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How Do You Detect Cheating In Chess? Watch the Computer
First time accepted submitter Shaterri writes "Which is more likely: that a low-ranked player could play through a high-level tournament at grandmaster level, or that they were getting undetected assistance from a computer? How about when that player is nearly strip-searched with no devices found? How about when their moves correlate too well with independent computer calculations? Ken Regan has a fascinating article on one of the most complex (potential) cheating cases to come along in recent memory."
Done.
A simple wireless enabled butt plug and knowledge of Morse code or similar encoding is all that would be required. Unless they scanned the entire frequency spectrum and found nothing, meaning that nobody in the room had an electronic device that radiates, then my good friend Occam thinks this is likely to be the answer.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Where the hell did you get that from? Your quest for the first post clearly outweighed your desire to read anything written and think.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
I almost forgot the most important ingredient: Saltpeter ;-)
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It is possible that the chess equivalent of a lower-league football player could find incredible reserves of concentration and mental clarity for the first time in his career. It is equally possible that he could have solicited help in some imaginative form-
Take athletics as an example - an athlete who improves their personal best performances year on year has not yet reached their peak. But if they improve too much in one year, then the suspicion of drug-assistance is raised and they can be tested for that. Sometimes, the athlete is guilty, but the drug is so new that their tests return a negative result, so they are allowed to continue competing. Subsequent improvements in the test process allow for re-evaluation and retesting, and retrospective bans.
However, with a chess match, no such retrospective action can be taken because if the person cheated and was not caught, how are the invigilators (referees) going to retest? Was the cheating mechanism some kind of visual signal from the audience? If an audience is allowed to live-observe the games, you can have cameras on them, so that can be tested. But just about any other option involves the accused having some kind of signal receiver on their person, and that is not something that can be checked reliably retrospectively.
So if they are accused on the spot, then the onus must be on the accuser to prove the accusation on the spot. No proof? Then not guilty, resume the games.
uh... is it jesus?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Not necessarily: The best human chess players can beat the not-best computer chess programs.
I am officially gone from
What if they are not cheating? Some possibilities:
.
:>)
1 -- they learned chess mostly/exclusively by playing against a machine rather than against human opponents. Then their strategy would mostly be informed by or similar to the type of gameplay which they have observed kicking their own ass as they learned to play. Thus they might "play like a computer" because they have internalized the computer's algorithms as they learned to play chess.
2 -- they randomly play chess in manners that appear like a computer's algorithms. In fact, hey, when they say that the person's moves closely mirror the moves a computer would make, shouldn't they specify which computer program/algorithm they mean for making chess moves? If you're running gnu/linux, you can play Xboard ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xboard ) as the front-end (visual GUI) with multiple possible engines driving it underneath (such as Gnu chess). You can even run Xboard to provide a running analysis of a game being played by others as you enter the moves played (see the man pages for analysis options). Different engines would probably come up with different moves/styles of play, right? So saying that a person's moves and play style mirror a computer is an insufficiently detailed accusation. The chess engine being suspected ought to be specified and indicated, in my opinion.
3 -- yes it is strange that someone with a normally low rating would suddenly get so far against a grand-master, and yes it is less suspicious when that happens with a yougner player, but why couldn't it occur with an adult player? Suspicion is just suspicion, not evidence.
4 -- there is a comment in the article about using Faraday cages at the match in order to decrease the risk for cheating. Remember that these days computers are very small, smaller than a deck of cards (yes, fancy phone in your pocket, I'm talking about you being as powerful as a supercomputer from the 1970s or 1980s). They could rig a fancy interface for their toes and have a shoe computer for all that you know.
5 -- is this all fallout from the pete rose type stuff, or because of lance armstrong from yesterday?
A cheating scandal in chess. Wowza.
The point of the article is a bit different. If you win using a computer then you are cheating.
Not sure if Big blue or whatever is the top chess computer by now consistently wins over top chess players, but at least not long ago humans used to consistently win over computers, so winning against computers is (still) not cheating per se.
If you win against a computer you are cheating
I thought it was more if you win playing the same moves that a computer would make you are cheating.
This presupposes that computers play chess differently to humans. My understanding with chess is that there are certain 'stock' moves, openings and such like, that players memorize and use to their advantage. What if someone has set up positions and studied a computer response to those positions or play, would repeating the learned computer moves be the equivalent of cheating? What impact does an eidetic memory have on this where a person is able recall those positions and moves exactly?
