Linux Chess Supercomputer Overpowers Grandmaster

Capt Bubudiu writes "Deep Blue vs. Kasparov is something most readers will remember but when Deep Blue was retired by IBM, a Dubai company took over with Hydra. In a $150,000 6-game challenge in Wembley UK, the games got off to a humiliation for mankind as Michael Adams, the UK Grandmaster, was mauled in games one and three, drawing game two. Adams is ranked seventh in the world and what ordinary mortals call a 'Super Grandmaster'."

Comments

"we" won?

[moz25]

The interesting thing is that in a man vs. machine fight, the tech folks can say "we won" as they assembled the machine. Is it a humiliation or triumph for mankind that it can build a machine that can defeat itself? I think it would rather be a failure for humans if mortals can defeat highly optimized machines.

Re:"we" won?

[ottffssent]

The computers are not beating the humans with math. They are not relying on superior computational capability. The computers are winning with superior algorithms. Even a fairly shallow complete traversal of the search space is many orders of magnitude away from being possible, and a machine using this approach will be consistently beaten by even middling players. Computer chess has advanced primarily due to algorithmic optimizations. The evaluation functions that a modern chess engine uses are extremely well-tuned, and while a chess engine may be backed by an enormous pre-computed opening book, this too is dependent on algorithmic advances, because the book is calculated using algorithms as well, not a brute-force search. The two sets of algorithms are different, and the opening book can benefit from hugely greater computational resources, but ultimately the search algorithm is the limiting factor.

In short, the recent successes of machine chess are due to human enginuity, to the same sort of creative processes that humans themselves use to play chess. Technology, in the machine sense, is almost irrelevant (see Fritz's victories on a dinky 8P Xeon with a few gig of RAM) when compared to the advances in understanding of the game of chess.

Interestingly, even as the programmers are developing an ever-greater understanding of chess, chess players are developing an ever-greater understanding of both the game and the way in which computers play it, though people with much greater understanding of this than I tell me that the newest algorithms are playing a very human-like game, minimizing the effect of understanding 'computer chess' on the game.

Jessie Owens Outpaced by Motorbike

[nagora]

Big deal.

TWW

Beating a supercomputer is easy..

[Thomas DM]

I bet I can beat every supercomputer on Earth.. If you just allow me to pull the plug ;)

Yeah, but...

[chriswaclawik]

In my mind, there will always be only one true grandmaster.

I'm still waiting for the day where a supercomputer can win a rap battle against a human...

Hydra is not the ultimate chess entity

[Redshift]

Hydra performed very badly in the recent Freestyle Chess competition run by ChessBase - competitors were a variety of grandmasters and amateurs assisted by databases and computers. I other words, any form of cheating was acceptable, all that mattered were the moves on the board.

The two Hydra machines did not even make it into the final sixteen. Moreover, the eventual winners were a couple of amateurs using pretty ordinary PCs running over-the-counter chess programs. On the way to the title they beat a selection of computer- and supergrandmaster-assisted grandmasters.

On this evidence the "strongest chess entity on the planet" is a team consisting of a New Hampshire database administrator + a soccer coach + 3 ordinary PCs.

Links:

Hydra knocked out

Final result

Winners debriefing