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16th World Computer Chess Championship In Progress

Posted by timothy on from the all-the-hipsters-are-there dept.

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!"

3 of 183 comments (clear)

  1. Women's grandmaster? by joeflies · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Does chess really need to separate the rankings between male and female champions? Isn't this a sport that gender really doesn't factor in?

    1. Re:Women's grandmaster? by BadAnalogyGuy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You're a bit mistaken.

      The intellectual abilities of both men and women are essentially equal. The key differentiation between the cognitive abilities of men and women is that men are able to confront a problem by breaking things down into smaller parts and focus on solving those to form a complete solution while the minds of women take problems holistically and solve based on tradeoffs between different sections of a problem area.

      This would seem to benefit women chess players, but the fact is that chess is a game with many intricacies and the ability to analyze at the micro level (as in visualizing x number of steps ahead) is a critical skill. To take the game holistically works fine at the lower levels (and may be a superior form of cognition for those levels) because a full understanding of the game as an exhibition of ebb and flow gives various insights that a purely logical player would not apprehend immediately. What is clear, though, is that male chess grand champions are able to apprehend the holistic game while female chess grand champions are not able to make the jump to pure logic and focus.

      This is the unfortunate truth about the split in chess rankings. It is also why men won't stop for directions when lost and women are able to care for families so well.

    2. Re:Women's grandmaster? by rm999 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      This is a controversial topic - while men clearly excel in physical sports, the mean intelligence of men and women are approximately the same. Often, apparent differences in intelligence (e.g. income) have societal explanations.

      On the other hand, some experiments (http://www.polymath-systems.com/intel/essayrev/sexdiff.html) indicate that the variance in intelligence is greater in men: there are more very smart men than women, but also more very stupid men. Chess, a game that very smart people excel at, tends to be dominated by men. It's not that gender factors into the game per se, but the same could be said for football.

      That said, the article summary "a Women's Grandmaster played two games against Rybka; the result? Rybka won both games!" is probably a troll because Rybka could beat any human; but I still chuckled...