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Hydra vs. Shredder
azaris writes "The powerful computer chess engine Hydra, running on a sixteen-way Linux cluster, is taking on the many times world champion engine Shredder in a match between the two chess super computers in Abu Dhabi, according to ChessBase.com. So far, Hydra is leading by two clear victories." S!: ChessBase also points to the announcement of a "64,000 square meter International Chess City" in Dubai, planned to cost US $2.6 billion, which "will feature 32 buildings designed to mirror the image of a traditional black and white game board."
They're still working on improving it. http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/meet/html/d.3 .html
I'm not terribly familiar with the geography of the region, so I guess I could be reading the map wrong, but the article shows that the "Chess City" is being built in Dubai, not Abu Dhabi. The map in the article shows both places, and they appear to be nowhere near one another.
sqrt(64000) = 252.982 meters
Do the submitters ever check what they type ?
Its NOT Abu Dhabi, its Dubai - very close to each other, but seperate soverign states (although they are often described as Gulf Emirates).
Dubai is in the midst of a massive tourism push, spending billions of pounds/dollars/whatever on tourism projects. They have some of the best hotels in the world there.
I've been to Dubai and its a cracking place - all the mystic and personality of the Gulf Arab world, without too much(yet) of the raving fundamentalism. [For some who lived for 3 years in Saudi Arabia, Dubai was the promised land - the enjoyment of living in the gulf with legal booze !]
Just like IBM computers are not listed to be at this place, I'm sure that Junior is also bound by some issues such that it is not represented at Abu Dhabi.
On the one hand, it's a city devoted to chess. On the other hand, it's in the UAE, which make it easy to build when you're playing with the oil money that should go back to the people. See here for the severe lack of democracy source.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
I don't know if you are joking, but GNU/Chess is very badly outclassed by lots of amateur engines, let alone by these professionals.
Reality is defined by the maddest person in the room
a "64,000 square meter International Chess City" in Dubai, planned to cost US $2.6 billion, which "will feature 32 buildings designed to mirror the image of a traditional black and white game board."
Wow. Dubai is really ramping up the tourism hooks. I just saw an article in some boating magazine about the man-made islands they're building to increase their shoreline. I found a Google hit here.
Duh. No buildings are necessary for the 32 empty squares.
Islam does not forbid Chess. If Sistani does not like it, that is his problem. The confusion here stems from the medival era when many people in the Islamic/Arab world were so smitten by Chess that some scholars felt that it was a huge waste of time and said it was "Makrooh" (undesirable). I am not aware of any respected scholar who said it is Haraam (forbidden).
For the record, the United Arab Emirates, the country that Abu Dhabi is the capital of, does not do beheadings. They have capital punishment, just like America, & they use a firing squad. So far this year they have not had a single execution, unlike the US. (Source: http://www.amnesty.org/resources/report04/stats-en g/text/06b.html )
Sorry to feed a troll, but I had to do this.
It was turned into a weather forecaster for the Atlanta Olympics. I dunno what happened to it after that.
You're on crack and you don't know what you're talking about. Deep Blue would have done fine against any player.
for those actually interested in the games themselves, here are games 1 and 2 in PGN. You can view them with winboard/xboard . Just paste them into a .pgn file.
[Event "Match rapid 90 min"]
[Site "Abu Dhabi"]
[Date "2004.08.14"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Hydra"]
[Black "Shredder"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B80"]
[PlyCount "75"]
[EventDate "2004.??.??"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Be3 e6 7. f3 b5 8. g4 h6
9. Qd2 Nbd7 10. O-O-O Bb7 11. h4 d5 12. exd5 Nxd5 13. Nxd5 Bxd5 14. Bg2 Ne5 15.
Qe2 Qa5 16. f4 Qxa2 17. Bxd5 Qa1+ 18. Kd2 Bb4+ 19. c3 Qxb2+ 20. Ke1 Bxc3+ 21.
