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)."

Comments

Here is mirror of the game :)

[doomy]

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

Re:Here is mirror of the game :)

[wan-fu]

You're missing the remainder of the game:

26.f5 gxf5 27.Bxf5 cxd5 28.Bxe6 Rxe6 29.Rxf7 Kxf7 30.Qh7+ Ke8 31.Qxh5+ Ke7 32.Qg5+ Ke8 33.Qh5+ Ke7 34.Qh7+ 1/2-1/2.

Bullshit...

[Transient0]

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.

Re:Bullshit...

[DAldredge]

10^120 is the number of possible chess moves. From a google link.

" If you were to fully develop the entire tree for all possible chess moves, the total number of board positions is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,00 0,000,
000,000,000,000, or 10120, give or take a few. That's a very big number. For example, there have only been 1026 nanoseconds since the Big Bang. There are thought to be only 1075 atoms in the entire universe. When you consider that the Milky Way galaxy contains billions of suns, and there are billions of galaxies, you can see that that's a whole lot of atoms. That number is dwarfed by the number of possible chess moves. Chess is a pretty intricate game!"

Re:Bullshit...

[product byproduct]

Watch your terminology:

• The number of chess moves is at most 218.
  
• The number of chess positions is estimated to be between 10^43 and 10^50.
  
• The number of chess games is infinite, as the 50-move rule and the draw by repetition of position don't apply if no player makes the claim.
  
• The game tree complexity is about 10^123. That's the number of chess games you may have to consider to play perfect chess.
  

Source: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess

Re:Understanding vs. Processing

[njan]

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.

Re:Understanding vs. Processing

[vontrotsky]

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.

Results

[Stalyx]

"The game lasted several hours before resulting in a draw. Chess Grandmaster Peter Nielsen commented that he had set several traps for ChessBrain which computers normally fall for... but was surprised that ChessBrain refused them! "

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.

Re:I'd love to see a Beowolf cluster of those

[brad-d]

Oh yeah, that'd be right.

Finally I thought I could get a 5+ funny and here you go and steal my joke. I mean, what are the chances of somebody else thinking of this exact same joke on Slashdot? 1 in 3?

GM vs. thousands of humans?

[schm00]

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?

Re:GM vs. thousands of humans?

[sciencewhiz]

There are many systems like this. Chessworld.net is one, and they just challenged chessbrain to a match. You can see a full list of chessworld.net's ongoing games here: http://chessworld.net/chessclubs/event_show_chessw orld_summary_rowgames.asp

Re:Understanding vs. Processing

[arvindn]

Hey! This is pure FUD.

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".

Am I doing my maths correctly?

[Knx]

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