The idea that there was some undetected cheating mechanism at play in the case in the article seems to go against the principle of Occam's Razor. The simplest solution to the issue is that either Ivanov just had a great tournament, or that his opponents played into situations for which he'd prepared with the aid of a computer, or a combination of the two. Such appears to be the level of mistrust in chess though that this simple solution is dismissed in search of something more fantastical.
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
So what is your excuse then?
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
3 paragraphs in and I'm already annoyed by the excessive and awkward hyperlinking, e.g. linking to chessprofessionals.org via the word "the".
In any case one end up with a competition that is ultimately going to be destroyed by technology. Computers can play better than humans, so it is going to be all about who can outplay the computer. Like some many sports, it is not going to be who is the best, but who can be shown to be good, but not too good, as that would indicated cheating.
It is really pointless because in the real world we don't focus on who suceeds under lab conditions and with an arbitrary set of rules. It is who succeeds without causes excessive damage.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It is mathematically proven to be unsolveable within finite time, as the problem is in class NP.
BUT, within AI, the latest techniques most probably always wins over a human with a statistical significance that could be concidered "solved". (Albeit, for purity, I think it should always be concidered unsolveable - almost always, and always are two different things, even in infinity)
- AI geek
(Btw, Deep Blue is ANCIENT, it used rule-based AI ffs)
01 REDEFINE REALITY.
Great job, Sherlock. No one had figured out why most of the frist psots suck. Your powers of observation are great. You would make a killing working for H&R block with your amazing deductions.
Ha! Deductions! Because it conflates logical deductions with tax deductions!
That was classic.
I thought it was more if you win playing the same moves that a computer would make you are cheating.
In the old days, beyond student level, you had to play against tough human opponents to grind out experience, slowly learn to play like your human opponents, and with any luck you'd advance beyond your human trainers.
In the new day, because the computers are the strongest players and always available etc, you'll grind your experience out against a computer, slowly learn to play like your computer opponents, and with any luck you'll advance beyond the programmers of your computer trainers.
It seems inevitable that in a couple generations human chess will look "computer" to a current player.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Also, these moves, which can be equated to "experience", is often fed to the computer by a human.
Modern techniques often uses a mix of random chance, adaption, human fed experience, statistical experience etc.
Hence it'll play "humanly", it'll play "ruley", it'll play "alien"... Maybe that can be concidered "computery". But there is overlaps with humans in the "humanly" department, and if humans study statistically proven moves, then there's more... Etc.
01 REDEFINE REALITY.
Too limited. Needs to block light.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
There was no point. It was all in your head. The "point" was never stated or implied.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
It is mathematically proven to be unsolveable within finite time, as the problem is in class NP.
No. No it is not. I am not sure where you got this, but chess is easily solvable in finite time. It is a simple tree search but incredibly massive. My desktop, given enough time and a massive increase in memory, could solve chess. Granted the memory would take up a planet the size of Saturn and the time would run into issues with the heat death of the universe, but this is much different than being "unsolvable within finite time".
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
He's being haunted by the ghost of a grandmaster chess player!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
okay... that article is worthless, but googling around it seems that `neocheating' is just regular cheating with some NLP-type confidence nonsense thrown in. nice racket, i'm sure there are self-proclaimed experts giving seminars on this crap. could you give me one example of neocheating which is materially distinct from regular cheating?
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Hold the tournament on a commercial airliner that repeatedly takes off and lands. Certainly if someone on board the plane was using an electronic device during take off or landing something terrible would happen ;)
Grrrrr... don't bother me, I'm thinking.
If you win against a computer you are cheating
I thought it was more if you win playing the same moves that a computer would make you are cheating.
This presupposes that computers play chess differently to humans. My understanding with chess is that there are certain 'stock' moves, openings and such like, that players memorize and use to their advantage. What if someone has set up positions and studied a computer response to those positions or play, would repeating the learned computer moves be the equivalent of cheating? What impact does an eidetic memory have on this where a person is able recall those positions and moves exactly?
