Humans are "rewarded" when they accomplish a desire outcome, therefore pushing them for more actions that will lead to a desire outcome.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    46. Re:I disagree... by iabervon · · Score: 2, Interesting

      A computer will be intelligent when it is capable of learning things which are entirely new, by applying its knowledge, trying things, general reasoning, and developing new representations. Chess is fine, go is fine, but I'll be impressed when a chess program goes on the internet and learns to play go.

      There have been a series of problems that people have posed with the idea that they couldn't be solved without giving the program the ability to figure out the problem. Each time, however, people figure out how to solve the problem without giving the computer general intelligence. But the problems weren't definitions of intelligence ("Intelligence is what is necessary to play chess"), but rather people thought (incorrectly) that the problems couldn't be solved without intelligence.

      On the other hand, there is a cluster of problems which have not been solved, despite many attempts, which are not intended to be difficult (which can be overcome eventually with clever coding and fast hardware), but rather which explicitly require undirected learning and the ability to generalize to new applications.

      Of course, many of the problems originally posed as measures of intelligence were, in fact, problems that people wanted solutions to, because they were difficult for people. So the effort put into solving these problems without trying to use general intelligence is actually worthwhile.

    47. Re:I disagree... by be-fan · · Score: 1

      For one, computer will actually simulate every possible move to ensure there will be no mistaks.
      >>>>>>>>>>>>
      But they don't! That's the whole point of pruning! Deciding what parts of the search space not to simulate!

      --
      A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
    48. Re:I disagree... by Bi()hazard · · Score: 5, Informative

      When humans play they rely primarily on pattern matching rather than searching a tree (unless they suck). Computers tend to be very poor at pattern matching, and humans tend to be extremely good-that's why a small child can look at photographs and categorize them instantly, but the most advanced computers have great difficulty with that kind of task.

      Most skilled human chess players apply pattern matching by looking at the board and identifying interesting things. They start with nothing and add new options to the list until they feel they have a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the situation.

      Search tree pruning, by contrast, starts by including the entire space of potential moves and identifying courses of action that can be eliminated. Alpha-beta pruning is a particularly poor example here since it has the useful property that all a-b pruned subtrees are guaranteed not to be optimal. However, humans often ignore superior courses of action and choose suboptimal ones that "feel right" or match prior experience.

      There have been various experiments on the limits of raw pattern matching ability with chess pieces. An interesting one involved asking participants to memorize an arrangement of pieces and reconstruct it a minute after the arrangement is removed. Participants included people with little or no chess experience and masters.

      Those without experience memorized it as raw data, and did as well as they would have if asked to memorize random numbers instead of chess arrangements. The masters were more interesting. They did about the same as the beginners on random arrangements that could never actually happen in a game, but they were infinitely better at reconstructing realistic arrangements that often show up in games. The experiments proved that masters can recognize groups of pieces and evaluate them collectively.

      In a game situation this means the master looks at the board, and certain parts of it just stand out. The master will pay no attention to areas that don't grab his attention, and doesn't need to evaluate whether any of those individual pieces are worth moving. Interestingly, this means that playing with nonstandard rules (such as changing piece movements) will likely devastate a master's ability while only slightly reducing an amateur's skill level and leaving the computer's ability unchanged.

      Even though I think the parent is a troll, here's an academic article detailing some other experiments on the topic.

    49. Re:I disagree... by iion_tichy · · Score: 1

      "When a human rejects the vast majority of possible moves he's not even considering them. Pruning a search tree--what a computer is doing--entails actually exploring each move on the tree as far as it can."

      No, pruning actually means cutting off a branch before exploring it, that is, not to explore it. I don't see how you would play chess without doing that. Of course it's the heuristics (to prune or not to prune) where humans and computers differ.

    50. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Alpha-beta pruning does not search the entire tree. That's the whole point. The computer only calculates enough to see whether a strategy makes sense or not. It doesn't need to follow a strategy to its conclusion to know that. Humans have identical behaviour. We're just not aware why we reject strategies (though we can make up reasons for it if we want to), whereas computers are. So in a sense you could say the way computers play chess is more intelligent, because at least they know what they're doing.

    51. Re:I disagree... by cduffy · · Score: 1

      Your definition is incomplete. Certainly, humans will learn to seek rewards (rewards being things that cause the "goodness function" to evaluate high) -- but how is it determined what items have a high "goodness function" such that they function as a reward? The goodness function, then, isn't entirely determined *by* rewards; indeed, the goodness function determines what things *are* rewards.

      Describing conditioning as the be all and end all of human behaviour is also incomplete -- ones' hunger for food, ones' need for affection, or even traits like curiosity are largely inbuilt -- though I'll certainly grant that conditioning later modifies the associated weightings.

      One final bit -- I don't know if I need to spell this out, but might as well. A "goodness function" is called such not because it necessarily makes a human good, but earns its name as it's used to interpret how good one's curent state is versus how good ones' state would be if one just did $FOO. For selfish people this "goodness" function could evaluate high on a course of action that hurts others but results in personal gain, for instance), while folks with higher empathy weightings (however those are established -- I can think of a few plausible guesses but they're just that) more quickly decrease a scenario's goodness rating based on harm done to others.

      In summary: Condition certainly affects later behaviour as it modifies the weights used in decisionmaking (including goodness-function evaluation). That said, humans are born with a pre-built goodness function -- if not our brains wouldn't know which stimuli to treat as rewards and to seek for. Coming up with a good equivalent to that inbuilt goodness function is a Hard Problem in artificial intelligence, and coming up with a general solution has a lot of potential to make AI problem-solving techniques we already posess much more useful in the context of building "strong" AI.

    52. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Every time we are able to write a computer program to solve a problem that we thought required intelligence, we conclude, "Oh, then that can't be what we meant by intelligence" rather than "The computer has now achieved intelligence."


      You make it sound as though there's something wrong with that. Decades ago, it was perfectly reasonable to assume that chess required intelligence because the only "things" that could successful were, by definition, imbued with intelligence. That computers can now play chess successfully, indicates that chess doesn't require intelligence as the computer clearly doesn't exhbibit any accept in a chess sense. It's circular logic.
    53. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could he have?

      From what I've seen, the great chess players are semi-autistic misfits that wouldn't amount to anything without chess.

    54. Re:I disagree... by admiralh · · Score: 1
      Just because an airplane does not flap its wings to fly like a bird does, is it really not flying? On the contrary, airplanes are better fliers than birds.

      "Better" depends upon the qualities used to define relative worth. Can airplanes fly faster than birds? Of course. Can airplanes take off and land without 5,000-foot long runways? Not many. Can airplanes take off and land on a telephone wire? No. Can airplanes fly using only birdseed as fuel? No. Can airplanes continually avoid becoming Wile E. Coyote's dinner? ... Sorry, I got carried away.

      Obviously, aeronautical engineers have been successful in designing effective flying machines. But these flying machines are not "artificial birds". Likewise, computer scientists have developed programs that do well-defined tasks like playing chess very well. But I believe that this is not truly "artificial intelligence" precisely because the computer doesn't approach the problem the same way we do. The researchers can solve the problems however they choose to, and that solution will have value. However, unless the solution involves the same processes a human mind would use, it's not what I consider AI.

      --
      Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
    55. Re:I disagree... by gribbly · · Score: 2, Interesting

      How can you create something that you cannot adequately define?

      Evolve it.

      grib

      --
      maybe
    56. Re:I disagree... by mikera · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have to say that I still think that humans and computers use essentially the same algorithm. Even the very best chess players search and prune a tree of moves.

      Of course, grandmasters don't think of this as searching and pruning a tree, but that's what they are doing subconciously. If they didn't, they'd get obliterated in tactical exchanges.

      The main difference between the human and computer tree searches is simply that the computers are far better (faster) at searching while the humans are far better at pruning and evaluation (thanks to the pattern matching you mention).

      Humans simply ignore (prune) the vast majority of possible moves, so their "search tree" has a very low branching factor. I wouldn't be surprised if the average was less than 2 for top players, so they can look very deeply into a position without considering many alternative lines.

      The other advantage that humans have is that they are much better at considering "strategic" aspects when evaluationg a position. It's very hard to get computers to recognise these. But in effect, this just means that the human has a much better evaluation function, so this is still consistent with the fundamental tree search approach. Like the parent post says, this ability doubtless involves considering groups of pieces using pattern matching etc.

      The other interesting thing that humans do is remember aspects of the position which they subconciously make use of while doing move search and position evaluation, e.g. the existence of a pin or potential fork threat. My own style of play uses this quite a bit - I like to look for threats and weaknesses then try to find lines that will help me exploit them.

      In this way, humans seem to be doing a kind of "directed search" which is theoretically possible in a computer's tree search but I've never seen actually implemented in computer chess. Anyone seen anything like this in a tree search algorithm? I think there could be potential for research in this area.

    57. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      I agree that winning in chess (especially machines that are tailored for one player) isn't the end of it. However, I disagree with your view of efficiency. Yes, computers won't be as efficient as humans but so what? If a computer can beat you in everything, it is "superior". It doesn't matter if it is inefficient as long as it wins.

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    58. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 0

      I would say (this is just my definition; take it for what it's worth :) ) intelligence is when something is self-aware and can develop NEW thoughts (ie. learn). Computers aren't really smart and likely won't be for a long time because they don't do anything NEW. All they do is to go through pre-defined algorithms, and use pre-defined techniques. Even so-called learning algorithms are very primitive and very little new thoughts are generated.

      If someone can design a computer that comes up with totally new thoughts, it is intelligent in my book. So, instead of just using existing algorithms, if a computer can create a totally new algorithm, it is intelligent...

      Having said that, if computers become intelligent, we'll have all sorts of problems...

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    59. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      Computers CAN become superior to humans. I'm not sure if it will happen but it CAN happen. All that needs to happen is for them to become 'self-aware' or start LEARNING. An intelligent computer will be able to generate NEW thoughts, algorithms, processes, etc. Therefore, it would be superior to humans. For example, an intelligent computer will be able to develop a NEW method to travel in space long before humans do. In other words, it can think of new things before humans that. THAT, my dear robot-loving friend ;), is SCARY!

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    60. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      What YOU said is irrelevant; what he said is more relevant. Attacking tanks is not part of flying, but diving fast and come out gracefully is. A bird is a far better flier than a plane. Perhaps the only thing the planes are better at is maximum speeds and things like that. In terms of control, movement, etc birds are better...

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    61. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      You must be the father of these chess-playing computers... you guys must share the same genes... you all think the same ;)

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    62. Re:I disagree... by GauteL · · Score: 1

      You might not understand this, but not all people reading Slashdot has English as their native language.

      I would actually say that considering that my main language is Norwegian, my english is pretty damn good. How is your Norwegian by the way?

    63. Re:I disagree... by admiralh · · Score: 1

      I had heard that some Christian fundamentalists (e.g. Pat Roberton, Jerry Falwell) at one time used the lack of female grandmasters as a sign that women were mentally inferior to men. Unfortunately, I can't find any quotes online, so we'll file that in the "Urban Legend" for now.

      Garry Kasparov has also made statements that he doesn't believe that women will ever play at the ability of top men. True, the "intelligence" word is not used, but it is certainly implied.

      --
      Hopelessly pedantic since 1963.
    64. Re:I disagree... by superyooser · · Score: 1

      That's a great point. This match does not represent man vs. machine. It is man vs. man. It's just that one side is using a machine to be their proxy player. The computer didn't come up with its strategies on its own. Its knowledge is the sum of its creators' knowledge. If the computer wins, it still has zero chess-playing ability of its own. All we can say is that it's a good puppet for its programmer overlords.

    65. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You hit on the difference. You aren't 'pruning the search tree', you are actively developing a plan. Your plan might be as simple as bring your knights into play or something more complex like threatening your opponent's rook on one side in order to force hime to move a pawn so that...etc.

      You don't have to search and reject all possibilities because you have a desired outcome and only need to search possibilities that will advance or hinder that specific plan. That's what makes humans better at chess or go or whatever, and it doesn't have anything to do with pattern-matching. It is determination, a desired outcome, and the ability to change not only the outcome, but what outcome is desired that is the difference between 'thinking' and 'processing data',

    66. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just because a human can use the same techniques a computer does in playing chess, does not mean the human is limited to using only the techniques programmed into the computer.

    67. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Computers CAN'T become 'self-aware' or start LEARNING. Ergo, they cannot become superior to humans, if that is your measure of superiority.

      I, for one, welcome the continued reign of our fleshy, self-aware, capable-of-learning-but-choosing-not-to, human overlords.

    68. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is $FOO a reference to a pointer to a function?

    69. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not proof, but definitely a sign.

    70. Re:I disagree... by mikec · · Score: 1

      I play a lot of chess, and I "prune search trees" all the time. Whenever I way to myself "oops, that loses a piece; no need to look further" I have pruned a search tree.

    71. Re:I disagree... by Pakaran2 · · Score: 1

      Well a lot of them are/were to some extent mentally/neurologically less than healthy. But if Kasparov has such problems (which I've never heard stated) that does not reflect on humans in general; nor would it prevent him from working in another field.

      Gates and Einstein are both believed to have Aspergers. And I'm diagnosed with it, so I would appreciate you not making those kinds of blanket remarks.

    72. Re:I disagree... by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      Why do you say they cannot become conscious or start leaning?

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
    73. Re:I disagree... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I can tell you I've never once in my life 'pruned a search tree.'

      You did. Each time you tried to compute a combinaison, which you find unsuccessful, you actually pruned the search tree by not looking further. Even the moves you aren't considering are a result of you pruning the search tree quite early.

    74. Re:I disagree... by xenocide2 · · Score: 1

      Interesting aspect, but I think you can say the same applies to computers as well. Only, their goal is "checkmate the opponent" rather than "take the queen's rook." If the computer thinks that rook is the only thing stopping it, then eventually it will take it.

