Slashdot Mirror
16th World Computer Chess Championship In Progress
vmartell writes "The 16th World Computer Chess Championship is now in progress in Beijing, as part of the Computer Games Championship. Currently in the lead are Rybka 3.0, recognized as the world's strongest chess engine and Hiarcs, another commercial engine. Another curiosity is a Java ME based engine running on a Nokia phone, which is currently being trounced by the other engines. A very interesting sideline: before the computer tournament, a Women's Grandmaster played two games against Rybka. The result? Rybka won both games!"
The women need it.. otherwise they wouldn't get a look in.
Of course, someone will get offended at this statement and say that women are just as good as men at chess.. I don't know how they'll explain the lack of ranking of women but, hey, it's probably some giant male conspiracy right? Women are just as good as men at chess but, for some reason, men conspire to prevent them from getting high ranks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rybka
The page also goes into detail on the name...
No sig today...
"P.S. You arrogant fans of Go can frak yourselves. Where do you think the scientists will go once they're done with chess. Enjoy it while it lasts."
Considering Go's harder. I'd say they're welcome to try.
Shai Schticks:"You don't make peace with friends, you make peace with enemies"
I'm guessing that's a snide remark on my spelling..
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/learnt
is how the English spell it.. ya know, the namesake of the language?
It's also how we spell it here in Australia.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Because Deep Rybka is considerably stronger than Deep Fritz.
http://64.68.157.89/forum/viewtopic.php?topic_view=threads&p=221014&t=23997&sid=40fc40362255abca455eb72ef938f2aa
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 is the magic number.
This story, for example, apparently has zero comments.
Here I was thinking I could get a Turk related first post :( At least Hiarcs almost rhymes with Turk. I didn't actually realise that the name was a reference to this - should have known what with the rest of the series being full of references.
Is anyone really surprised that a computer beat a human grandmaster twice in a row? As computers get more powerful, it is inevitable that they will completely outclass humans in games with perfect knowledge. There were times when Kasparov fooled Deep Blue's algorithms a couple of times (presumably giving it a piece or two in return for a square with significant strategic advantage), but they just trained it so that it wouldn't fall for those tricks again. I honestly wouldn't be surprisd if a grandmaster never won a tournament game against a chess supercomputer ever again.
which is totally what she said
http://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men
That link says "men" in it, but in fact includes women as well... or rather one woman, Judit Polgar, at #27. The 2nd ranked woman doesn't make the top 100 (ELO: 2618).
Whatever. Let's reply to that obvious troll.
1) You need opening preparation to play. Well, that's a given, and it was already the case 20 years ago. Now, with computers, opening preparation is easier, so players are better prepared.
2) Grandmasters have not memorized ending tablebases, first because it is impossible, and second, because grandmasters are still much much better than computers in endgames. Endgame is not about memorisation, but about technique. And yes, you have to work that too.
3) Average chess games is 40 moves long, not 60
4) Computers make opening books deeper but also wider: lines that were considered unplayable are now playable. This adds diversity to the games.
5) Middlegame last anywhere from 0 to 20 moves. Not "1 to 5".
6) Capablanca already said that chess was so analysed that it was boring and draw in 1930. Guess what: he was wrong.
So, what is exactly your complain ? That you have to work a lot to play competitively at your local chess club ? Well, that is not because of computers, it is because the players there are better than you are.
And that is not due to computer play. It is due to the internet. Because on the chess servers, you have people playing chess as if it was WoW. So, the guy you face at that local chess club, maybe he plays 40 "3+0" games a day...