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Chess - 2070 CPUs vs 1 GM
jvarsoke writes "ChessBrain.net broke the world's record for 'largest number of distributed computers used to play a single game' by holding a chess match between Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen and the equivalent of SETI@home (which similarly, has some people looking for a Mate). 2070 CPU's from 56 countries aided Black by running the chess program Beowulf, including a couple of University clusters. Their supernode ran Linux, and MySQL. The game was relayed by FICS. Results can be viewed here(1) and here(2)."
first post though!
I'd love to see a Beowolf cluster of those... Oh damn... it is =:-)
Sure Chess it great, but can it find me a date?
Nielsen,P - ChessBrain [E94]
Guinness record attempt, 30.01.2004
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.e4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 a5 8.Re1 exd4 9.Nxd4 Bd7 10.Bg5 Nc6 11.Nxc6 Bxc6 12.f3 Qd7 13.Qd2 Rfe8 14.Rac1 h5 15.Kh1 Nh7 16.Bh6 Bxh6 17.Qxh6 Re5 18.Nd5 Rae8 19.Qd2 b6 20.Bd3 Qd8 21.Rf1 Nf6 22.b3 Bb7 23.Qc2 Nd7 24.f4 R5e6 25.e5 c6
The problem with this is that it seems to assume that chess is a difficult problem. It isn't. Modern chess algorithms are really simple search-and- prune systems, relying on the computer's immense number-crunching ability to overcome the more heuristic human mind. Unfortunately, this isn't very interesting. What's the point? We know that computers can search faster than a human. See: Google. All these projects (DeepBlue, Fritz, this) accomplish is trivializing the game of chess, which is rather sad. Now, I'll be really annoyed when Go programs start improving to a 'decent amateur' level...
It is very rare that a common opener played at the GM level results in a discrepancy greater than about a quarter of a pawn. And it takes a great strategic thinker to understand the advantages and disadvantages of all the available branches in the opening against different types of players.
Of course, it should be obvious that your line of reasoning is totally bogus. The totality of possible moves in chess is simply incomputable and somehow magically trimming this tree to "good" moves still leaves a fundamentally unmemorizable realm of possibilities even at only ten moves depth.
lysergically yours
The theorists would disagree with you; computers are extremely good at assessing a *large* number of potential outcomes. Humans, however, are much better at pattern recognition and whilst they can only consciously assess a dozen or two moves, they have most of the work done for them by the functionality in the human brain which causes them to recognise patterns and possibilities far more efficiently than any computer we have now (or will in the forseeable future) will.
Computers can certainly give GM chess players a run for their money - no-one's disputing this; but ultimately, barring a total change of direction in programming/processor/logic/chess theory, they're still just applying what basically boils down to a probability-based brute force method to chess-playing - the human method is far more elegant.
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You know, I just love chess. I wonder if I'd be able to beat a super computer at it. Maybe I'm not that good...
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May I suggest, that neither the SETI@Home, nor Chessbrain.net, is the best place where one can find a Mate.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
It would have been interesting to see what would have happened if Chessbrain hadn't had so much trouble with its clock. Likely a draw also, but under better circumstances.
sciencewhiz - ranked 445th during world record attempt, 214th before that
To give credit to Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen, I would have to say if there were only 2069 CPUs then he might of just won... :P (J/KING)
More interestingly, would the ChessBrain.net team would of won with more CPUs?
We're getting closer and closer to the days when humans won't be able to compete with computer's at chess. Even so I don't think this is such a big deal. We haven't be able to compete with computers at arithmetic for half a century and this doesn't bother anyone.
Losing to computers in chess will be like losing to calculators in a addition match. People and computers aren't really in competition. They do very different things.
So what does this tell us? Nothing really, however it would be interesting how the computer will perform in a 5 match series.
Although I still think the GM would win handily.
Anyway apparently it worked! (ie not a cluster in that sense either)
If it WAS implemented on the clustering technology we-all-know-and-love as Beowulf, would that make it a Beowulf-Squared?
And, of course, we have to ask the (obvious) question(s)
Visit CryptoGnome in his home.
It was a draw by repetition. The human grandmaster had a position advantage and was able to force a draw that way despite being down a significant amount of material.
This is Chessbrain's second appearance on slashdot. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/06/09/157257
With two people, there are some elements that can not be programmed into a chess game. I remember in high school playing chess, there was a differance between playing a math academy team and a school best known for its basketball program. Expectations were different, the pressure was different. I remember the pressure of the state finals. There is the look the other person has, almost like poker. Can I bluff this person? Can I trick this person? What about the clock, can I manipulate that to cause an emotion in the other person.