      They say there's a prohibitive number of states to consider to brute force chess. I agree that simply using some form of dynamic programming to build a large pattern matching database isn't very intelligent, but I can't help but think that eventually we'll be at a point where one can consider trying just that.

      --
      I Browse at +4 Flamebait

      Open Source Sysadmin

    75. Re:I disagree... by drunkenbatman · · Score: 1

      I play a lot of chess and I can tell you I've never once in my life 'pruned a search tree.' Humans just don't play that way. When a human rejects the vast majority of possible moves he's not even considering them. Pruning a search tree--what a computer is doing--entails actually exploring each move on the tree as far as it can. Then it assigns it a numerical value and orders the moves.

      Some would say that is exactly what you're doing, just that your brain does it in such a way that you aren't consciously aware of it.

      IE, we know our brain looks for patterns in everything it sees, matching them up against our vast store of patterns we've come to recognize. You can see this when you look at a cloud, or a piece of wood's grain, and see shapes/people.

      Your brain has actually been processing the pattern against it's knowledge store, trying to see what it references, but you just go "hey, that looks like an elephant" once it's found what it considers to be its closest match. You aren't consciously aware of it.

      You can of course do the process consciously, just as you can do cause/effect scenarios. But when someone throws a ball at you, you are subconsciously working things through- trajectory, gravity, speed, all of which are handled in the dirty parts of your brain. You just catch it.

  6. Checkmate by lewko · · Score: 5, Funny

    Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with
    a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.

    --
    Do you or your partner snore? - Visit www.snoring.com.au
    1. Re:Checkmate by zeux · · Score: 2, Funny
      Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with
      a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.


      Actually, that would be the ultimate proof of winning for Fritz.
    2. Re:Checkmate by Wylfing · · Score: 5, Funny
      Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.

      And that is why Fritz sent a Terminator back in time, to get rid of Kasparov before he was born.

      --
      Our intelligent designer has never created an animal that we couldn't improve by strapping a bomb to it.
    3. Re:Checkmate by Databass · · Score: 1


      If Kasparov can remember exactly how he built that "strong pawn structure", can he win in the exact same way again?

    4. Re:Checkmate by gnu-generation-one · · Score: 1

      "And that is why Fritz sent a Terminator back in time, to get rid of Kasparov before he was born."

      They already did. That's why we've only got Kasparov to play for us, as the robots already went back in time to kill O'Leary before he was born.

    5. Re:Checkmate by NeoPotato · · Score: 2, Funny

      And that is why Fritz sent a Terminator back in time, to get rid of Kasparov before he was born.

      Except Deep Blue, Kasparov's original nemesis, is sent back to protect him!

    6. Re:Checkmate by rlafflick · · Score: 1

      the programmers or groomers are going to tweak the computer not to respond with the same moves. Also, the computer will be playing with white pieces next go so it would be the one with the first move and such an advantage.

    7. Re:Checkmate by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No, the Terminator only had to go back and start a fire in O'Leary's great-great-grandmother's place...

      -cmh

  7. There's the human advantage exposed right there by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

    Kasparov created a positional advantage on the queen side with a very strong pawn structure to which Fritz didn't have an answer.

    Well, what can poor Fritz, a cold emotionless computer, do when a handsome russian stallion of a man puts his pawn on the queen's side? Of course he didn't have an answer ...

    --
    "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    1. Re:There's the human advantage exposed right there by AbbyNormal · · Score: 2, Funny

      Silly Chess players. When will they learn that it is not the Strength of your pawn structure, but how well you use it.

      --
      Sig it.
    2. Re:There's the human advantage exposed right there by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      I think Kasparov knows how to use a strong Pawn structure.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
  8. Other AI programs by ekephart · · Score: 4, Interesting

    For those interested in AI game programming without the insane complexities of chess, Nine Men's Morris is fun. Also a frequently researched topic in AI.

    Play here.

    --
    sig
  9. on the fritz by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It seems like the interface has been the major hang up for kasparov. Maybe he's finally got the hang of it.

  10. Kasparov's Comment by BinBoy · · Score: 5, Funny

    Kasparov: pwned!

    Programmer: No way! Look at my ping. It was lag!

    1. Re:Kasparov's Comment by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Boy you're funny ...
      No really, I mean it.

      (Dad always told me to say nice things to retarded children so they don't feel bad)

    2. Re:Kasparov's Comment by LostCluster · · Score: 1

      This match may be in 3d, but I can assure you ping speeds are not an issue. :)

  11. Someone tell us about the computer by zymano · · Score: 1

    How much more powerful is this computer vs the last one ? Is Kasparov changing his strategy versus the last time he played the computer ?

    Thanks.

    1. Re:Someone tell us about the computer by Bagels · · Score: 1

      Actually, less powerful, IIRC - this one was supposed to be programmed to play smarter, presumably through better algorithms that automatically eliminate some of the dumber moves.

      --
      --- Bwah?
    2. Re:Someone tell us about the computer by Ateryx · · Score: 1

      I was curious if anyone else heard the same tidbit of info:
      When Kas was playing Deep Blue or Deep Thought or one of the above, an interesting thing occured: Deep _____ continually recalculated its moves. This was not programmed into the program, and it happened several times throughout the matches.
      Is this an urban myth or AI oddity?
      Anyone?

      --
      "The truth suffers from too much analysis"
    3. Re:Someone tell us about the computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What do you think, brianiac? No computer is programmed with "AI", only with complex if/then logic. If it wasn't programmed, and it wasn't a physical error (bit swapping, etc.), then it DIDN'T HAPPEN.

    4. Re:Someone tell us about the computer by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      I would assume it was a program glitch, a bug in the program that make it do that. Or the algorithm actually "asked" the processor to recalculate it, while the programmer might no be aware of it.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    5. Re:Someone tell us about the computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Similar computer, similar program in terms of strength but entirely different. In other words, this computer is about as good but in different ways. Kasparov has finally adopted largely anti-computer strategies for this match, a process which has been going on since his very first computer game.

  12. Only a matter of time.. by js3 · · Score: 0

    given a finite amount of time the human brain can figure out how to solve any problem. I'm sure in a couple of years no machine can beat Kaspharov. Imho computers are 100 years too early to even compete with the human brain

    --
    did you forget to take your meds?
    1. Re:Only a matter of time.. by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 3, Funny

      given a finite amount of time the human brain can figure out how to solve any problem.

      Okay, I give you 10 seconds to demonstrate the Fermat theorem : 1..2..3 ...

      Imho computers are 100 years too early to even compete with the human brain

      [/me checks the date]
      No, I knew I was right, it is 2003.

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:Only a matter of time.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If it is theorem it means it is already proved, i think you mean the Fermant conjeture.

    3. Re:Only a matter of time.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I meant the Fermat theorem.

    4. Re:Only a matter of time.. by nihilogos · · Score: 1

      given a finite amount of time the human brain can figure out how to solve any problem.

      I give you 1000 years to solve the Riemann hypothesis. Of course only about 70 of those years will be of any use to you :)

      --
      :wq
    5. Re:Only a matter of time.. by Quill_28 · · Score: 1

      What are you talking about?

      Eventually a computer player will be so good it will be impossible to beat.

      You can't beat a computer at tic-tac-toe, connect four, and checkers, so one day it will be impossible to beat a computer at chess.

    6. Re:Only a matter of time.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      thats correct, there is a finite number of moves, once the computer knows all of them, and can reference them fast enough, it will simply be impossible to win (unless you play white- black will lose everytime)

  13. Move list by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is there a place on the site that lets you step through the game move by move? I couldn't find it.

    1. Re:Move list by 0tim0 · · Score: 1
      Just click 'view live.' That'll give you a flash popup with play, fwd, back buttons...

      --t

    2. Re:Move list by superfast-scooter · · Score: 1

      "watch live now!"

  14. Whew! by ChicoLance · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There is a lot of relief here to me, as a spectator. The first game had Garry as white with a strong opening and everything looked good, then due to some dubious moves, it was a drawn game.

    The second game on Thursday had Garry as black beat pretty much from the beginning. Garry fought back very well and might have drawn the game, but then foolishly blundered which cost him the game almost immediately. You could see the frustration level just go through the roof, as he's still trying to prove that he's better than the computer, but only to be beaten by the slow, steady computer approach.

    But today, he's redeemed himeself. Although the match is now tied, he has shown that he can win against the computer. I feel better. :)

    The last game will be difficult for Garry as black. But the fact that he won an game, and didn't draw them all has got to have him elated.

    1. Re:Whew! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Chess is all about memorizing moves and running through as many combinations of potential moves as possible as fast as you can. Clearly, a computer can do both of these tasks much faster. That doesn't mean a computer is "smarter". It just means that the computer can do a specific mundane task much faster than a human can. big deal. That's like saying a toaster is better than I am because it can heat toast up faster than I could by rubbing bread between my hands.

    2. Re:Whew! by etyam · · Score: 1

      Kasparov had a very good position in game two too. Not winning, but definately an edge over white. However, his Rg7 threw all that away of course. But he was absolutely not "beat from the beginning" in game 2.

    3. Re:Whew! by imsabbel · · Score: 1

      i dont know any reason why you should feel better when a man wins agains a computer in a search tree dominated game.

      ITs like getting a depression about cars being faster then beautiful horses or planes flying faster than birds...

      --
      HI O WISE PRINCE. WHT TOOK U SO DAM LONG?
    4. Re:Whew! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      game 2 showed how humans can suck badly by making obvious mistakes.

      game 3 showed how computers can suck badly by being incapable of planning.

      perhaps, on some level, there's a connection.
      The best chess comes from a man like Kasparov checking his moves through fritz to weed out tactical blunders.

  15. Battle chess by zokum · · Score: 2, Funny

    So, does anyone know when all this fancy AI will be backported into Battle Chess?

    --
    Rest in peace Malin "looxn" Kristiansen. We miss you...
    1. Re:Battle chess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DARPA have officially launched the Battlechess 2004 competition - open to everybody who wants to enter. Robot warriors will have to fight their way from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 10 hours. First prize is a million dollars.

      DARPA have since annouced that there are only 25 places. These will be allocated on a first come, first served basis, with the early teams being able to gain extra points by wiping out unfinished droid teams en route. After the confusion and bad organisation surrounding previous competitions, DARPA are convinced they have got it right this time...

    2. Re:Battle chess by whiteranger99x · · Score: 2, Funny

      To hell with Battle Chess, I say put it in Archon!!! >:)

      --
      Join the TWIT army now!
    3. Re:Battle chess by Little+Brother · · Score: 1
      About the time WB gets a hold of the copyright to Battle Chess after realizing the similarity to Wizard's Chess in the Harry Potter books. (WB, in case you've been living under a rock, owns the rights to merchandise Harry Potter products) Then there will be a complete rewrite and it will be realeased as "Harry Potter Wizzard Chess" and chess playing among the under 13 crowd will go up tenfold.

      Unless this has already happened and my predictions about the popularity were wrong, of course.

      And no, the under 13 crowd will never play on skill level 1000 (level which must not be named) but the fact that they COULD will be a selling point.

      --

      Little Brother, watching the watchers

    4. Re:Battle chess by RevMike · · Score: 1

      I have a copy of Sargon 3 on 5 1/4" floppy. Can I gat this stuff backported to that?

  16. crap by s33l3t · · Score: 0

    if the computer ends up winning and skynet gets ahold of that technology we're all in BIG trouble

  17. Eight Pawn Chess by __aanonl8035 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I play a little chess. When I was younger I had a 1600 rating. I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo. So I practiced and finally became good enough to beat the computer (albiet only a Nintendo) What I learned then (and seems to be common knowledge among chess players) is that when playing a computer, you stand a much better chance if you keep all your pawns on the board and manouver your pieces behind them. Computers think about the game in a very different manner, and I think eight pawn chess highlights where their weakness lies. They do not have a plan. They do not start the game with a long term plan to the ending. I believe that in the past, Garry was a true sportsman and did not play eight pawn chess against the strongest computers. He played real chess. He played what he would play against another Grandmaster. I really think he could probably beat the computer almost all of the time by playing eight pawn chess.

    1. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by Rosco+P.+Coltrane · · Score: 4, Funny

      I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo.

      Good thing you latched on the chess game cartridge, otherwise you'd have grown a moustache, started wearing red overalls and sporting a strong Italien accent, and become a plumber ...

      --
      "A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
    2. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by dr_davel · · Score: 1

      Indeed, today's game was a fine example of eight-pawn chess. The computer played abysmally, worse than anyone would expect, choosing to shuffle pieces pointless back and forth rather than opening up the game the only way it could (along the f-file). Garry could have won this with one parietal lobe tied behind his back -- which must be super frustrating for him after losing the previous game.

      --
      Never eat anything bigger than your head.
    3. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by Craig3010 · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yeah and 3 Card Monte REALLY confuses the fuck out of them

    4. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not a terribly convincing syllogism there. It is highly likely that Fritz is more competent against your eight pawn strategy than your Nintendo.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    5. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by asavage · · Score: 1

      Actually it is a very good idea. By keeping the number of pieces on the board high, it greatly reduces how deep the computer can look. This is due to more branches in the search tree.

    6. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by colmore · · Score: 1

      Why is this? Is it simply because more pieces on the board = more moves for the computer to analyze = less deep prediction?

      Do you think that a state-of-the-art system like the one Gary is playing would have the same simple blunder as your NES?

      --
      In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
    7. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by QBobWatson · · Score: 2, Informative
      I don't think this applies to Fritz. From the interview with #2 player Vladimir Kramnik after his 2002 match with Fritz, when asked if he's trying to play "anti-computer chess", he replies:


      In my preparation I tried to play this kind of anti-computer strategy, in some rapid training games. I could see clearly that it's not working anymore. The positional technique of this program is so much higher than years ago. It pushes pawns, builds the center, and begins activity on the flank. You cannot play like this anymore against computers. So many things I looked at in my preparations simply didn't work. I was shocked to see the level of positional improvement they had made.