I can comment a bit at this. I used to play in chess tournaments in my state some years ago. I was at a very low level in most of them. To put it in simple terms, I was about as far away in talent from the best players in my state (not my country or the world, but just my state) as I could be. I gave up playing chess because bluntly put, computers ruined it. You are right that players memorize openings. The list of known openings and known variations of those openings is staggering. Honestly, it's more than most people can memorize. Back in the 1990s when I played, it was unusual for a known opening to go beyond maybe 7 or so moves before you "got out of book" as they put it and responses started to deviate from known ones. Keep in mind that while you could always deviate very early from known responses, the odds of such being successful were quite low as if the move was really any good, it would already be known. Now add to this the knowledge that since white moves first, he controls the game. So if I as a player think "I'm really hoping white opens with e4 as I've been dying to try out the black side of this variation of the Ruy Lopez", white may open with d4, destroying my chance to defend an e4 opening. Even if white opens with e4 as I hope, on his 2nd move he may prevent the Ruy Lopez variation that I wanted to play. So you can see that what you have to learn is quite enormous because when you play black,you have to be prepared for all kinds of openings that you may not ever play when you have the white pieces.
Computer analysis took to openings to deeper levels of known good responses. So an opening that used to be maybe 7 moves long before you got out of book was now 13-14 moves long. At some point it just becomes impossible to keep up. To be honest with you, I put a lot of time into trying to improve and I really didn't make much progress. It was already tough enough for me to keep up before computers got involved and I just gave up as I felt like I was getting left further and further behind. To be honest with you, a lot of the tournaments weren't much fun. A lot of the guys who showed up to them were really weird. It made me question whether I really wanted to spend a lot of time getting better at something that attracted defective people to it. It's not unheard of for guys to be exceptionally good at chess and be homeless because they can't keep a job. Fischer himself was a genius player but if there was ever a crazier World Champion than him, I don't know who that would be.
Plenty of above-audible and below-audible bandwidth below 100 khz as well.
Then some wag will get a quantum link going, doesn't use EM at all, and so much for the Faraday cage.
And so it goes.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Please stop referring to yourself in plural. Only the Queen and we, Anonymous Coward, are allowed to do that.
How exactly do you think that card manipulations tricks, collusion, and information sharing can help you cheat in a game of chess - in which there are no cards, there is no hidden information, and there are only two players?
It seems pretty obvious upon RTFA that this guy is likely to have cheated.
One of Ivanov’s losses was in a long game in a closed position (the kind where computers perform poorly), and at the end, Ivanov made a rudimentary mistake. It stood out because of how well he had played in the other games. The other loss was in the penultimate round, when the organizers, as a precaution, stopped broadcasting the games on the Internet so that people outside the playing hall could not try to assist the players.
Please mod this post up so other people can see it -- I'm sorry I don't have an account and I'm late for work.
I knew some good youth players back in the days (I'm talking early '90s, elo ranking around 2000), and of course they analyzed their opponents previous games with Fritz (best Chess program at that time) to see how to play these guys. That's hardly cheating, it's just a tool in getting better (as long as you don't use it during the game ;-)).
Mind that those people know how to play. Even the supposed 'cheater' has an elo ranking of >2200. That's already pretty damn good. It's not like this guy would suddenly start sucking if his 'cheating channel' falls out. Even a tiny board advantage at that level is critical (hell it was already critical at 1600 level).
is not to play.
If you can internalize calculating every possible move several plies deep, then you are right. But no human can, so you are wrong. My bet is you have never played more than a casual game of chess and don't understand how humans play chess or how computers do. They are two entirely different phenomenon.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
okay, you're either a troll or an irredeemable crank. have a nice day.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
That 'article' makes absolutely no explanation for what 'neo-cheating' is... Useless.
Is that the one with the birds or the little old lady?
It is mathematically proven to be unsolveable within finite time
Every game ends in a finite number of moves, therefore the permutation of all games is also finite.
"His name was James Damore."
If you play against a computer you may be able to do really well if you have memorized the moves that someone else has made in a successful game against that computer or a similar computer. If you do memorize a whole chess game from both sides you are of course good, so maybe it's not cheating, but it's a way to rig the game into what's hopefully your favor. As long as the computer responds with known responses you can stick to the memorized moves, if the computer doesn't you have to re-evaluate what's needed to get back on track.
It's not going to be easy, but it's certainly doable.
As a side note I heard of two blokes that had memorized a classic chess game and then started to replay it in a park. It was quite a show for the people around that chess board. (or shall I say pavement).
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
> I thought it was more if you win playing the same moves that a computer would make you are cheating.