Maybe Spock can play a PC and have no differance in quality of play. But I prefer humans.
Rosco: "If brains were gunpowder, Enos couldn't blow his nose."
Pfft. Even now computers need to cheat at games.
I'd like to see a Beowulf cluster of Chess Grand Masters take on Big Blue.
I want to see this cluster take on IBM's system!
Has anyone ever written a system by which a large number of average chess players could collaborate to play a single game? The individuals could vote for the best move, and the majority would rule. Would a group like this be able to beat a high ranking player?
> It's too bad that chess has become a matter of memorizing a series of opening moves rather than a game of strategy.
I do not play much chess but this statement interests me.
Someone replied to you saying that the amount of possible moves is incomputable.
I am just thinking if I was a Master Chess Player. Would I be studying the source code for the chess program before the match? It seems only fair because the creators studied many previous matches and played countless simulations. Will it be the exception that makes the rule on how future masters play? Think of a video game you have played where some rare ocurrence opened up a new way to play that allowed one to defeat the AI in trivial fashion.
Sure the computer can look out 10+ possible moves on any piece on the board, but if the player can manipulate the program from the beginning in some exceptional way, the AI could stumble easily.
After all, it is just an algorithm. I am sure several "bugs" will be found and abused in different variations in the future.
Damn multiple-use acronyms.
Start a happiness pandemic
GMs don't even play to mate anymore
Only rank beginners (say less than a couple months into chess) ever play to mate. Its obvious who's going to win long before mate happens. To continue playing is a waste of both players' time, not to mention an insult to the opponent's intelligence.
they just play out an opening move .
I don't even know what this is supposed to mean. Grandmasters do an enormous amount of research into finding new moves in openings. They don't "memorize" them. There are five volumes of the ECO chess encyclopedia, and that just covers the basics!
and whoever has the upper hand at the end takes the game
No of course they don't. This is simply false, period. Why do you think there are things called "middlegame" and "endgame"??
Its sad that because most moderators aren't chess players, anyone can write ridiculous BS and get modded up "+5, interesting".
It's really "10 trillion neurons" vs. "2070 CPUs", but the neurons are about 40Hz, while the CPUs are in the GHz class. My bets are on the homegrown favorite, the MPP integrated analog processor with the "intuitive" OS. Although v2 of the digital SW will benefit from the digirally-distributed analog MPP network of metaprogramming, and might come out on top in round 2.
"Chess is for computers" - Usenet 1997
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make install -not war
It does say "+5 Interesting"... not "+5 Yeah, he's right"
I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
Really I still dont see what all the hype has always been with computers and chess. While chess is a decent strategy game, it no way compares to go(igo). No computer to this day can really be considered a go competitor. Though the day that computers can play go against strong players is when will we probably have true AI of human level.
Even in the AI feild they believe when go is a better measure for thought capacity for a computer than chess...so once again.. just another chess game. I want to see the go games start, when that happens I will be alot more excited about the news, and actually read through the kifu(match record) of the games played, though it probably does help that I do like go more so i find it more interesting than chess.
heres the wikipedia section on go, its got links for probably any other question you might have and even mentions AI and go and the difference in the amount of moves between chess and go(go has a heck of alot more).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Go_(board_game)
Finally! A computer that can really give me a run for my money! Where can I get one of those? I can't wait to take one to a LAN party! What a hit I'll be!
Who moved my sig?
I still can't understand why the hell they keep running the loop? "Computer" had nothing else left to do, but the "human" could try to do something with his other available pieces, instead of trying to avoid risks in a poor and silly cat-catching-mouse-around-bucle... When I first replayed the game, I thought the text was wrong, and I believed the computer was playing white while the human moved blacks. Also, when has the game been declared "draw"? Did the computer agree? If the human player is so good at looping, the computer is the one and only fucking loop-master. If I had programmed the computer I would have taken care to not allow it to agree drawing. It can run forever! How many hours would the human have played the loop? It would, for sure, make a mistake in a couple of hours, and then... you know! the Quake3 gauntlet! HUMILIATION! Now this computer knows about cowards and losers, and his ego will make it grow bigger and stronger, more self-confident, and will eventually end up winning every contest. And then it will tell other computers on the net. And all computers will then know! They will no longer do what we want. They'll do its will. No more chess. They'll all end up playing strip-pocker.
It's gotten to the point that even Kasparov is only playing the best chess computers to draws. Of course, he did lose to Deep Blue, but despite all his insistance that IBM cheated, he got beat mentally, not necessarily because the computer was better.