      I should note that IANAGM though.
    8. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by platypus · · Score: 1

      The problem with you theory is that the operators of fritz stated that Fritz set a new record of search depth in this game (19 ply, IIRC), just _because_ these many pieces blocked each other and limited the width of the search tree.
      No, the point is not many pieces per se, the point is to get to a closed position, where there's nothing interesting to see in the computer horizon.
      Sure, these kinds of closed positions normally need many pieces, but search depth isn't the problem.

    9. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by Gwala · · Score: 1

      No, he's being paid $25,000 extra if he win's, I think that's a good incentive, and if it isnt, it bloody well should be.

      -Gwala

      --
      #!/bin/csh cat $0
    10. Re:Eight Pawn Chess by wisdom_brewing · · Score: 1

      werent the overalls blue in the good old days?

  18. Televised Chess by porp · · Score: 5, Informative

    For those who receive ESPN/ESPN2, the sports network has televised all three matches and will televise the fourth on Tuesday at 1:00pm. I've watched all three games on there, and it's actually very entertaining, if only for the humor of seeing history's greatest chess player in action and wearing those stupid X3D goggles. I just hope Garry can pull off Game 4 with a win.

    porp

    1. Re:Televised Chess by jensend · · Score: 1

      You also get to watch Yasser Seriawan sit and shake his head as his yappy co-commentator talks continually about his opinions that Kasparov must be scared out of his wits because of the computer's latest move and that computers are destined to beat human players just about 100% of the time within 2 years.

  19. 1.2 Million TV viewers! by gyc · · Score: 1

    According to the X3D website's live commentary, 1.2 million people watched the match last Tuesday, double the regular viewership of the regular ESPN channel. Hopefully this bodes well for more televised chess in the future

  20. Two classic computer chess articles by purplejacket · · Score: 3, Informative

    I wrote an email to chessbase two months ago and actually got a response from Fred Friedel (the Chessbase president). I then replied to him about two classic articles I'd seen on chess as I was interested in seeing more of such in regard to the current match. They did some interesting statistical analysis (here's part five of a series, it links to the other parts) but, of course, I'm still hoping for more more more. Here's some of what I wrote in my email:

    In replying to my original email you asked if I had any specific thing I miss. I can reply that over time I've seen two really good articles on computer chess. The first was the cover story from Scientific American in 1990:
    http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005CCF 5-D9D7-1CF6-93F6809EC5880000
    It was about Kasparov vs. Deep Thought. The second was in 1997 from Byte Magazine:
    http://www.byte.com/art/9707/sec6/art6.htm
    The thing that stuck in my memory from the second article was this information:
    "Hsu told BYTE that his team chose the RS/6000SP because it was the best available IBM system for the job, even though its P2SC processors don't have the best integer performance. Although the P2SC lags in raw integer horsepower, the RS/6000SP largely makes up for it by uniting 32 of the processors in a parallel system architecture with high-speed, low-latency connections."

    I would be very interested to see the above sort of coverage of the current chess match. To put it in colloquial terms I'd like to see a big fat writeup of the workings of fritz, how it's design is broken down, how it makes tradeoffs between one kind of technique vs another, how it works with the intel architecture, how it uses null-move ordering, RAM caching, and how it fits into the history of human-chess matches.

    1. Re:Two classic computer chess articles by Starky · · Score: 1
      The Scientific American article returns "Error--Page Not Found".


      The only two articles the search engine returned for the string "Kasparov" were 1996 and 2001 articles. Is there somewhere else the article can be found?

      --
      -- My choice of computing platform is a symbol of my individuality and belief in personal freedom.
    2. Re:Two classic computer chess articles by YetAnotherLogin · · Score: 1

      You gotta remember to take out the space inserted by slashcode:

      http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005CCF 5-D9D7-1CF6-93F6809EC5880000

  21. darn flash... by anarcat · · Score: 1

    Anyone has a PGN file of the game somewhere? I'd like to study it in Xboard, and flash is lacking here.

    --
    Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
    1. Re:darn flash... by __aanonl8035 · · Score: 2, Informative

      http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic.html#news130 This Week in Chess

    2. Re:darn flash... by Davak · · Score: 2, Informative

      [Event "Man-Machine World Championship"]
      [Site "New York"]
      [Date "2003.11.16"]
      [Round "3"]
      [White "Garry Kasparov"]
      [Black "X3D Fritz"]
      [Result "*"]
      [ECO "D45"]
      [WhiteElo "2830"]
      [Annotator "Greengard,M"]
      [PlyCount "89"]

      {61MB, DELL8200} 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 d5 4. d4 c6 5. e3 a6 {
      Diverging from game one.} 6. c5 Nbd7 7. b4 a5 8. b5 e5 9. Qa4 Qc7 10. Ba3 e4
      11. Nd2 Be7 12. b6 Qd8 13. h3 O-O 14. Nb3 Bd6 15. Rb1 Be7 16. Nxa5 Nb8 17. Bb4
      Qd7 18. Rb2 Qe6 19. Qd1 Nfd7 20. a3 Qh6 21. Nb3 Bh4 22. Qd2 Nf6 23. Kd1 Be6 24.
      Kc1 Rd8 25. Rc2 Nbd7 26. Kb2 Nf8 27. a4 Ng6 28. a5 Ne7 29. a6 bxa6 30. Na5 Rdb8
      31. g3 Bg5 32. Bg2 Qg6 33. Ka1 Kh8 34. Na2 Bd7 35. Bc3 Ne8 36. Nb4 Kg8 37. Rb1
      Bc8 38. Ra2 Bh6 39. Bf1 Qe6 40. Qd1 Nf6 41. Qa4 Bb7 42. Nxb7 Rxb7 43. Nxa6 Qd7
      44. Qc2 Kh8 45. Rb3 *

    3. Re:darn flash... by Rick+and+Roll · · Score: 1

      I couldn't tell from your post whether you have flash installed. If you do, there is a "PGN" button to the right of all the VCR buttons, in the watch it live screen. I would post a link of it, but flash makes it a pain. Man, I hate flash.

  22. I love these stories... by Valar · · Score: 4, Interesting

    because they bring out so many people who bitterly complain and make excuses and want to challenge Fritz to a game of poker or something because it would give the human the advantage.

    This is far from the end of our species, chill out. Even if we are worse at chess than the computers, it doesn't make the experience of being human meaningless. It doesn't mean we will be welcoming our new robot overlords any time soon.

    Anyway, would it really be so bad, if AIs started getting better than humans at a lot of things? I think that in the end, we could take our greatest joy as a species in knowing that we created something better than ourselves.

    Of course, that is an issue so seperated from computer chess, that many of you are probably complaining to yourselves.

    That's how I feel when I read the excuse making and naysaying.

    1. Re:I love these stories... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was really upset when I discovered that humans had already created many machines that are better than us at various tasks. It crushed me to learn that there's a machine out there which is capable of moving more dirt per hour than the entire human race could probably manage. I was hurt to find out my car's paint job was the work of machines, and that all the ones and zeros arriving at my desktop from the internet are handled in some computer rather than by a desk of fully employed women in coveralls.

      FFS let's just build AI so we can go back to having sex all the time!

    2. Re:I love these stories... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      Hey, that's what all living things are about, procreation.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
  23. Is Fritz learning? by LostCluster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does Fritz learn from today's defeat... or could Kasparov repeat today's win simply by repeating today's move sequence on Tuesday?

    1. Re:Is Fritz learning? by reddish · · Score: 1

      He'd be advised not to do that, as Thursay, the colors are reversed :-)

    2. Re:Is Fritz learning? by geekoid · · Score: 2, Interesting

      well, the next match they will switch sides. It would be interesting if the computer tried his own stratagy against him.

      I am curious to find the answer to your question.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    3. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Bananenrepublik · · Score: 1

      No, because the computer will both keep evaluating today's match, and play another opening tomorrow. Apart from that the colors will be reversed ;-)

    4. Re:Is Fritz learning? by NotAnotherReboot · · Score: 1

      He was white today, which has the first move. Black has an inherent disadvantage that makes it much more difficult to win.

    5. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Zak3056 · · Score: 1

      Does Fritz learn from today's defeat... or could Kasparov repeat today's win simply by repeating today's move sequence on Tuesday?

      Your two questions are not actually related--on Tuesday, Kasparov will play the black pieces, so will not be able to reproduce his moves today. :)

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    6. Re:Is Fritz learning? by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Ignore the "they're switching colors" naysayers. We know what you were really asking.

      However, it is unlikely that anyone could win twice against a system like this simply by repeating the same move sequence. I don't claim to be an expert at computer chess, but I do know that most programs have a database of chess board configurations, along with information about the strength of the position. A sophisticated program like Fritz will add new boards as the game is played.

      The fact that the sequence led to the machine losing means that the machine is going to look for other alternatives the next time that board shows up.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    7. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Nate+Eldredge · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't most chess programs include some measure of non-determinism in their move choice, precisely so this isn't possible? For instance, if two different moves are found to have scores which are "close", the computer could select one at random.

      In the simplest case, there must be some random mechanism to choose which opening to play. It would be boring and weak to always use the same one.

      Probably Fritz will learn from this game, but I don't think that it's necessary in order to avoid meeting exactly the same defeat.

    8. Re:Is Fritz learning? by wviperw · · Score: 0

      I was wondering the exact same thing. Like, if Kaspy had won the 1st game as white, and then just remembered his moves, he could win the 3rd game as white the EXACT same way. But like others said, the Fritz has probably added the game to its memory. So, with the exact same white moves, it might not play the same responses, but slightly different ones. However, I somehow think that the slightly different ones it would play would still spell its doom unless it could prevent the 8-pawn lockup from the opening. During the match, the creator of Fritz commented that they wouldn't have time to fix the "problems" which Fritz very obviously exhibited this game in regards to queen-side closed chess, so if there WERE another game where Garry played as white, I bet he could pull off a VERY similar game successfully.

      --
      Nothing disturbs me more than blind loyalism towards some unrealistic and over-idealistic notion of one's nationality.
    9. Re:Is Fritz learning? by fishbonez · · Score: 3, Insightful
      I think the issue isn't that the computer will learn in between matches. I think the issue is that the computer will be reprogrammed in between matches.

      One of the main shortcomings of these matches is calling them "man versus machine". Because that's really a misnomer and obscures the actual situation. Which is, that the Kasparov is playing a computer program that is not thinking entirely for itself. A lot of the decisions that the program makes have been pre-programmed by the team of chess experts prior to each match. It's the group of experts that evaluates the opponent and decides the general strategy of each game.

      The program isn't altered in the middle of a game. But it also isn't Kasparov versus a completed chess program thinking for itself. I would go so far as to say the reprogramming during a multiple game match and the evaluation of the opponent by the chess experts is cheating. And really relegates these matches to novelties to be gawked at but not to be considered real.

      --
      Frylock: That's not a toy!
      Master Shake: You say that about everything you own. You should own toys. They're fun.
    10. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      That would depend heavily on Fritz's implementation details. While others have pointed out that the game was probably added to Fritz's library, there's other implementation details that would probably make repeating a game unlikely.

      For instance, a computer can think about a single move almost indefinitely (continually looking more moves ahead.) Fritz undoubtedly has certain algorithms that determine the cutoff point when it is ready to stop "thinking" and move. Fritz undoutably also spends time "thinking" during Kasparov's turn. If Kasparov were to try to duplicate a game, he would have to ensure that his moves were made at exactly the same time they were in the previous game, otherwise Fritz's thinking state would be different from the first time and it might come up with a move that is different (which would force Kasparov to deviate from the previous game.)

      The better answer is that this is a computer program which defeated the current world chess champion. It's programers are likely highly intelligent and would likely have built in some mechanism for Fritz learning from its mistakes. The better question is whether the approach (as in general strategy) that Kasparov used to defeat Fritz can be duplicated. It's not unlikely that Kasparov will be able to adapt to whatever adaptations Fritz comes up with.

    11. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Migrant+Programmer · · Score: 1
      The program isn't altered in the middle of a game. But it also isn't Kasparov versus a completed chess program thinking for itself. I would go so far as to say the reprogramming during a multiple game match and the evaluation of the opponent by the chess experts is cheating. And really relegates these matches to novelties to be gawked at but not to be considered real.

      At the beginning of the tournament, here is what we have:
      • Human has been able to observe all the public games involving the computer, and learn from them.
      • Computer has been able to observe all the public games involving the human, and "learn" from them.

      After one game played, here is what we have:
      • Human has been able to observe all the public games involving the computer, including the last one, and learn from them.
      • Computer has been able to observe all the public games involving the human, including the last one, and "learn" from them.

      Whether the computer's method of learning is "real" machine learning or custom programming makes no difference between the situation before the game and the situation after the game. Each opponent has the time and ability to learn from the first game. You don't suppose we could prevent Kasparov from evaluating the machine?

      So if you want to say "reprogramming during a multiple game match and the evaluation of the opponent by the chess experts is cheating," then you have to say the same thing about the initial programming in the first place.

      BTW, if you have a program that "thinks entirely for itself," I know some other AI researchers that would love to talk to you.
    12. Re:Is Fritz learning? by kavau · · Score: 2, Informative
      No, Fritz does not have a learning algorithm. The developers will surely analyze today's game and tweak Fritz accordingly, though.

      However, Kasparov won't be able to reproduce this exact game in the next game for two reasons:

      1) He has the black pieces in the next game, and

      2) Even if he would be playing white again, Fritz chooses opening moves and variants from his database with a random element. So it's very unlikely that two of the games will turn out exactly the same. In one of the previous matches, the Fritz developers were even allowed to change Fritz's opening preferences between the matches. So you can be sure they'll eliminate this line from Fritz's choices.

    13. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Kris_J · · Score: 1
      Don't most chess programs include some measure of non-determinism in their move choice, precisely so this isn't possible?
      No doubt the good ones do, but I remember the chinese chess version of Battle Chess for the PC had a six move checkmate that you could do any time you wanted at any difficulty level.
    14. Re:Is Fritz learning? by brucmack · · Score: 1

      No, Fritz will be playing the white pieces in game 4, so is in a better position to determine the board layout and play more to its strengths.