As Regan points out, this is only unlikely if you play the same moves as a computer, and many of these are cases where the advantage of the chosen move was tiny. If the computer chooses moves that are forced or better by a clear margin, so will a good player. On the other hand, if the computer's preferred move is only better by an insignificant amount, it's very unlikely that a human will repeatedly do the same.
Of course, this allows cheats to improve their strategy: where there are several moves with little difference between them, choose randomly instead of choosing the best.
Not off-topic. Dead on.
Lance Armstrong was initially judged by the USADA to have used PED based not on testing results, but on the testimony of former teammates, some of whom failed their own tests, and may have had an ax to grind. First, because they feel they may have been singled out because of their assocation with Armstrong,second because they may have been pressured by Armstrong or the relationship to use PED, third because they may actually have witnessed Armstrong either taking PEDs or encouraging it, and fourth ALL of the above. The end result is that no one in cycling at the international level will be able to withstand the mere accusations. Non-analytical positives will become the norm. Every champion will be suspect, unless 100% testing is done, and then, as in Armstrong's case, new tests will be conducted on previosuly collected samples, in effect finding athletes guilty in arrears for using PEDs not yet known. Eventually coffee and Gatorade will be banned. And this will stain cycling to the point that fans like myself will turn away.
Chess will go this route. No Master of any rank will be allowed to exceed their 'reasonable' ability. Analysis will be conducted, perhaps electronic surviellance will be used to both check for transmissions and as forensics to be subjected to detailed analysis, suspects will be accused, strip-searched, imaged, run through the metal detectors, scrutinized, and judged guilty based on non-analytical positives. Chess will devolve into the meanest of states, blood sport not for the winners, but for the losers. I expect past upsets to be scrutinized for problems and winners discredited, even posthumously.
A pox on all of it. I'm watching the America's Cup. Less cheating, more suspense, and people could drown.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
This presupposes that computers play chess differently to humans.
They do. Computers can figure out great defensive tactics by figuring all possible combinations and go into board positions which humans would intrinsically think as too risky.
I've got a bridge to sell you. It's a very nice bridge. A Neo-Bridge in fact. And today I can give you a special offer on the price.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Jr0J8SPENjM
Like many of you, I was skeptical that it was cheating at first, but after watching this interesting analysis I am convinced.
Incorrect. A computer is only as good at chess as it has been programmed to be. I've beaten both Battle Chess and GNU Chess at times. I'm NOT a good player but I AM hyper-aware of mistakes made and on how to capitalize when they are made. :)
Think of me when you shave your legs...
Of course it doesn't. You don't imagine the illuminati give away their secrets do you?
In addition to the problems pointed out by MyLongNickName, it is worth pointing out that problems being in NP don't mean they aren't solvable. Quite the opposite in fact: any fixed problem in NP is solvable. The issue is that some problems in NP (the so-called NP complete problems) are conjecturally difficult to solve. Roughly speaking, P is the set of questions which can be solved in time that is bounded by polynomial of the length of the problem statement. So for example, "Is the number n prime?" can be answered in time which is polynomial in the length of its input (here the input is the digits of n). Problems in NP are problems which when the answer is "yes" a proof exists that is the answer is yes, and the proof size is bounded by a polynomial of the input length, and the proof can be verified in polynomial time. So to solve a problem in NP one essentially needs to just check all the possible proofs of short size. The big conjecture is that P and NP are actually distinct- that is that there are problems where it is easy to prove a solution works but finding a solution is tough.
But there's another problem here. Even saying that chess is in NP isn't accurate. There are multiple generalizations of what one means by chess and since complexity classes require not single problems but sets of problems, what framework you use to call "chess" matters. http://cstheory.stackexchange.com/questions/6563/what-is-the-computational-complexity-of-solving-chess discusses this in some detail. In some frameworks, "chess" is actually in the much larger set of EXP or PSPACE, which are worse than NP in general, but are still finite time solvable.
Actually, 6 piece endgames have been solved already. It's sad but true :(
Not any more.
Garry Kasparov lost a match to a program several years ago - back when he was the world champion. Nowadays it is taken as a given that a top program on adequate hardware will overwhelm any human player. The human may win the odd game but most of the time he will be steamrollered.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Is programming not limited by the hardware on which it resides?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Over the board (OTB) is one thing, but online (c)heating becomes incredibly hard to detect in situ, for pretty obvious reasons. The online chess community has taken a couple of approaches to detect this. For PlayChess Online (a server that hosts online games), they try to detect if your computer is running another process that is a known Chess Engine while you are playing your game. Easily subverted by having two computers, or even a Virtual Box setup.