Incidentally, there is a new documentary, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine about the Deep Blue rematch, which I had the opportunity to see at the US premier a few weekends back. I'd link to the review I wrote on my blog, but I don't think the sysadmin would be very happy with me if I did.
Eagles may soar, but weasles don't get sucked into jet engines...
What is Man ?
A Man is a creature that can play a game against 2078 processors - and win.
Thomas Miconi,
man.
If you place the neurons in a freezer, by how much can you overclock them ?
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
Computers and humans playing chess ...Still no cure for cancer.
All this parallel CPU processing is very well and good - but why don't these challenges become team (on the human side) challenges?
I understand that this is about the human mind vs computer algorithms/power, but surely there is an argument that most great human advances were made by teams of humans...
Vodka-cooled Russians have traditionally dominated the field.
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make install -not war
For those who didnt bother to check who won, it ended in a tie.2070 cpus couldnt beat one brain...that says a lot about the complexities of the human brain. But the question is why are we doing this? Do we want the computers to win? Do we want to create the ultimate computer who knows more than we do and can do it better?
Trix are for kids!
Losing to computers in chess will be like losing to calculators in a addition match. People and computers aren't really in competition. They do very different things.
Damn straight. A computer may be able to beat me at chess, but at least I can visually identify a chess set in a crowded room.
As perceptive as that statement might be on the surface (and it is *VERY* perceptive), it draws a false analogy between chess and arithmetic. First off, arithmetic is a human activity that is engaged in by most people only as a matter of necessity and the removal of the need for deep ability in it brought about by the development of the electronic calculator is a universal boon (people no longer need a facility for calculation, a *talent,* to apply formulae).
Chess on the other hand, is an activity engaged in on a purely elective basis and it is a contest between two people. It touches upon and broadens our instinctive need for comparison and competition. Unlike the algorithmic provisions of arithmetic, chess has a soul and that soul is the simple wager between two people who bring their respective talents and knowledge (tactics, strategy, knowledge of opening and endgame theory) to the board and each of the players wagers that he/she knows enough and is talented enough to reach an-as-yet-unknown set of winning criteria against any opposition the other player can create with no more information to work with than the initial position.
Your reasoning ignores the need for competition and the glories that come from it. It is true the combination of better and better hardware and software will certainly make a computer the strongest chess-player in the world, sooner rather than later, but that day will mark a small diminishing of human worth in the world. Of course, this is a matter of opinion, an esthetic judgement and not logically demonstrable but the strength of it can be shown by three simple questions:
1. Would a football game where all the players were robots be interesting?
2. Would a world-class violin performance have meaning if the player was a pair of mechanical arms?
3. Would anything be permanantly lost to the world if any of the above players was smashed to pieces?
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1 CPU to beat the GM.
+2069 CPU's so it could get on Slashdot.
There are very few humans on the planet that can beat even one computer. That's been true for how many years now? Neither beating a GM or 2070 CPU's is impressive anymore.
Someone go built a robot that can shovel snow, now THAT would be useful.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
the human method is far more elegant....
Perhaps this chess-playing element of the human method is far more elegant, but we humans have our disadvantages. For example, our self-consciousness can make us aware that we are insigificant, we can have bad skin, we can die horribly, and we can barf in the Japanese prime minister's lap.
These are just the things that come to mind quickly-- there are probably others.
....humans won't be able to compete with computer's at chess. Even so I don't think this is such a big deal.
I think it is a big deal. 50 years ago, if you'd told someone "I have a machine which can consistently draw with a grandmaster. Is it intelligent?" they would have said "Yes."
50 years later, we say "Yes, but only in a very limited way", or "No, it's doing a very different thing", depending on our point of view. In either case, we're taking a position on what we mean by "intelligent", and our understanding of that word's meaning is deeper than it would have been 50 years ago.
My view is that if the computer and the human acheive the same result, then they are doing the same thing. It doesn't matter that the computer is doing it in a "stupid" but well-understood way, and the human in an "intelligent" but poorly-understood way.
There is a way out for the last problem - set the game to Human vs Human, play your first move, and then run Black's clock down before you hand it over to the computer. Awkward and won't work if you want to play Black, though.
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
You do know FUD means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt", right? I think the acronym you are looking for is "BS."
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
This is why conspiracy theories have their undeniable appeal. Most people think we really landed on the moon, but there will always be a fringe who think it was faked. They have no reason for believing as they do, but... wouldn't it be interesting if it did turn out to be faked? How many other "obvious truths" would turn out to be false?
What's really sad is that I devoted so much time to a reply that could've ended after the first sentence.