    15. Re:Is Fritz learning? by platypus · · Score: 1

      Fritz has an openings database and knows about the win/loose numbers of each opening. I bet he's able to record that loss and therefor degrade that opening.

    16. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's why we need Fischer-random chess, otherwise known as shuffle-chess.

      Sure, still have and endgame databases etc, but uptil then it's all rely on your wits (until a massive opening book for all shuffle chess possibilities is built up).

      I'd really like to see Fritz play a top-level K (or Anand) at shuffle chess. I have no idea which player would gain the advantage over real chess. I suspect the computer would gain most, humans would not be able to use the 'this move looks good' method because there would be too many starting configurations to build up intuition for. The more I think about, I'm pretty sure fritz would bust Kaspy's ass.

    17. Re:Is Fritz learning? by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 1

      Actually, I was only considering beating the computer twice with the exact same sequence of moves. Even barring reprogramming, the computer would have knowledge of the first game to rely on during the second. So at some point it will realize that it has to do something differently.

      I agree that having human experts deciding on overall strategy and reprogramming the system seriously compromises claims of "intelligence." But I don't see how following a set of preprogrammed rules constitutes "not thinking for itself." When a human uses an opening learned from a book, he's not necessarily turning over his intellectual capacities to the book. You also have to consider whether he understands the advantages of that opening, how he selected the opening, how he handles himself when the book runs out of instructions, and whether he can improvise if the opponent doesn't cooperate with the opening.

      Now, if we made the book bigger, to the point that it gave instructions for every possible game [big book], and the human slavishly followed it, then it would be the book playing chess, not the person. The human "player" wouldn't be able to make any claim of independent thought.

      But that's not how chess programs work, and if they did then we would have to say that the database the computer is using knows how to play chess pretty well. The program itself would be about three lines of code implementing a loop to query the database, and would therefore be considered non-intelligent.

      But in real programs, the database of known board positions is vastly smaller than in the previous example, so the program itself must be smarter in order to play well. How does it do that? By following a weighted set of rules.

      Yes, it will be a big day in AI when a program can adapt its own ruleset to the point that it can stand on its own two, er, feet. It will be an even bigger day when a program can take the most basic rules of chess, and generate a higher-level ruleset just through trial, error, and reflection.

      But in the meantime, I find the current state of the art to be pretty impressive. A decent computer program on the highest setting can consistently beat probably 99% of the population, with no "expert help". These systems know how to play chess pretty well. It's just that their capacity for self-introspection is less robust than ours.

      Finally, I find it difficult to believe that Kasparov isn't getting "expert help" between matches as well.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    18. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      well, kasparov will have the pieces on the other side of the board, so he wouldn't be able to repeat the sequence of moves.

      yes fritz has some fairly simplistic learning (when compared to human type learning).

      Even if he has the same pieces, several other factors play into whether fritz makes the same moves.

      Fritz uses an opening book and most likely wouldn't play the same opening.

      Fritz uses kasparov's time to "ponder" a position so if kasparov moves faster (as he probably would when following a line he already knows), then fritz will have less time to ponder, and may make a different move.

      However, all that being said, repeating the same line over and over again vs computers is a favorite way for people to get obscenely high ratings on chess servers.

      Matt (JamesBaud on FICS)

    19. Re:Is Fritz learning? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just to nitpick, Shuffle Chess is not another name for Fischer Random Chess. In Shuffle Chess, the pieces in the back row are rearranged completely at random. In Fischer Random Chess, there are rules about the arrangement of pieces in the back row (bishops on differently-colored squares, king between the two rooks).

      But if we're going with a random board configuration anyway, I'd say add two more bishops and two more knights, and increase the board size to 12x12. The human and the computer would be equally disadvantaged by the invalidation of their knowledge of openings, but it would give the humans more of a fighting chance with the larger branching factor.

  24. 1600 is nothing by jbellis · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Fritz has grandmasters working for them. They're not stupid and neither are the programmers...

    Kasparov tried playing "anti-computer" chess against Deep Blue and got his butt handed to him. After losing to Deep Blue Kasparov really, Really, REALLY wants to beat Fritz (after helping hype him as "even better than Deep Blue"). If it were as simple as you describe, he wouldn't be wasting any time doing it now.

  25. Human by cfuse · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does Kasparov play human beings anymore? or is he too good for us?

    1. Re:Human by Craig3010 · · Score: 2, Funny

      After he discovered Tara Patrick's Virtual Sex With Me, he doesn't give a damn about human interaction.

    2. Re:Human by drinkypoo · · Score: 1

      Now this is what I call inspired advertising. Talk about knowing your audience...

      --
      "You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
  26. 'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by Sprunkys · · Score: 5, Informative

    To quote (from memory) the online commentator Mig Greengard:
    "If X3D Fritz lacks a clear target it plays like a braindamaged lemur"

    As Fritz moved its pieces back and forth throughout the game, Kasparov could make several free moves. That isn't brilliant, that's just making use of the other guys mistakes. Kasparov dominated the whole game, while Fritz had no clue at all what to do. According to one of its makers, X3D Fritz reached a new record of reading deeply (19 ply if I'm not mistaken) since the number of possible moves was so small in the cramped space they were building up their positions. This, however, didn't help a bit and I had a few giggles over bishops and knights moving away and then back again to the very same place they were coming from.

    Only at the very end did Fritz realize it was losing, throughout the whole game it couldn't see what was glaringly obvious to the audience.

    I've been told that this was proper anti-computer chess. The cramped position makes it tremendously difficult for a computer program to play properly while a human can easily see what's to be done.

    All in all, it wasn't brilliant, Fritz just didn't have a clue

    What am I discussing all this chess for? Let me get back to KGS...

    --
    "We live in our minds, and existance is the attempt to bring that life into physical reality" Ayn Rand
    1. Re:'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 1
      All in all, it wasn't brilliant, Fritz just didn't have a clue

      Maybe so, but Kasparov played a damn fine game.

    2. Re:'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by Mulletproof · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Now I'm not one that thinks chess is the end-all-be-all of society, but some might consider it brilliant that he was able to absolutely dumbfound the pinnical of chess technology. Yeah he made use of the other guy's mistakes... That's called "winning". Since the computer is brute forcing it's way through the chess match by trying to calculate ever possible senario per move, I consider it brilliant that he found a way to neutralize that huge advantage, even if the games was rather one-sided. Now to continue to win using the same motis operandi is cheesy simply exploitng a blindspot, but to find that blindspot [i]is[/i] brilliance in and of itself.

      --
      You need a FREE iPod Nano
    3. Re:'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by kavau · · Score: 1

      The brilliant part was that Kasparov got Fritz into such a cramped position. The rest was just routine for him, I'm sure.

    4. Re:'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by platypus · · Score: 1

      And you have to add that even if he knew where he wanted to go, it is incredibly hard really get there. After all, he has an opponent which _will_ see a possible advantage far far ahead, so making one very small mistake on could completely destroy his plan against such a monster. I think Kaspy played a brilliant game.

    5. Re:'brilliantly won game 3' my shiny metal ass by Flunitrazepam · · Score: 1
      Only at the very end did Fritz realize it was losing


      And then he extended a mighty robotic arm and brought it smashing down on the board, sending the would-be victorious human's pieces flying
      --
      1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
  27. It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by teamhasnoi · · Score: 4, Funny
    but I have a long history of getting my ass kicked at chess. The only time I *ever* beat a computer at chess was when I played the easiest level on Chessmaster 2100 on my Apple IIgs. I celebrated for days.

    I played chess all the time with pals about 10 years ago. We were all at about the same level of bad. I thought I would prove my chess-skilz one day and played some guy at the local coffeeshop. After 3 moves, I was checkmated. My middle eastern opponent turned to my friend and said, "Your friend is stupid. I will not play him again.", swept all the pieces off the board, got up, shook his head and left.

    That stung. So You Go Gary! I must live vicariously through you! Kick some ass! Then I must go back to OS X gnuChess which mocks me every time I play, "You are stupid. I will not play you again."

    /me weeps into hands.

    1. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      " My middle eastern opponent turned to my friend and said, "Your friend is stupid. I will not play him again.", swept all the pieces off the board, got up, shook his head and left."

      Jesus, damn arabs, did he blow himself up after?

    2. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Fucking middle-easterners. Too bad that didn't happen more recently, you could have called the FBI on his terrorist ass and had him shipped off to Gitmo.

    3. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My middle eastern opponent turned to my friend and said, "Your friend is stupid. I will not play him again.", swept all the pieces off the board, got up, shook his head and left.

      Dubya, is that you? that might go a long way to explain why you're acting so stupidly when it comes to middle-eastern people.

    4. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 1
      After 3 moves, I was checkmated

      Don't feel bad...sure, it's embarassing, but it turns out there are only a few ways to checkmate someone in the first 10 moves of the game, and it only takes about half an hour of instruction to learn how to avoid all of them.

      In other words, you could almost instantly become unbeatable! Well, within those first 10 moves, anyway. :-)

      The next level of difficulty after that is to learn the basics of opening development -- how to get all of your pieces out and mobile while maintaining a good defensive position, and having some notion what to do if the other guy gets aggressive and starts trading pieces with you.

      With instruction from a friendly player who already knows that much, you can develop those basic ideas in perhaps only a few dozen games. And you can't be that bad of a player, or else you couldn't have won that game against the Chessmaster 2100. Take heart.

      But you are very unlikely to learn from other bad players, nor from poor sports, like that duffer who overturned the chess pieces because he won too easily.

      --
      Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
    5. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by geekoid · · Score: 5, Funny

      haha, thats is a damn funny story.

      I remember one time, I was tossing darts, and won a game of cricket in the fewest possible throws.
      By the time I was on my last toss, everybody in the bar was gathered around. My last toss landed perectly, the crowd goes wild. I had a great reputation, free drinks when I retold that story, and I never, ever, threw darts anywhere near that bar again. heh.

      A matter of fact, about 10 years latter, I meet a guy at agaming clubg. He kept looking at me funny. Then one day he looks at me and runs off. about 30 minutes latter he returns. Turned out his father was the guy a beat, and gave him a picture of me tossing that last dart. the caption:
      "With practice comes perfection."

      I was laughing so hard, I had tears rolling down my cheeks.

      --
      The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
    6. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I feel you there man. I played my family and friends and usually beat them, and then I started playing online chess and got destroyed. We should start our own chess society for people who suck :)

    7. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Zan+Zu+from+Eridu · · Score: 1
      Then I must go back to OS X gnuChess which mocks me every time I play, "You are stupid. I will not play you again."

      Try installing Crafty as your chess engine if you're in to masochism. If you really like the pain, install the endgame databases and get those lovely "mate in 57 moves" announcements.

    8. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Craig3010 · · Score: 1

      Dude! 3 moves? I wouldn't admit that here again if I were you!

    9. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That reminds of the time I was in one of those gift and talented kids programs. (My school district's particular variation was called REACH -- Realizing Excellence in Academic Cognition Heuristically.)

      Anyway, we were all sitting around playing this math game where you are shown six single-digit numbers on paper cards. The teacher would flip new cards over, and the goal was to invent an expression whose value was equal to the sixth number by using the first five numbers and whatever common arithmetic operators (addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc.) that you needed. So, for example, if the numbers were 1, 5, 2, 7, 4; 8, then you might say... hmm... ((7 / (5 + 2)) + 1) * 4 == 8.

      Anyway, there we were playing this game, and the teacher started to get a little lax. Instead of flipping over 6 new cards, she would replace just one of them. (Maybe she was trying to get us to understand relationships between different sets of numbers, I dunno.) So I am sitting there, my brain churning about as fast as my little fifth-grade head would allow, and I have the thought, "Hmm... If only the last digit were a two."

      I'm sure you can guess what happened. Along about then, the teacher replaced the card I was thinking of with a two. My hand shot up about 1 microsecond later. The teacher didn't expect an answer that quickly, so she dismissed me, but I insisted I had the answer. So I told her the answer, and sure enough, it worked out correctly. Naturally, the proof's in the pudding, so I must be a Really Bright Kid, huh? (And that in comparison with the other Really Bright Kids I was surrounded with.) Thankfully, I don't think much ever came of it except that she took me aside and wanted to talk about my exceptional ability or something.

      I guess that doesn't compare with "With Practice Comes Perfection". But, it was a nice little victory anyway...

    10. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      Thank god you didn't play him, although I'm perplexed, you got Fool's Mated? The only way you can lose like that is opening your King-side pawn all the way, an extremely dumb move at that. However, I'm glad you didn't play that guy again for the following reasons.

      1. That guy doesn't have any Chess manner. Even if your oppoenent is extremely dumb/idiotic, you don't swept the pieces off the board and leave.
      2. Playing any more chess with him will make you a jerk.
      3. He has no honor.

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    11. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by millette · · Score: 1

      Let's call that arithmetic game "Numbo". Now imagine playing that against a computer? How much fun can it be? Of course, you think, it's unfair! The computer is much better equipped to do simple (and quite complicated) math, so it could brute force it's way faster then you could pick up a pen.

      Well, that's exactly what Daniel Defays did in 1986. But he didn't program the computer "as" a computer to brute force results. Even 17 years ago it was obvious and not too interesting.

      If you want more info, here's a bibiographical note refering to a most interesting book on AI.

    12. Re:It's not like I rode the Short Bus to school by ralphclark · · Score: 1

      That's a godo story. You could even enter it in a short story competition.

  28. So what? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Man vs Calculator: Round 1!

    The machine designed specifically for calculating 2+2 today declared victory over all humans, at being superior in all regards when that calculation is involved. Capable of outputting the answer (the integer number 4) a billion times a second, the computer was judged itself to be a billion times better than humans at solving that problem - the humans taking at least a second to write or say the answer.