The most successful way to detect cheating is in postmortem review. I worked with the ICC/FICS Slow Time Control league team (one guy usually) who would run move correlation statistics off suspicious games. There were lots of parameters in his analysis to tweak: ignore book (pre-planned) openings, use endgame tables, tolerance threshold, plys deep to look, how many branches to examine, etc. I was part one of the peer reviewers of the system and an occasional game. The basic idea was to run the moves through a few engines and find out how high the move correlation was for both players. In certain points of the game, the move correlation is very high because good candidate moves are obvious. However, over a single 35move game (avg), GM correlation with any of the popular chess engines (even HIARCS, which supposedly plays more like a human) was around 23%. 1800 level players (club level) were even less. Magnus Carlsen wasn't on the scene yet; he apparently learned more from the computer than any human. Perhaps he'd be higher. The typical cheater scored around 98%.
This of course is not to say that there couldn't be a player who "thought like a computer". But this would put in question the main criticism of game specific AI, and general AI, that they do not actually model how the human brain thinks. Finding a human who thought like a computer would actually be incredibly interesting to the whole field of AI. That being said, the burden at that point is on the cheater to prove because he is well beyond a reasonable doubt.
Actually, no. The only things limiting the length of the game for permutations where each side could, say, begin moving a few endgame pieces back and forth endlessly, are the "50-move" and "draw by threefold repetition" rules. However, claiming a draw by either of these means is -not mandatory-, so unlikely as it may be practically, both sides could elect to never claim a draw under either rule and the shuffling of pieces could go on infinitely.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
There were forced lines in (for example) the Sicilian which went to over 20 moves back in the 70's. If you could not follow them (I certainly could not), the idea was to avoid those lines. There was far more thud and blunder at the level I played at which was just fine - I never took chess that seriously and never even dreamed of playing it professionally.
The Pirc used to be a good "alternative" opening but towards the end of my time as a player I found more and more opponents who could handle it better with white than I as black. Time to say goodbye!
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
correct me if I'm wrong but the states of the game would be finite even if turns can go on forever.
"Science can amuse and fascinate us all, but it is engineering that changes the world. " - Asimov.
Not really the same environment but the Internet Chess Club has also amazing ways to detect if you are cheating. Some people were caught after they got help from the Fritz software - it seems by analyzing the way you play (long games from, say, people who are not registered FIDE IM,GM etc...), ICC is able to detect that you are playing above your abilities...
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
It doesn't apply. Since you think it does how about explaining how exactly ot applies to chess as I've already asked.
None of the "other fields" tacked on to the end of the beginners guide to card tricks that is that document apply to chess.
Among other problems with your argument, you have also forgotten that there is a clock.
"His name was James Damore."
And you seem to have forgotten that "clock games" are a subset of "chess games".
Not that it would change things anyway, as for most types of tournament games (if we subset it that way), the time controls add time to the clock for every N moves. "Sudden death" time controls would be the exception, but we are again talking about a (dramatic) subset of "chess games", and "chess games" per se can still be infinite, considering all the permutations of moves across the permutations of games.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Going to the FA,
Either
or
The level of mistrust in chess is not that high but this case was exceptional.
There was one thing in the article which was pretty much garbage - Although Magnus Carlsen recently broke Garry Kasparovâ(TM)s all-time rating record to reach 2861, my program for "Intrinsic Ratings" clocked Ivanov's performance in the range 3089-3258 depending on which games and moves are counted according to supplementary information in the case . . ..
Magnus Carlsen's rating is based on his results over the last 12 months. He has played tournaments to a standard of over 3000, just not over a whole year. If you play a tournament containing strong players, win most of your games and draw the rest, you will have a stratospheric rating from that tournament. Ivanov actually lost a game or two and the author is clearly cherry-picking, only counting games where he won and ignoring those where he did not.
ELO ratings are based on wins, draws and defeats, along with the opponent's rating. The quality of the moves made is totally irrelevant.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Correct, but then we're assuming that the algorithm calculating the moves includes the ability to do all the necessary positional hashes, and though most modern chess engines do such hashing to some extent, a positional repetition of all future lines would have to be detected by the search algorithm, and this has become a different issue than what I was responding to. ;)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Also, these moves, which can be equated to "experience", is often fed to the computer by a human.