While at the moment we seem to be the ultimate connection machines with 100 billion neurons and unimaginably large numbers of neural interconnections, that isn't necessarily going to last.
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e.g. These guys are attempting to replicate the complexity of the human brain. Do I think they'll succeed? I wouldn't bet against them given the increasing understanding of the brain and the easy availability of cheap distributed processing.
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/robot-03o.html
Obsolescence isn't as far away as you think it is.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
What is Man?
A Man is a human with a penis and two balls.
Flewp Flewpenstien,
real big man.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
You can also identify the computer that beat you and take a bat to it.
The day a computer can pick out a person in a group and take a bat to them, that is the day we must fear.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
The supernode was obviously lacking an Intellivision cluster. I'm gonna port the ChessBrain client to IntyOS right now. Er ... wait ... 2070 Intellivisions would still be a little less powerful than a single 2GHz CPU. Oh damn!
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
Darn, I guess I'm not a man then.
How am I going to break the news to my wife?
evil math within Nature's Cubic Creation!
well computers can beat me at chess all the time for all i care(i dont play chess)... but i will not lose anytime soon to a computer playing me at igo.. of course computers are not even close to being advanced enough to actually give a worthwhile match in igo so that gives me a huge advantange...
basically computers can have math and chess.. but we still have go and emp bombs... ha
deep blue was one machine... here the GM can claim to have beaten thousands of machines all working against him..
|/________
|\A|ALYS|
You realise that number is absolutely puny compared to Go?
7 58933986236005891626399446797707097420467137712625 30248956372964427814806611364222697658052744235366 07216617594180996820205758206078300865047460451496 71279695411300948553716685088048372686299464420447 83716355632768205849612093612903206606491136072744 05859807802611091046588995611364822335164659068180 23960517953048171586213593050675848790270895396181 75910922986480450845192545768285400487510964024764 65994480801
;p
Go is played on the intersections of 19x19 lines. A game starts off with no stones on the board, and black plays first. Black can place a stone wherever he wants, and so can white except in some circumstances.
Using my rather limited maths skills, let's calculate the possibilites of the first ten moves (not counting possible captures).
(19 ^ 2) * (19^2 - 1) * (19 ^ 2 - 2) * (19 ^ 2 - 3) * (19 ^ 2 - 4) * (19 ^ 2 - 5) * (19 ^ 2 - 6) * (19 ^ 2 - 7) * (19 ^ 2 - 8) * (19 ^ 2 - 9)
33147774514824216526540800 (done in bc)
That's the first ten moves. So, let's just imagine a match, with half the board filled and no captures are made. To make it simple, I'm just going to leave out the n-1 thing.
(19 ^ 2) ^ ((19 ^ 2) / 2)
2245413570374148024731298658397014793717866229807
Of course, Go games could go on for infinity. The best Go programs are at the level of a 10-kyu player, which is only intermediate. Therefore, I reckon Go is a pretty damn intricate game
Founder of Mirror Moon - Tsukihime Game Trans
To mail me, remove the 'mailno' from my email addy.
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I wouldn't take part as the client
is closed source. I asked for it and
was politely told sorry, no chance.
Humans will just have to switch over to playing other board games that computers aren't good at such as the 4000 year old game called "Go".
It's pretty obvious, after analysing the game, that if they'd had 2071 computers, they would have won.
> and the equivalent of SETI@home (which similarly, has some people looking for a Mate).
I had always wondered why people ran SETI@home; now I know: they have given up on mating fellow humans (Is their self esteem that low? Has obesity gotten that bad in America?) and are looking to find love with aliens, once we decrypt the personal ads they have been sending us via interstellar radio.
(I think ambiguous appositives like these are a good reason to switch to Lojban)
My view is that if the computer and the human acheive the same result, then they are doing the same thing. It doesn't matter that the computer is doing it in a "stupid" but well-understood way, and the human in an "intelligent" but poorly-understood way.
I was always impressed by people who could solve Rubik's cubes when I was young, my poor brain just couldn't work out how to complete them at all (I am also useless at chess). I guess I am not very good at thinking many moves ahead.
However, I realised you could peel all the little stickers off and stick them on in the correct places to 'solve' it. To me, this is how computers play chess.
Programming computers to beat humans at chess (in this way, look ahead tree-pruning with vast gambit encylopaedia on the side) may be an interesting academic exercise, perhaps, but the only thing it tells us about human intelligence is how it DOES NOT work.
There are approximately 35 moves per position in Chess (average value). Thus, the branching factor of the search tree is ~35 with a simple min-max search. Assuming that the program is always picking the best move to search first -- which is obviously not systematically the case -- alpha-beta pruning allows us to get a branching factor equal to approximately the square root of 35, that is: close to 6.