Kf1 exd5 22. fxe5 Qb4 23. Bf2 O-O 24. g5 Bxd4 25. Bxd4 h5 26. Kg2 Rac8 27. Rhf1
Qe7 28. Qxh5 Rc2+ 29. Kg3 Rc6 30. Rd3 a5 31. Rdf3 Re6 32. Rf6 Rxe5 33. Bxe5
Qxe5+ 34. R6f4 a4 35. Kg2 d4 36. Rxf7 Qd5+ 37. R7f3 Rc8 38. Re1 1-0
[Event "Match rapid 90 min"]
[Site "Abu Dhabi"]
[Date "2004.08.15"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Shredder"]
[Black "Hydra"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B97"]
[PlyCount "102"]
[EventDate "2004.??.??"]
1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 a6 6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 Qb6 8. Nb3
Be7 9. Qf3 Nbd7 10. O-O-O Qc7 11. Kb1 b5 12. Bd3 b4 13. Ne2 Bb7 14. Qh3 Nxe4
15. Bxe7 Kxe7 16. Qh4+ Ndf6 17. Rhe1 h6 18. f5 e5 19. Nf4 Ng5 20. Nh5 Nxh5 21.
Qxh5 Bxg2 22. Nd2 a5 23. h4 Nh7 24. Qe2 Bc6 25. Rg1 Rhg8 26. Ne4 Bxe4 27. Bxe4
Rac8 28. Bd3 Qb6 29. Bb5 Nf6 30. Ba4 e4 31. Rde1 Qc5 32. Qa6 d5 33. Rd1 d4 34.
Bb3 Rc6 35. Qe2 Kf8 36. Ba4 Rd6 37. Qf1 Rd8 38. Qa6 Qc7 39. Qb5 Rh8 40. Qf1 Rh7
41. Bb3 h5 42. Ba4 e3 43. Qb5 Rh6 44. Rg2 Rd5 45. Qf1 Ng4 46. Bb3 Rd8 47. Ba4
Rf6 48. Re1 g6 49. Rc1 Rxf5 50. Qe2 Qe7 51. Bb5 Qxh4 0-1
There was no specific action taken to specifically tune DB to Kasparov. Its tuning was primarily in the hands of feedback from a number of the top US players (probably none of which had ever played Kasparov) and the ingenuity of Feng Hsu, it primary designer.
Kasparov doesn't have a style of play that you can just put your finger on and say "oh, I know how to counter that!". The closest anyone has come to doing that is when Vladimir Kramnik beat him in a World Championship match in 2000. And Kramnik did it in a style that no computer could ever hope to emulate.
Deep Blue's primary "tuning" was directed at just making sure it played chess really really well. The VLSI doesn't have any specific "anti-Kasparov logic" in it at all. They used a combination of brute force and state of the art in heuristic evaluation of chess positions. Feng Hsu also revolutionized game tree search technology with a method he created called "singular extension", which I believe most chess programs now use in one form or another.
They also let Kasparov psyche himself out and play in an extremely unusual style that he is not really known for. Commenting on the games from the audience Viswanathan Anand (currently second in the world) said basically he couldn't believe or understand the way Kasparov was playing.
As to the whole dismantling thing, IBM actually had smaller versions of DB playing exhibition games against all comers for a little while after the match before shutting down the whole thing. An earlier version of DB called Deep Thought II, also entered the World Computer Chess Championships soon after, and lost the championship and its individual game to Fritz running on a single CPU PC.
I have no idea why people keep modding this up. First off, most of the people who are starving in this world are doing so because they live under an oppressive regime that likes it that way. An army lives and dies on it's stomach, along with the fact that giving land to one's cronies helps keep one in power. This is most definetly the case in the Sudan and Zimbabwe.
It is almost never for the lack of natural resources. Japan has almost none, yet they seem to be eating fine. Thirty years ago, Zimbabwe used to be the bread basket of Africa. Now they starve. Therefore, if you want to help feed the hungry, you have to take out the dictators, and we all know how well that went the last couple times we tried to do that. Plus that costs a whole lot more than 2.6 billion.
On the other hand, very few of the gulf states have even tried to expand their economy beyond oil. Considering how unstable the region is now, imagine what it would be like when the money and world interest runs out. The world will eventually shift away from Mid-East oil, that is inevitable.
Considering that, trying to reinvent U.A.E. as a tourist destination is a brilliant move. First it ensures that there will be some positive world attention given to the country. Secondly, it provides a more robust economy. Both are ultimatly good things that will lead to more jobs, which should help starving people feed themselves :)
"To save the planet, I had to go to the worst spot on Earth, and that was Philadelphia." -- Sun Ra