    Seriously though, human minds have built a tool for solving chess puzzles, a series of algorithms and search spaces. To say that the "computer is superior to the human mind" is like saying that a rock is superior to human hands because it's better at killing lizards - the conclusion doesn't make much sense outside of the very narrow problem space.

  29. a different strategy by wilsynet · · Score: 3, Informative

    In game two, Kasparov played the Berlin defence, which is a more closed game than the traditionally sharp Sicilian that Kasparov usually employs. It is well known that the sheer number crunching ability of the computer puts it significantly above the very best human tacticians. So yes, I think Kasparov has changed his strategy somewhat.

    1. Re:a different strategy by RevMike · · Score: 2, Funny
      In game two, Kasparov played the Berlin defence, which is a more closed game than the traditionally sharp Sicilian that Kasparov usually employs.

      Inconceivable. After all, one should never enter a battle of wits with a Sicilian, especially when death is on the line. It is the second greatest strategic blunder, the first being "Never get into a land war in Asia."

    2. Re:a different strategy by DNS-and-BIND · · Score: 1
      Immediately following this statement..."Ha ha ha ha", followed by the Sicilian keeling over, stone dead.

      Of course, the defense of Berlin didn't go over too well historically, either.

      --
      Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
    3. Re:a different strategy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      But doesn't a land war in Asia end with the Berlin defence? ;)

  30. The revolution will not be televised. by LostCluster · · Score: 2, Informative

    The telecasts have begun on ESPN2 at the start of play, but so far all of them have been kicked over to sister network ESPNews because they ran longer than their allotted airtime. Today's game, however, got bumped off of ESPNews to make room for NFL highlights today, so the chess coverage was regulated to two-minute live updates during the football coverage. Why did ESPN allow a match to be scheduled for today knowing that they would have run out of networks on which to put the full telecast unless an early blunder would be made?

    It's fully expected that Tuesday's match will also spill into ESPNews territory as well, but at least they should be able to air the conclusion live since it will be weekday with no major sports events scheduled for the daytime.

    1. Re:The revolution will not be televised. by porp · · Score: 2, Funny

      During the first match they went over 30 minutes and then moved over to ESPNEWS. Though they still cut into the match to show regular ESPNEWS highlight crap, they showed the majority of the match. I expect Tuesday's coverage to be similar. The match today just happened to coincide with NFL Sunday, and there are millions of people that watch ESPNEWS for news conferences and such. I just wish they would have not opted to show Women's College Hoops instead on ESPN2. I guess they were surprised by the large number of viewers the match garnered.

      porp

  31. Anti Computer Strategy by digitaltraveller · · Score: 1

    That game was a beautiful demonstration of anti-computer chess strategy. Kasparov pushed his pawns early to close the game, gain a space advantage, enhance the power of his knights, and play long term, while the computer thrashed around without the ability to detect these abstract strategic moves AKA a _plan_.
    See here for more info.

    1. Re:Anti Computer Strategy by eric_ste · · Score: 1

      I must admit that the moves 14 to 20 were a nice work of art, how he cannot approach a6 with a bishop and therefore captures the pawn, protects the knight with the bishop, protects the bishop with the pawn while leaving a way out for the queen and removing the knight. QUite a nice sequence.... I'm up to there in the game :))

  32. Does he still play humans? by smkndrkn · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...or does that not get any press?

    I play chess...since 3rd grade but I don't follow tournament play. Does he get more money to play the computers?

    --
    ======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
    1. Re:Does he still play humans? by civilengineer · · Score: 1

      Yes he still plays humans and still beats most of them except Vladimir Kramnik. He is considered by all to be the strongest player in the world even though he lost to kramnik in last year in a world championship match.

      He will get $200,000 if he wins this match and $150 k if he loses!
      human events dont generally have such huge prizes.

      --

      New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
    2. Re:Does he still play humans? by PDAllen · · Score: 2, Informative

      I think it was more like three years ago he played Kramnik with the world championship at stake.
      Most people also think that the reason he lost that was that he accepted Kramnik's challenge to play shorter games than standard: Kramnik thinks faster than Kasparov, but not as deeply, and hasn't beaten him in any matches with normal time rules.
      He doesn't get many one-on-one matches any more, because no-one wants to be beaten repeatedly. He does enter tournaments, and tends to win those.

  33. Re:The game of Go ? Mod Parent Up by pgrote · · Score: 1

    Thank you for that explanation. Very good link.

  34. Re:I have the ultimate answer for this question.. by t0qer · · Score: 1

    1.Computer beats human at chess.
    2.Human proceeds to reach for nearest rock and smash the computer to smitherines.
    3. Human wins next match since the computer can no longer play!

    **DISCLAIMER**Violence against living beings is whacked, but i've been known to slap my computer around on occasions.

  35. Does this still mean anything? by owlstead · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Obviously these kind of matches are very interesting for chess players. But I wonder if there is any other significance, in theoretic science or in the computer science depts.

    In other words, why should we care who wins? I don't want to troll, but the machine vs human chess player story is getting a bit stale. If the computer wins, that will mean, what? It's such a specialized field that you can hardly call it a milestone in computer science.

  36. maybe Kasparov should be an Action Ranger by dandelion_wine · · Score: 4, Funny

    Al Gore: You already know Stephen Hawking. Also with us is Nichelle Nichols a.k.a. Commander Uhura.

    Nichols: Incoming transmission from MCI one rate department. It sounds like a limited time offer.

    Gore: Tell them I'm in the tub! To my left you'll recognise Gary Gygax, inventor of dungeons and dragons.

    Gygax: Greetings! It's a...[rolls dice.]...pleasure to meet you!

    Gore: And our summer intern, Deep Blue. The world's foremost chess playing computer.

    Deep Blue: Bishop to knight 4.

    Gore: Not all missions can be solved with chess, Deep Blue. Someday you'll understand that.

    1. Re:maybe Kasparov should be an Action Ranger by horos2c · · Score: 1

      >> Gygax: Greetings! It's a...[rolls dice.]...pleasure to meet you!

      Put those dice away before I take them away!

    2. Re:maybe Kasparov should be an Action Ranger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      whats the from lol

      soudns familiar

      simpsons?

    3. Re:maybe Kasparov should be an Action Ranger by dandelion_wine · · Score: 1

      close -- Futurama -- episode: "Anthology of Interest I", my personal fave.

  37. DMCA Violation by CelticWhisper · · Score: 0

    In other news, chess master Garry Kasparov was arrested under the DMCA for defeating the Fritz mechanism, the codename for the copy-protection technology in TCPA hardware. Full story at eleven.

    --
    Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
    http://www.tsanewsblog.com
  38. Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by Latent+Heat · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The only thing this will prove is whether or not Kasparov is in the top ranks of computer programmers.

    A lot of people are trying to make of this a kind of John Henry against the steam drill contest. Here is my take on it.

    Some while ago someone told me that computer programmers "break things", and I never quite understood what they meant. Some while later, a "competitor" was demoing a Windows version of a type of program for which I had put a great deal of effort into a DOS version. The program had a lot of graphical and interactive displays of scientific plots and other data, and I knew enough about Windows and all the stuff you had to do (WM_SIZE, WM_PAINT) to make it look right, and I suspected my acquaintence was "first to market" by taking a lot of short cuts on his UI. He let all the scientists in the room play with his program, but he was very reluctant to let me near the thing -- because the first thing I was going to do was try and break it to find out how much work he had yet to do.

    The only way Kasparov is going to beat that chess program is if he uncovers some limitation or shortcoming -- in other words to break it, and once broken I bet he could beat the thing at will. Last time around the cheat was a team of programmers hanging around trying to patch the program as soon as Kasparov latched on to such a weakness.

    The chess program will have reached true AI (in a limited problem set) once Kasparov is able to find a weakness, beat if for several games straight and for the program to somehow learn from what is going on and "close the hole", and if the program can withstand other such attacks from other chess grand masters and likewise "close the hole" without going unstable (one of the problems with learning algorithms is that can overadapt and go into limit cycles). That would have far reaching implications in terms of computer security, spam prevention, 24-7 uptime, and automated bug correction -- a program capable of fixing itself would be an advance indeed.

    1. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You are one of those guys who sounds like they know what they're talking about, but are actually clueless.

    2. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      I think you're onto something here, but there's still some confusion to be worked out. It's more conceivable to say that the computer is "playing chess" than to say Kasparov is "programming." Admittedly the programmers have to understand chess thoroughly, but Kasparov could wipe the floor with the lot of them. Meanwhile, any of them could "Hello, World" Kasparov into a quivering mass of jelly, if the battle were waged on their own field of expertise.

      So what is actually going on? The programmers have been given a problem (chess) to solve, and have created a system that is very good at solving it. Kasparov is also good at "solving" chess, and he's putting his expertise in that field up against the best automated chess-solving system that can be devised. Meanwhile the programmers are improving the rules governing the automated system as the game progresses.

      AI requires some level of situational awareness, but what you describe is a form of self-awareness. Admittedly, a program able to analyze its own rulesets and tactics for weaknesses is higher on the AI scale than a program which slavishly follows them.

      But I don't think it's worthwhile to draw a sharp line separating "true AI" from imitators. Chances are, the program currently has some limited "self-adaptation" built in; it's just not robust enough to allow the programmers to exit the loop entirely. If a sharp line could be drawn, then one would have to point out which of the thousands of potential improvements would push the system over the line.

      I'm of the opinion that chess programs have been demonstrating rudimentary intelligence at least since my 486 first beat me.

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    3. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by FryGuy1013 · · Score: 1

      Admittedly the programmers have to understand chess thoroughly, but Kasparov could wipe the floor with the lot of them

      This is not necessarily true. A successful checkers player was built with the creator not knowing much at all about checkers. See One Jump Ahead for more info.

      --
      bananas like monkeys.
    4. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by DG · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The comment about "breaking things" is very insightful.

      I'm no master chess player, but I used to play a lot of chess against Sargon III on my C=64 back in the day.

      I discovered, quite by accident, that the chess engine in Sargon III could not see "indirect" attacks (there's probably some real chess term for this - if you want to threaten a piece with some other piece, put some third piece in the line of intended attack, move the attacking piece into position, and then "reveal" the attack by moving the "blocking" piece someplace else)

      After a while, the program had trained me to set up these elabourate attacks... that a real human, even another amatuer like myself, would instantly recognise.

      Say... I wonder if the computer was programming me?

      DG

      --
      Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
    5. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by rlafflick · · Score: 1

      that concept of indirect attacks is called discovery. I find it interesing that its search tree did not include this though.

    6. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by ShieldWolf · · Score: 1

      I find it interesing that its search tree did not include this though.

      Maybe because it was running on a COMMODORE 64!?!?

      --
      just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
    7. Re:Kasparov: World's Best Computer Programmer? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Say... I wonder if the computer was programming me?

      No, you just discovered (pardon the pun) a hole in the computer strategy and did whatever it takes to exploit it-- just like Kasparov did.

      Or you could say that your computer opponent motivated you into improving your game to the point where you can spot such weaknesses. Natrually you can get the same effect from human opponents.

      -cmh

  39. Wow by nyseal · · Score: 0, Troll

    Seriously, does anyone even CARE about this anymore? What I'D like to see is a human beat him.

    --
    [SIG] Remember Mattel handheld games?
    1. Re:Wow by guamman · · Score: 1

      His pupil beat him in 2000. It cost Kasparov the title of world chapion. Althought he is still considered the best (and highest ranked) chess player. Search google next time before you make requrest in the thread. Often you'll find your answer easier and faster.

    2. Re:Wow by astro13 · · Score: 1

      What about a teenager playing blacks. ?

    3. Re:Wow by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      Computer chess is just a mask for the fact that they can't make machines play Go.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    4. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Just a mask? My ability to run doesn't exist to mask the fact that I can't fly. There's a genuine interest in computer chess that is more perceived by the public than Go is.

    5. Re:Wow by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      "Mask" was a poor choice of word, but I still believe it is the case that even *with* public interest in Go, there would remain enormous difficulties in programming a computer to play it well. In other words, the lack of interest isn't the barrier that the limitations of technology are. I hope I'm wrong, and I would really like for someone to show me I'm wrong.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
    6. Re:Wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With this I can agree. Clearly, there are limitations that we are dealing with right now in terms of computational ability. Will a way be found to make a competent or maybe even good Go computer player? I think it's possible. I don't think contemporary methods will suffice, though.

      I can't pretend to know about the amount of research is put into having a computer play Go. It seems to me that it's much less than the research that goes into Chess. I don't believe that it's because Chess is easier on a computer than Go, but rather that Chess is just more important to us for historical reasons. I doubt ESPN would ever show Go world championships.

      If IBM put the kind of time into developing machines to play Go that they did in Chess I would at least bet that we'd have a better Go playing computer in this world than we do right now. Would it be a GOOD player? I can't say, but I can venture a guess and say that it probably wouldn't be as good against humans as their chess playing counterparts currently are.

    7. Re:Wow by fishbowl · · Score: 1

      >Chess is just more important to us for
      >historical reasons.

      Who are "us?" Aren't there a LOT of Asian computer programmers? I think it may even be possible that there are millions, if not billions, of people who know the game of Go who have perhaps scarcely seen Chess.

      --
      -fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
  40. Humans do NOT control the best airplanes. by LibertineR · · Score: 1

    They only give computers instructions. Our best fighter aircraft, the F-16 and F-22 could not fly at all under direct human control. The stick, rudder and throttle only give inputs to computers which do everything in a way that prevents the airplane from tumbling out of control. Without the computers, no human could make inputs fast enough to keep the airplanes from crashing. Fly-by-wire systems are also in place on the 747-400, 777 and some Airbus planes too.

    1. Re:Humans do NOT control the best airplanes. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ok, if you want to go that route, who do you think programmed the computers on those planes you mentioned? Answer: Humans. Humans fly planes, whether by a set of instructions given to a computer or by direct input.