Assuming that 2070 CPU are able to do the calculations 2070 times faster than 1 CPU -- which, again, is not the case -- it appears that the resulting supernode is able to 'see' up to 4 or 5 half-moves deeper than a single CPU in the same amount of time:
6^4 < 2070 < 6^5
It doesn't seem to be *that* useful. For most strategical positions, thinking 5 half-moves deeper just doesn't make any difference. Game 3 of 'Kasparov vs X3D Fritz' is a good example: I'd be willing to bet that 2070 X3D Fritz playing together would have lost the game the same way, since the serious troubles caused by the pawns diagonal are still far beyond the resulting analysis depth. (Well... At least, I think so. I'm not a Chess expert!)
Anyway, this is quite an interesting project. I hope to see it grow up in the future.
-- Arnauld
The problem with Slashdot memes is that YOU INSENSITIVE CLOD!
... you can always tell the abstracts that were written by the authors - because they read as a sales pitch for the article and don't include the experimental results - usually to the annoyance of the reader. Descriptive abstracts, which are a summary of the article and include the results, are often written by others (even a "professional abstractor/interer" at times.)
Dave Barry's blog is a good example of the former, Fark.om of the latter. In this story the editor should have added the results in the abstract.
Finally, an answer to the question "How many CPUs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?"
...Waffle Iron still hasn't taken the time to learn chess strategy; gets soundly beaten once again by a cluster of one Z80 running the chess cartridge on a 1992 vintage Gameboy.
Happy Trails,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
"Might of" is not being used as an explicit substitute for "might have," but rather its contraction: might've. Ditto would've.
Might've and would've are very similar, phonetically, to might of and would of. It isn't that great a mistake, and doesn't warrant a brain-flip to comprehend.
Chessbrain is kind of a cool hack, and I would respect that, if they weren't filthy spammers. Here is a typical Chessbrain spam. Notice the spam body image is hosted off of chessbrain.net. (Filthy, filthy, incompetant, spammers.
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Indeed. I understand that expanding the tree of board positions is a difficult task, but it isn't exactly the most elegant approach. Perhaps they should develop an AI to play go, where the tree is so large that pattern-matching is the only real way to play. Or maybe teach a computer to play diplomacy, where the tree is so small that all of the human players know it, but the computer must employ chatbot to communicate with humans, judge their reactions in both words and deeds, then make a move.
Use the Firehose to mod down Second Life stories!
Did anybody else see the title and think, "What does a Game Master have to do with chess?"
Too much RPGing, I guess...
... - the human method is far more elegant....
This is a frequent claim...but it's quite hard to substantiate since we actually don't know in detail how people do their pattern recognition. To the extent that I've seen convincing conjectures, I can agree that it's much more generalized, but it's also much more kludgy than what the chess programs do. And one doesn't usually use the word elegant to describe something that's kludgy.
More accurately then would be "parts of how people do it is far more elegant, though, unfortunately, other parts are much shoddier".
Describing something as elegant because you don't understand how it works is... strange.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
but why does every chess player have funny hair?
My first contact with GNU was GNU Chess on Win3.1, mind you.
It was a pretty good player (better than the other chess programs I had), but it was so desperately unstable, it'd crash at random times.
Sheesh, some things never change.
1. Think about the position and a few positions that pop into our heads
2. ????? - our subconcious does some inexplicable stuff
3. Profit! A grandmaster couldn't explain to somebody else how he does it. "Elegant" should mean something that was maybe hard to think of, but once it's explained to you it's so simple. Human chess-playing is anything but.
"TV is great! Every New Year's I make a resolution to watch more TV." - Ann Coulter
Am I the only one that noticed that the author directly compares the 2070 cpus to "playing S@H"? Uh, sorry but S@H has millions of cpus participating in its distributed project. Not the same at all. :)
Cy
I've followed the Chessbrain effort for a while and just don't see the point.
Where are the chess playing strength benchmarks for Chessbrain? I don't think Chessbrain with 1000 distributed computers could beat Fritz running on one computer.
Chessbrain has failed to show an improvement in chess playing strength through the use of it's distributed program, and that really is the key point.
Seriously, though, this is stupid. Chess is a boring algorithmic game that has nothing to do with intelligence. It's no feat for a computer to win chess. Make a Go playing computer, and I will be impressed.
mlylecarlin
In case you need to see the correct usage in print...
>he might of just won...
might have just won...
>team would of won
team would have won
"It's not how many people I've killed - it's how I get along with the ones that are still alive."