  41. Incredible by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I find this absolutely incredible. Here we have a machine with software that can do nothing but play chess, which checks millions of positions a second every second of the game trying to find the best possible game, and on the other side is a human being, designed to go find food and survive and so on. Humans were NOT created to strategically shove pieces around a board.

    And yet, he can still win, and he probably didn't do too well the last two games only because he was thinking about cutting his fingernails or something.

  42. Kasparov's nationality by oob · · Score: 2, Informative

    GK was born in Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan. While Azerbaijan was once a member state of the Soviet Union, this does not make him Russian.

    1. Re:Kasparov's nationality by the_consumer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Doesn't make him not one, either. If your parents are Japanese, it doesn't matter where you're born. You're Japanese too.

      --
      "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
    2. Re:Kasparov's nationality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      your not american if your born in america?

    3. Re:Kasparov's nationality by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not to a lot of racist Americans, apparently. To them, you're only American if you're white.

    4. Re:Kasparov's nationality by kzadot · · Score: 1

      This is rubbish. If someone has a south african mother, a australian father, and is born and raised in mexico.

      What are they? Mexican of course.

      I guess you think all the white australians are actually english eh? No they are australian.

      The crap you are talking is usually only pulled out in defense of xenophoba and racism.

    5. Re:Kasparov's nationality by the_consumer · · Score: 1
      Hardly. It's the law in Japan. Any child born to ethnically Japanese parents (such as former Peruvian president Alberto Fujimori) is a Japanese citizen. If an American woman is visiting Botswana while pregnant, and has her American fathered child while there, then is the child Botswanan? No, the child is American. If the child is raised in Botswana, then you have a case. The initial post just said the Kasparov was born in Azerbaijan, not mentioning where he was raised. To be pedantic, one could say that he was a Soviet citizen, not a Russian or Azerbaijani one. I prefer to think that if his parents were from Russia, it is up to them to decide how to raise their child. I don't know where his parents were from, I was just making the point that the place of his birth has little bearing on his actual nationality. Does he live in Russia now? Does he hold Russian citizenship? If so, then he's a Russian.

      Also, fuck you, you bastard. There's nothing racist about asserting a point about how nationalities are accessed. If anyone is racist, it's you, for jumping to the conclusion. Do the world a favor and choke yourself to death with your white hood, racist.

      --
      "If you're thinking what I'm thinking, you're right." -
  43. Just Great by Herkum01 · · Score: 1

    I am waiting for the first declaration from him declaring himself "The One" and taking the nickname Neo.

    The scary part will be when he starts calling the computer, Agent Smith.

    1. Re:Just Great by Craig3010 · · Score: 1

      I think he's calling the computer "my bitch"

  44. Mod this shit up by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Funniest comment posted yet on this heap

  45. it's just a game. by thoughtcrime · · Score: 1

    And in other news, I set up a positional advantage in a hallway in NetHack to produce a conga line of death.

    --

    ____ _______
    Duty now for the future!
  46. gnomes chess by double_plus_ungod · · Score: 1

    1. e4 e5
    2. Bc4 Bc5
    3. ???
    4. Qxf7 checkmate!

    1. Re:gnomes chess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      amazing, your bishop can go in straight line...

    2. Re:gnomes chess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      3. Qf3 Nc6

    3. Re:gnomes chess by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, it's the kings bishop that goes to c4/c5.

  47. How does the computer play? by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 1

    Something I've wondered is--when the computer goes first, how does it decide to open? Is it random based on its analysis of the opponent or what?

    --
    If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
    1. Re:How does the computer play? by linuxjack55 · · Score: 2, Informative

      The game of chess has been around so long that opening moves and their variations have been cataloged, categorized, and analyzed in great detail. It's been a while since I was a serious student of the game, but I think Modern Chess Openings is still the standard reference for opening play.

      In any event, X3D Fritz has a database of analyzed opening moves, including, for this match, a database of Kasparov's opening moves. It's called the opening book. Opening books save the computer time at the start of the game, since it doesn't have to reinvent the wheel every time it plays.

      As for deciding the first move to play, the computer has a randomizer to select a move from its opening book. For this match, though, I wouldn't be surprised if X3D's programmers didn't pick its first move for it.

      --
      The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
    2. Re:How does the computer play? by Bohnanza · · Score: 2, Insightful
      I wouldn't be surprised if X3D's programmers didn't pick its first move for it.

      That would be cheating, wouldn't it? It's supposed to be "Man Vs. Machine", not "Man Vs. Machine and Another Man"

      --

      -----

      Sorry, I'm only a 1336 h4x0r.

    3. Re:How does the computer play? by linuxjack55 · · Score: 1

      That's an interesting question. Even if X3D's handlers couldn't manually pick the first move, though, they could still set up the computer's opening book in a way unfavorable to Kasparov, so that even a random choice would play to the opponent's weakness. I'm fairly certain that X3D's book includes every recorded game played by Kasparov.

      --
      The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
  48. Its not Human V Computer by bacon-kidney-pie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Its ridiculous to say oooh the computer has beaten the human. Whats actually happening is that a human unassisted is being beaten by a team of humans using a tool (the computer). Computers are just tools. What this means is that us dumb humans have figured out a way to model what this really smart (well good at chess at least) human is doing. To me its about as big a deal as saying ooh the worlds strongest man just got beaten by a guy with a forklift truck.

    1. Re:Its not Human V Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So when Kasparov wins, do you then attribute it to his particular circumstances? After all, he's had the repository of recorded human knowledge about chess at his fingertips for decades now. Are the humans that wrote the books Kasparov reads and taught him to play chess then responsible for Kasparov's wins? How about his parents? His past opponents and their sources? The millions of individual neural configurations that store his chess knowledge?

      Kasparov didn't spring from the head of Zeus a full Grandmaster of chess, you know...

    2. Re:Its not Human V Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      What a stupid thing to say considering how insightful this post is. Kasparov breathes, thinks, operates on his own. He has intelligence, Fritz just emulates the *action*. Fritz cant make a cup of coffee, or dance, for example.

      Chess is quite an interesting game, but lets face it, its about the only one a computer can be good at.

    3. Re:Its not Human V Computer by dvdeug · · Score: 1

      To me its about as big a deal as saying ooh the worlds strongest man just got beaten by a guy with a forklift truck.

      Or when weavers were beaten by Jacquard's loom. Or when the first airplanes left the ground or broke the sound barrier. If you want not to be amazed by our tools and their potential, then that's acceptable, but to us it is an amazing thing. Sure, the immediate impact of a computer being superior to any human at chess is as little as a man being put on the moon by his tools, but both times a line was crossed, and we celebrate our skills as tool makers that let us cross that line.

    4. Re:Its not Human V Computer by bacon-kidney-pie · · Score: 1

      Well, your right of course and you make a good point. With this one though its like we are losing rather than winning. People carry on like its the computers which have done this, but really its people and as you say, we should be celebrating, rather than announcing our allegiance to our new computer masters. Having said that, let me just add this... GO KASPAROV :-).

    5. Re:Its not Human V Computer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Completely agree. It's never computer vs. human, it's human programmer and human hardware engineer making a tool to beat a human. So we are talking about human intelligence vs. human inteligence, which is a good thing and we should be praising the programmers for clever sophisticated algorithms. Talking about the dismise of humans is laughable, even if humans always lose to human made tools, why is that a bad thing?

  49. well, remember the old saying by ShadowRage · · Score: 1

    a computer is only as good as its creator.

    if the programmer didnt think of a move kasporov
    would think of, the computer will be like *bzzzt* error. and loop until it makes an illogical move out of confusion, much like a person does when in doubt.

    1. Re:well, remember the old saying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is completely wrong. The computer's strength is in evaluating all possible moves it can (to a certain depth). Theroretically, as computing power increases, programmers can get stupider and stupider and just rely on the computer to do the work, and have a competitive chess program.

    2. Re:well, remember the old saying by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A human is only as good at chess as its experience-derived knowledge allows it to be.

      Humans are not born chess players, and neither are computers. Both require other humans, living or dead, to learn the rules and to become better players.

  50. Mod up! by EvanED · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The parent hit the nail on the head. Computers require a different strategy than human players. For instance, there was one particular move in this game that illustrates this, 18. Rb2, that is a loss of tempo against a human opponent. However, against Fritz it was a very smart move. The computer should have moved the piece on f6 then pushed its f pawn to f5 then f4, attacking Kasparov's f pawn. Moving Rb2 however had the effect of making black work a little harder to attack, apparently pushing the number of moves it needed to consider to find the advantage beyond where it was searching. Against a human player it would have had little or no effect (all the commentators were saying how Fritz was ignoring the opportunity with the f pawn), but against Fritz it made Kasparov's game much much easier.

    1. Re:Mod up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Computers require a different strategy than human players.

      In other words, these machines have failed the Turing test.

      -cmh

  51. Question. by Epistax · · Score: 1, Redundant

    If Kasparov played his next game identically, would the computer come to the same decisions as before, securing him another win?

    1. Re:Question. by civilengineer · · Score: 1

      Next game he plays black. He can repeat the strategy of playing a closed position, but cannot repeat the same game. And so far, all GMs who have beat computers have used this strategy of manuevering slowly in a closed position which confuses the computer.

      --

      New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
    2. Re:Question. by Epistax · · Score: 1

      Well ok, you're dodging the point of the question. Say he plays the game after that, that is, whatever game starts identically (same person goes first), he plays identically. Come on man give me more credit than that.

    3. Re:Question. by civilengineer · · Score: 1

      There is no game after that. It is a four game match. But, if he plays one after that, lets say, the computer wont play the same moves to lose again. It is smart enough to learn.

      --

      New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
    4. Re:Question. by GodSpiral · · Score: 1

      Kasparov played the same moves as game 1 in game 3. The comp is the one who deviated.

      Essentially, the computer uses an opening book, in which many althernatives for the first 10-20 moves are calculated to be identically good to each other.

      If the same first out of book position was reached again, and kasparov played the same moves using the same amount of thinking time, then yes, Fritz would also play identically.

    5. Re:Question. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      THe programmers are there making decesions as well, they would catch him playing like that and change their corse of action.

  52. Dumb question about DFAs by jonhuang · · Score: 1

    So the computer is a Deterministic Finite Automata unless there are some random seeds involved. If there are random seeds involved, it would be kinda weird since the algorithms are themselves deterministic. Even with learning algorithms, this is just one game out of who knows how many thousands it's played.

    So barring a deep blue type reprogramming, couldn't Kasp. go download his move list and play the same winning game again?

    1. Re:Dumb question about DFAs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Your strategy was countered in the 1960s by adding randomness to move selection. Do you *really* think that this hole would have gone unnoticed by billions of people for 40 years until you think of it in 2003? Jesus.

  53. An interesting game... by TygerFish · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The game was interesting. It resembled a classic game from the thirties with either Saemisch or Maroczy as white. It underlines the strengths of the human mind versus computers.

    The annotators of the first game pointed out over and over again, that some of each player's decisions were based on the computer's looking over a few million positions, and 'knowing' that it was safe to play the kind of moves that a human's fears and instincts would have made it very uncomfortable for a human to have played (e.g., the capture of the bishop by the king in the drawn game). Games like the first two show the greatest strengths of computers: superhuman ability in positions involving the calculation of tactical complications.

    The current game by contrast grave rise to a position that is possibly the greatest illustration of a human's real strengths: the ability to create closed positions where tactical calculations of severely reduced utility; creating a position where experience and 'instinct' far outweigh calculation.

    In the latest game, the computer's playing, 5...a6 created a 'hole,' a 'positional weakness,' and the rest of the game was a matter of exploiting its consequences while simultaneously giving the computer no chance to balance the game neither by winning back material, nor by a compensatory attack against white's position.

    To put it another way, the nature of the position allowed white to create and exploit a position where the computer's ability to look at millions of positions per second was essentially useless.

    It was clever and precise play on Kasparov's part.

    --
    To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
    "Yeah. It smells, too..."
  54. And the last game will be this Tuesday, Nov. 18. by _Griphin_ · · Score: 1

    Not unless game #4 is a draw.

  55. Nine Men's Morris (and more) is solved by yjlim · · Score: 4, Informative

    Nine Men's Morris has been solved by Ralph Gasser in 1996 (Draw).

    So has Qubic (4x4x4 Tic-Tac-Toe) by Patashnik O in 1980. (First Player Win)

    Connect Four by James Allen in September 1998. (First Player Win)

    Let's see John W. Romein and Henri E. Bal from that wonderful games research group in U of Alberta solved Awari in 2002. (Draw)

    Read Victor Allis' PhD thesis for a good overview on finding game theoretic results of games. He invented the proof-number search technique that he used to (re)solve Qubic and Connect-Four. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~victor/thesis.html


    Nine Men's Morris is not researched actively anymore, but Ralph Gasser's paper is often cited in any paper that deals with artificial intelligence in games.

    Of course, even though the game might already be solved, that does not mean that it is not fun to play...

    1. Re:Nine Men's Morris (and more) is solved by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Anyone have a plaintext mirror? His ".Z" files don't work well for windows users. :(

  56. That is what Fritz Does by thenextpresident · · Score: 1

    "When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them."

    Which is exactly what Fritz does. Blue was the one that would cover every single possible move. Hence, it had to have more computing power to cover more moves.

    Fritz however, only is interested in the interesting moves. Fritz does EXACTLY what you are talking about.

    --
    Jason Lotito
  57. Ray Kurzweil on Kramnik-Firtz match by civilengineer · · Score: 1

    The same program drew with Kramnik last year. It was quite a surprise as we would have expected Deep Fritz to trounce kramnik by now. But, the reason why it did not is discussed here by Ray kurzweil.
    Interestingly, the current game is using 4 processors against 8 used in kramnik game.

    --

    New year Resolution: Don't change sig this year
  58. How to beat someone in 3 moves... by Jotham · · Score: 1
    or The Dummy's Guide to becoming a Chess Guru.

    Well it actually takes 4 moves, but black only gets to make 3 before losing...I'm guessing the game went something like this:

    .. A B C D E F G H
    1 |R|N|B|Q|K|B|N|R|
    2 |P|P|P|P|P|P|P|P| <-- Black
    3 | | | | | | | | |
    4 | | | | | | | | |
    5 | | | | | | | | |
    6 | | | | | | | | |
    7 |p|p|p|p|p|p|p|p| <-- White
    8 |r|n|b|q|k|b|n|r|
    For reference - white in lowercase, forgive me if I've got the ASCII notation incorrect - I always use a board.

    White: Standard Opening: King's Pawn(E7) to E5
    Black: Standard Response: King's Pawn(E2) to E4
    White: Right Bishop(F8) to (B5) (which covers F2)
    Black: hum..still just setting up.. ie. brings out a Knight
    White: Queen to F6 (attack on F2)
    Black: Fails to cover or block F2
    White: Queen to F2 (checkmate)

    .. A B C D E F G H
    1 |R| |B|Q|K|B|N|R|
    2 |P|P|P| | |q|P|P|
    3 | | |N|P| | | | |
    4 | | | | |P| | | |
    5 | | |b| |p| | | |
    6 | | | | | | | | |
    7 |p|p|p|p| |p|p|p|
    8 |r|n|b| |k| |n|r|

    This opening is used on new players by those that want to totally demoralise them... like many magic tricks, it only works once and sweeping all the piece off the board just stopped you from analysing it so you could work out what happened.

    The secret is in the weakness of position F2 - in the starting setup only the king can defend this position, so if you can get two points of attack on it, its toast and the king is still locked in and unable to run.

    Chess programs never use this attack as it is so simple to defend against once you're aware of it, one of the easiest of which is just to step forward your pawn at F2 by 1.

    If you use this against someone to show off, be nice and explain how you did it afterwards.

    If you want to continue showing off - in the next game instead of bring your queen out for the instant kill, you can walk up your right knight to attack F2 (don't forget to step forward your queen's pawn, so your left bishop can protect the knight as it advances - to the beginner it looks like you're just trying to defend your opening pawn).

    If they've learnt from the previous encounter they'll block you off, if not you can do a really nasty queen/rook(castle) fork which gives you nice early piece advantage and demoralises your oppenent. You can then just trade pieces off until the end game and use your extra piece to win (or protect your pawns so they can run up and become queens for demoralising effect).

    This game will also show you how good your oppenent actually is, allowing you to masterfully retire undefeated by refusing all futher games with them by telling them that the are not yet l33t enough to challenge you.

    1. Re:How to beat someone in 3 moves... by KD5YPT · · Score: 1

      Actually you can find it online. It's called a Fool's Mate.

      http://www.geocities.com/matthew1585/foolsmate.htm

      --
      In US, you can easily buy enough major firearms to wipe out your neighbourhood but a few little fireworks are banned.
    2. Re:How to beat someone in 3 moves... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      There is a shorter method: black mates on his second move:

      1. f2-f4, e7-e6; 2. g2-g4, d8-h4#

      my dad is a super genius, and a great chess player to. He once managed to pull this of twice against the same person!!

    3. Re:How to beat someone in 3 moves... by millette · · Score: 1

      Hum... that actually tells more about his opponent then your dad's genius.

  59. Damn... by Worldly+Iconoclast · · Score: 1

    And I can't even beat the computer at GNU Chess :(

  60. My question is... by jeffkjo1 · · Score: 1

    My question is, if you're Gary Kasparov, what's the point anymore? You will beat all human players, hands down, so you're stuck playing machines, which is incredibly antisocial. It would seem that it's time to hang up your chess hat and move on.

    Although... he probably gets paid shitloads of money, so nevermind.

  61. The joy of open source. by eric_ste · · Score: 1

    Try looking at the sources of gnugo. ;)

    1. Re:The joy of open source. by Morosoph · · Score: 1
      Indeed. The documentation in gnugo-3.4/doc is pretty good. From move_generation.texi:
      In the value field of a pattern (@pxref{Pattern Values}) one may
      specify a shape value.

      This is used to compute the shape factor, which multiplies the
      score of a move. We take the largest positive contribution to
      shape and add 1 for each additional positive contribution
      found. Then we take the largest negative contribution to
      shape, and add 1 for each additional negative contribution. The
      resulting number is raised to the power 1.05 to obtain the
      shape factor.

      The rationale behind this complicated scheme is that every
      shape point is very significant. If two shape contributions
      with values (say) 5 and 3 are found, the second contribution
      should be devalued to 1. Otherwise the engine is too difficult
      to tune since finding multiple contributions to shape can cause
      significant overvaluing of a move.
      From this kind of detail, you start to get a serious idea of what's going on!
  62. Compare it to, say soccer... by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Do you try to run past a guy that's much faster than you? Do you try a head duel where the other guy is half a meter taller than you? Do you dribble a guy who you know would tackle you like a n00b? Do you try to tackle a guy who could outdribble the brazilian national team in a phone booth? No.

    Picking a strategy for which the opponent has no good answer is part of the game. Chess has an open strategy. Personally I prefer to create lots of bindings to confuse the opponent. Am I wrong, simply because the opponent doesn't manage to keep track of them all? Not at all.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  63. I'm not sure I agree with that by Trepidity · · Score: 1

    Humans have huge processing power, just not in the same sense as computers do. You say the human player rejects the vast majority of possible moves and concetrates on only a few of them. But how does he decide which ones to concentrate on? Through some sort of processing--whether it be excellent pattern-recognition, or some sort of explicit processing going on we don't yet understand. There's a lot of neuron-firing going on during even simple thought, and that's all processing power of one sort or another.

  64. Axiom of Choice and game of Go ??? by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 2, Informative
    Actually, the computer could win if the axiom of choice happens to be true. Even if that isn't true, a computer could still beat every human on earth.
    --
    Be incomprehensible. If they can't understand you, they can't disagree with you

    Are you trying out an application of your .sig here?

    Because (1) the axiom of choice only applies to infinite sets, whereas the number of possible games of GO is huge, but not infinite, and (2) The axiom of choice is not an open question that may "happen" to be true or not; it has been proven to be independent of the other typically used axioms. You can declare it to be either true or false, and either way, develop an interesting branch of math that depends on your choice -- as many mathematicians have done.

    In other words, your .sig philosophy of "if you can't dazzle 'em with brilliance, baffle 'em with BS" isn't cutting it this time around. :-)

    --
    Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
    1. Re:Axiom of Choice and game of Go ??? by kwerle · · Score: 1

      Not that I understand what YOU'RE talking about, but

      the number of possible games of GO is huge, but not infinite

      Pretty sure you're wrong there. Two players cooperating could play a game of go that never ends. All you need is to vary that, and you're set for infinite choices.

    2. Re:Axiom of Choice and game of Go ??? by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 1
      the number of possible games of GO is huge, but not infinite

      Pretty sure you're wrong there. Two players cooperating could play a game of go that never ends. All you need is to vary that, and you're set for infinite choices.

      The "ko" (eternity) rule prevents infinite games. But it almost doesn't matter. There are only a finite number of possible board positions. Naively, each spot can be empty or hold a white or black stone, so there are no more than 3 to the power (19*19) unique board positions (fewer, since not all are reachable given the various rules of Go).

      No matter what the precise rules of a game are, sooner or later the game must either end, or loop back to a previous board position.

      It's true that one could figure out ways to force an infinite sequence of increasingly complex ways of looping through all of those board positions, but this would be a sterile exercise rather than a "game".

      I suppose you're technically correct, though, ignoring the Ko rule, and ignoring the fact that we're talking about games, not just board positions.

      Anyway, that's why Go has the ko rule, and chess has similar rules...this stuff always comes up in practice, because some players will do anything to avoid losing, including aiming for infinite games. So eventually rules get introduced to rule out infinite games.

      --
      Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
    3. Re:Axiom of Choice and game of Go ??? by kwerle · · Score: 1

      The "ko" (eternity) rule prevents infinite games. But it almost doesn't matter. There are only a finite number of possible board positions. Naively, each spot can be empty or hold a white or black stone, so there are no more than 3 to the power (19*19) unique board positions (fewer, since not all are reachable given the various rules of Go).

      Actually, the ko rules seem to have matured. From a little research, it seems that "Super-Ko" forbids a board from repeating, while ko (used to?) mean that you could not create a trivial two-move loop. It was that definition that I was using. Super-Ko seems to be the accepted rule (or variation) now.

      See also http://www.britgo.org/rules/compare.html#rept

      In defense of my original arguement: ignoring super-ko, and assuming that play could be infinite, you can have an infinite number of games.

      A game is not just the position of the pieces at a given time, it is the plays that lead up to that point and proceed from that point.

      Assuming you have some repeating pattern on part of the board, and that you have a pattern that can change to be in either of 2 positions on another part of the board, you can modify the 2 position pattern as play goes on. You can then use the 2 potision pattern to generate pi in binary from the nth digit. Each "n game" represents one of an infinite number of unique games that never ends.

    4. Re:Axiom of Choice and game of Go ??? by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 1

      Yes; thanks for giving interesting food for thought. Before you raised this, I thought I had a stronger point.

      --
      Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
  65. If that were true... by siskbc · · Score: 1
    Chess is all about memorizing moves and running through as many combinations of potential moves as possible as fast as you can. Clearly, a computer can do both of these tasks much faster.

    ...then no human would be able to compare to even a modest computer. The fact is that chess is more about recognizing patterns and situations, which is much more difficult than memorizing the same. This is why a human can beat a computer, even though the human considers 3 moves per turn and the computer an enormous number.

    --

    -Looking for a job as a materials chemist or multivariat

  66. Quantum game of Go ??? by Doug+Merritt · · Score: 1
    Especially with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

    Okay, I'll bite: why does faster computing make it harder for computers to beat humans at Go? Or is this a reference to quantum mysticism?

    --
    Professional Wild-Eyed Visionary
    1. Re:Quantum game of Go ??? by Lars+T. · · Score: 1

      Because quantum computing is decades away.

      --

      Lars T.

      To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck

    2. Re:Quantum game of Go ??? by Sivaram_Velauthapill · · Score: 1

      lol... I didn't get it either but now I find it funny :)

      Sivaram Velauthapillai

      --
      Sivaram Velauthapillai
      Seeking the meaning of life... @slashdot of all places ;)
  67. Be afraid, be very afraid... by linuxjack55 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The position after 29. a6 was indicative of how paranoid Kasparov was about the computer's tactical capabilities. In addition to the pawn blockade stretching diagonally from f2 to b6, he had marched his king all the way from e1 to b2 and protected it behind a wall of pieces. The king's bunker looked like this:

    B
    N N
    K R Q

    As chess positions go, that one cracked me up.

    --
    The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
    1. Re:Be afraid, be very afraid... by Entropy248 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      He did that to maximize the number of moves that computer would have to compute to capture his king. Think about it, the possibilities are endless. Moving any piece opens up an escape hole for the King while maximizing the number of possible moves for the situation. The queen's capabilities in that position are enormous; she has a clear line of fire towards most of the squares that any piece can move to. The same is true for every piece on that formation. Again, further maximization of possibility. It's brilliant.

    2. Re:Be afraid, be very afraid... by piscine2000 · · Score: 1

      He did that to maximize the number of moves that computer would have to compute to capture his king. Think about it, the possibilities are endless.

      Actually, he did that for concrete strategic reasons--because of the pawn formation, the White King was much safer wandering on the "naked" Queenside than it would've been after Kingside castling.

    3. Re:Be afraid, be very afraid... by linuxjack55 · · Score: 1

      I agree, for sure. Not only did it create an impregnable defensive position for the king, it provided a centralized and flexible launch pad for movement along the pawn wall. Looking back, I can't believe the computer gave Kasparov the time to create the position. I'd be interested to know if that same position has ever occurred in human competition.

      The computer had some kingside counterattack possibilities, but kept its kingside pawns so hemmed in they couldn't be brought into play. Without some sort of break in the pawn wall, Kasparov was in firm control of the gate at a6 and could attack at his leisure.

      --
      The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
  68. * Corrected Links * by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Sorry for the bad links.
    Here is the Scientific American article.
    Here again is the Byte Magazine article.

    Here are some excerpts from the first article that talk about how to develop the algorithm:

    We also began to consider ways of tuning the evaluation function's 120 or so parameters, specified in software. Traditionally, programmers had hand-tuned the weights that programs assigned to material--pawns and pieces-- and to positional considerations. We believe ours is the only major program to tune its own weights automatically.

    We acquired 900 sample master games and arbitrarily defined the optimum weights as those that produce the best match between the moves the machine judges to be best and those that the masters actually played. The software part of the evaluation function was completely rewritten by Campbell and Nowatzyk to reflect this strategy. Instead of just assigning a final numerical value to each position, the evaluation function--in its tuning mode--returns an equation containing a string of linear terms. In other words, it produces a vector.

    Two tuning mechanisms were used. The first, which is called hill climbing, simply sets a given evaluation parameter at an arbitrary value and then performs, say, a five- or six-ply search on every position in the game data base to find the moves that the machine would play. It then adjusts the parameter and recalculates. If the number of matches between the computer's choices and the grandmaster's choice should increase, then the parameter is adjusted again in the same direction. The process continues until all the parameters have reached their highest level of performance. It would take years to optimize all the parameters by this method, however, and so we used it only in a few diffcult cases.

    The second tuning mechanism, proposed and implemented by Nowatzyk, was much quicker. It evolved from the simple notion of finding the best fit between the function of the machine's evaluation of positions and their presumed true values. The best fit provides the lowest average squared value of the error between the model and the true value. True values can be approximated, for these purposes, by the results returned from deep searches (if a known concept is being fine-tuned) or by comparing machine decisions with those of first-rate human players.

  69. Style. by nicodemus05 · · Score: 2, Interesting
    I'm not sure who I should be cheering for.

    On one hand, a victory for the computer means a victory for everything we've been working at for a long time. It means that computers are getting smarter, and smarter, and smarter.

    Call me a hypocrite, call me sentimental, but I desperately want Kasparov to win. I want us to still be better than computers at this game. It's highly mathematical, but there's always been a level of flare, panache, and style to the game. Even though 'Knight to King 4' may not sound particularly interesting, it could have been something intrinsically bold and audacious when done by a human player. When the same move is made by a computer it becomes purely calculated.

    I want Kasparov to win because I feel like it'd be a blow to the game to let an algorithm (albeit a brilliant one with an unbelievable amount of brute force behind it) beat something feeling.

    --
    while (!sleep){

    sheep++;

    }

  70. Brilliant by imnoteddy · · Score: 1
    Garry Kasparov just brilliantly won game 3

    He also brilliantly lost game 2 by not noticing he had a pinned pawn. Gary has a history of making mistakes against computer opponents. Vladimir Kramnik didn't exactly do that well either. Vishwanathan Anand does better against machines.

    --
    No electrons were harmed creating this post, though some may have been subjected to electrical and/or magnetic fields.
  71. Was today's coverage some kind of joke? by linuxjack55 · · Score: 1

    ESPN2 had the match sandwiched between the double-dutch jump rope championship and women's college basketball.

    How rude.

    --
    The trouble with practical jokes is that very often they get elected. -- Will Rogers
  72. CURSE YOU KASPAROV!!! by phel666 · · Score: 1

    sorry.
    I've been itching to say that. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then never mind.

    "I win again, you fuck!"

    --
    -- f00!
  73. We've already won by Szplug · · Score: 2, Insightful

    A human can pick up another game and learn it, and get better at it. He/she can notice shortcuts / regularities in the way the game works that reduces the amount of thinking s/he has to do, build a higher level, meaningful way of looking at the game. You can drop a human into any novel situation and they'll similarly figure out the rules, and shortcuts.

    We handle it completely differently - we rely on this ability, and chess programs look ahead some 15 or more moves, where humans supposedly top out at about 6.

    Now, if you think of Kasparov making a close game with a specially written, highly-refined program with his general purpose brain, look at it as the measure of what it takes to beat our brains! 15-20 move lookahead! It validates the brains' elegant and powerful design.

    --
    Someday we'll all be negroes
  74. Kasparov Fritz Game Scores by onegoodmove · · Score: 1

    I've posted copies of all the games played so far they are available in pgn, html, and you can play through them on a java viewer. Here is the link

  75. What is intelligence? by Broadcatch · · Score: 1

    Intelligence is what computers can't do (yet).

    --

    The antidote for misuse of freedom of speech is more freedom of speech.
    -- Molly Ivins

  76. Re:No, for several reasons by CyberDruid · · Score: 1

    1) As has already been stated - Kaspy is black on Tuesday.

    2) Almost all chess programs have book learning, meaning that it keeps statistics over how well it has done in it's different book lines ("book" meaning something like predecided moves in the opening, that it does not have to think about). It will play lines with poor statistics less frequently.

    3) Which brings us to the fact that a computer randomly picks from a choice of a couple of moves on every move for the first eight moves or so. So getting into the same line is very hard anyway.

    4) In this particular case, I think that the Fritz team is allowed to make changes to its opening book between games, just to fine-tune it to be anti-Kasparov. So they could simply stop Fritz from playing the same thing again. Furthermore, I think they are even allowed to make changes to the positional parameters of Fritz between games, to make it evaluate the position differently.

    5) Finally, a computer works on the position when it is your move as well (a feature called "pondering"), so in order to be certain that it will make exactly the same move in the same position, you have to make _your_ moves in exactly the same amount of time as the first time you played the game.

    In short - no way...

    --

    Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati

  77. Law of Large Numbers by PingPongBoy · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Four games is not enough to statistically show who is better, especially if they are tied after three games.

    I think Kasparov still knows a lot of tricks but will not reveal many of them even if it means losing a match of just 4 games. He would know after just a game or two who is really stronger, and if the machine is limited, he woould't care to play 100% in case the next upgrade learns too much.

    --
    Know your pads. One time pad: good for cryptography. Two timing pad: where to take your mistress.
  78. Kasparov = Pissy little bitch. by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 1



    Was watching ESPN2's coverage of the game yesterday, and they showed an outtake of Kasparov, before the match, throwing a hissy-fit over the fact that the board was oriented the wrong way. It took like 4 or 5 people to calm him down.

    Besides hating Kasparov for being a pissy little bitch, and being a life-long supporter of IBM, the phrase "THE AUTOMATON CANNOT BE DEFEATED" has a certain, beautiful ring to it. :) I hope Fritz beats the living shit out of him and sends him packing.

    Cheers,

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  79. On a related note... (Re: Miss New York City) by Bowie+J.+Poag · · Score: 1

    (Have a look at the "Miss New York City" pageant winner lingering around the set pimping X3D's ShittyGoggles 2000. If thats the best you New York twits have to offer, you might want to continue looking around in caves for undiscovered sasquatches. That woman has about as much sex appeal as a rusty fire hydrant overgrown with weeds.)

    --
    Bowie J. Poag

  80. The programmers learned something. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    For example, to avoid closed positions.
    And to make assumptions about not moving pawns on the kings side.

    1. Re:The programmers learned something. by rlafflick · · Score: 1

      one ting everybody fails to mention which I think might be most important is that the computer uses analysis to determine which move to make. If Kaspy tries to recreate the same game, the computer analyses the moves and determines that following this tree of moves leads to its defeat and as such prunes this branch and plays a different variation. on the other hand if the tables were turned and the computer is playin a variation which it won on, it would keep on with the branch until its opponent makes a different move. Now understand that the computer usually plays what it considers to be its strongest variation at its earliest possible time and is not prone to blunders like humans are, if it gets in line to a variation that is stronger for him than for his opponent, it usually gets an advantage and tries to squeeze it into a win.

  81. human brain rulez ! by nsebban · · Score: 1

    Take that, Sky-Net ! :)

    --
    ____
    nico
    Nico-Live
  82. Brilliant win!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Garry Kasparov just brilliantly won game 3

    Did you even watch the game? Kasparov just exploited a bug in Fritz' evaluation engine. I wouldn't call that a brilliant win. (He'd make a good hacker though.)

  83. doesn't matter by kinsoa · · Score: 1
    Kasparov is playing in a sublevel of the Matrix. It's good for our power production he believes he won the game.

  84. Re:Mod this dirty whore up! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I HATE the "phunney"-congratulation posts patting each other's backs. It's a circle-jerk, and you know it.

  85. Does this mean by boatboy · · Score: 2, Funny

    Does this mean Gary could be The One? (spoiler) I expect him to lay down and feed himself to X3D to save us all.

  86. Ducking Kasparov by amightywind · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Does Kasparov play human beings anymore? or is he too good for us?

    Ponomariov held out for more money (non-existant) in a sheduled match with Kasparov that would have led to a championship match between either Kramnik or Leko. Neither match ever happened so Kasparov headed back to New York for another payday with Fritz. The problem is not Kasparov playing other humans but other humans having the guts to play Kasparov. Kramnik has not defended his title in 3 years. The FIDE stripped Fischer's title after that long.

    --
    an ill wind that blows no good
  87. Matrix chess? by ylikone · · Score: 0

    Maybe someone has asked this before... but why does everybody wear dark sunglasses like in the matrix? Are they trying to look cool or what?

    --
    Meh.
  88. Opening book by yerricde · · Score: 1

    barring an opening book which in my opinion is not an example of chess playing at all

    Bi()hazard seems to think that pattern matching is how experienced humans play chess. An opening book is just how a computer does pattern matching in the beginning of a chess game.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  89. It's now bug hunting not a game by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Great. It's no longer "man vs machine" playing chess... If you ask me, it's more one man trying to find bugs in the machine's system. Or rather, what moves have not been preprogrammed properly.

  90. Nintendo VS Deep Fritz / Blue / Throat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I bet the nintendo would beat the crap out of the rest. It wouldn't prune it's search tree so much and kick their butts like a computer tends to kick the butt of someone human who prunes too much. NINTENDO IS KING.

  91. Man vs Machine or Man vs Man by nak_slim · · Score: 0

    Why some folks get nervous when a computer beats a human at chess is beyond me. Need I remind everyone that Fritz was designed and built by humans, programmed by humans playing a game invented by humans. Sounds to me like it this is more a Man (Kaspov) vs Men (team who designed, researched and programmed Fritz). I would guess that no one on the Fritz team could beat Kaspov one on one in Chess, so they formed a team and built a machine to do it. The computer has nothing that I would call intelligence, its just a fancy Turing Machine.

  92. Re:3d goggles actually *helped* your game?? by mr_luc · · Score: 1

    Damn, dude.

    I tried those, and it threw off my depth perception. It's probably because I'm an elitist tribes-playing fucker, but all 3d glasses I've tried so far work well for corridor-based games and very poorly for games like Tribes, where your position and perspective change so rapidly.

  93. Uh what's the big deal? by TheLink · · Score: 1

    Just a publicity stunt and easy money for Kasparov.

    I bet Kasparov plays with Fritz regularly (has his own copy). And didn't he recently play Deep Fritz already?

    Buy Deep Fritz:
    http://www.chessbase.com/shop/index.asp?ca t=Fritz+ Programs

    Add some serious hardware. Kasparov can afford serious hardware.

    --
  94. I don't know much about Fritz by Theatetus · · Score: 1

    I've only played against Fritz, not studied it, but I've always wondered how the same moves can beat a program one day and lose to it the next.

    I mean, presumably if K. used the same opening in his next match, Fritz would respond differently, right? (otherwise once you've beaten a program you could always beat it.) What changes between the two matches? Does Fritz recall its earlier losses and try to avoid similar traps? Is there some amount of randmoness in the early move selections? Is it just a question of which positions it has time to analyze?

    --
    All's true that is mistrusted
    1. Re:I don't know much about Fritz by thdexter · · Score: 1

      Every (decent) chess engine uses an opening book, so in the first moves of the game only some moves will drastically turn the tides for one player or the other., This is why there's so many openings.

      --
      I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
  95. Where's the 3D? by agentk · · Score: 1

    The games seem to be sponsored by a company to promote it's proprietary 3D graphics technology. (Please do not confuse this company named "X3D" with the candidate ISO standard X3D, which is a new, expanded version of VRML).

    I looked around the site, but couldn't find a single screenshot of the 3D graphics. All of the images are standard 2D chessboard diagrams, even the playback applet.

    The best I could find was a monitor on the edge of a photo of Miss NYC in stereo glasses. Seemed like a fairly good looking chess set.... but it would be nice to see some animated playback, in the correct time! I thought "X3D" was trying to promote it's technology, but I can't see any of it.

    Anyone catch it on ESPN2? Did they show the gfx there at all?

    reed
    --

    VOS/Interreality project: www.interreality.org

  96. Before the program or before the power? by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Well, it used to be, back before people really thought about how to build a chess program.

    I remember playing against early computer chess programs. Even at an early age, I could quite often outthink them, simply because of their lack of power. A master wouldn't even be amused pounding it into the ground. It wasn't the program that was at fault, it was that it was running on a CPU of the 80s, without the CPU power nor the memory to store a sufficently large game tree.

    However, I was never in doubt that if the machine had been blazingly fast, with lots of memory, it'd beat me hands down. Chess is after all a fairly simple game, there is no hidden information, no room for bluffs, statistical probabilities etc. Everything can be calculated in advance to an arbitrary depth.

    Chess could theoretically be solved - either as a win for white, draw, or even win for black. From what I've gathered, so could Go (I don't know if draws are possible there?) Does that require intelligence? No. Just near-infinite brute force.

    Most signs of intelligence can be mimiced by sufficent brute force. With enough samples from the solution set, picking the best one is "sufficient". Say e.g. a computer that wants to drive a car. The direction [0...360> degrees is an infinite set. If the computer calculates what happens every 10 degrees, it'd miss out on quite a bit. If it calculated what happens every 0,001 degrees, it'd do fine.

    Kjella

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    1. Re:Before the program or before the power? by renoX · · Score: 1

      >Most signs of intelligence can be mimiced by sufficent brute force.

      It is very true, and I think that our intelligence is only the result of our brain "brute force".

      Well, it is not the same way of processing than computers, but parallel processing is quite good too.. :-)

  97. HA by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Well, it is funny how you can criticize something you do not know much about. In my book beating the most advanced chess computer means brilliant. It is as brilliant as the computer program taking advantage of the "human" way of playing chess, which is prone to overlooks, while the computer is very methodical. I beat you are not as "brilliant" as Kasparov to beat the computer, so what give you the right to decide what is brilliant or not? Of curse, you can express your opinion, but it is just that. And it is my opinion that you should probably stick with KGS...

  98. Re:First by DerrickL · · Score: 1

    As an oper on squeaknet, I would just like to state that anyone who enters our community and causes trouble (trolling, harassment, etc) will be k-lined and banned at the IP level from our network. Also, the offenders ISP abuse department will be notified.

  99. Football by davidhan · · Score: 1

    I bet I could beat that chess computer at Madden! Ever since that first Sega game I could always kill the computer, even with the worst team!!!

  100. Deterministic? by Chris+Abernathy · · Score: 1

    What keeps Kasparov from playing the exact same game again now that he has found a series of moves the program cannot beat?

    Does it adapt in some way? Are some real programmers in there overnight tweaking things to prevent that?

  101. Re:First by ghimtr · · Score: 1

    right

  102. Thank you by anarcat · · Score: 1

    I didn't have flash on the machine, and the PGN was very helpful, thanks!

    --
    Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
  103. No more Fermatesque "right margin" excuses by yerricde · · Score: 1

    Got a proof that Slashdot won't accept? Format it in LaTeX, post it on geoshitties, and link to it.

    --
    Will I retire or break 10K?
  104. Um, no by autopr0n · · Score: 1

    Not unless the human mind is capable of running Exponential algorithms in linear time, which it is not.

    --
    autopr0n is like, down and stuff.