Modern techniques often uses a mix of random chance, adaption, human fed experience, statistical experience etc.
Hence it'll play "humanly", it'll play "ruley", it'll play "alien"... Maybe that can be concidered "computery". But there is overlaps with humans in the "humanly" department, and if humans study statistically proven moves, then there's more... Etc.
It's not "moves" that can be memorized that would distinguish a computer from a human player. It is when the player makes entire series of moves that make no sense until you can see 14 moves ahead.
Please kindly go die in a fire.
I guess this is what he would call "defective"...
GNU Chess played at it's highest level on a 2.4ghz P4 seems to play somewhere around a 2200 rating.
If you are beating highest-level GNU Chess on a decent CPU with any regularity then yes, you are certainly a "good player". Even if you beat it rarely, you're still probably a "good player".
I can't find any data on Battle Chess but IIRC it wasn't that strong.
Setup a Fool's mate intentionally. A cheater using an auto-play program will fall for it at no time. A human cannot spot a fool's mate that fast. As long as the game is finished (checkmate or not) within 30 seconds since it started, the game will not count as rated.
New Economic Perspectives
You told him to go die in a fire. You are the last person who should be telling someone the appropriate way to behave.
Support a great indie game: http://www.abaddon360.com
Try reading the parent again "the best human chess player can beat the NOT-BEST computer chess programs".
So it is doubtful that Garry Kasparov would lose to Chessmaster XI at its highest AI on a normal computer a.k.a. not Deep Blue.
What do you play? The violin?
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
The penultimate round was also against the strongest opponent, the tournament winner. Ivanov won the final match, which had no Internet broadcast.
We appear to need a more complex answer than "the cheating was done using the broadcast".
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
You should probably mention the 2296 number come from October 2004, not really current.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
True, but that's the only solid data I could find :(
Many comments suggest that the differences between the play of human and computers. A good human player will generally come up with some kind of plan and follow up with moves that are consistent with that plan. In practice, he may have to respond to his opponent's play. There may be direct threats that he cannot ignore or he may find a need to come up with a new plan when it has become apparent that the original plan is no longer workable. Chess programs generally perform an exhaustive search through sequences of moves and select the move that leads to the best evaluation of the position that arises after the opponent has made the best moves (as determined by the result of the evaluation). Consequently, computers tend to be deadly in tactical situations; oversights by the opponent are ruthlessly exploited. Also, they often defend difficult positions well; sometimes by finding moves that appear, at first sight, to be ridiculous to a human. However, a major weakness of computer chess programs concerns the evaluation criteria. If a forced checkmate is available, this is obviously going to be the preferred choice. In the absence of this possibility, material is easy to measure and, as a result, tends to be heavily weighted; this is reflected in the decidedly materialistic play play of most computer programs. However, other positional considerations are more subtle and a good human player can be at an advantage here. For example doubled pawns are usually considered to be a weakness (the pawns cannot form a chain where each pawn is protected by another). However, there may be ample compensation; the pawns may control critical squares and the accompanying half open file may be put to good use by the rooks. In this, and many other situations, the assessment of whether a particular feature of a position is good or bad depends on many factors and will change as the position evolves with further moves. In this example, the doubled pawns might be desirable in the middle game, but a liability in the endgame where their vulnerability becomes important. A strong human player will have ability to make good judgements as to the implications of his potential choices. Computers are generally much weaker in this respect. In closed positions, it is not unusual to see computers making aimless moves, for example indecisively moving a piece back and forth between two squares, whereas the strong human player will try to find a plan for gradually improving his position and forcing positional concessions on the part of his opponent. Also, computers will sometimes leave their king weakly defended while they pursue material advantage elsewhere on the board. The result is that there are definite differences in the style and conduct of the play between strong humans and computer programs.
You can search in finite time in a very big finite hash. You haven't thought this through.
Well, not technically. For chess you could simply move pieces back and forth over and over again forever, but an algorithm could account for that (no need to re-trace a subtree you've already calculated). And some other games, of course, are not bound at all (baseball comes to mind).
So it is doubtful that Garry Kasparov would lose to Chessmaster XI at its highest AI on a normal computer a.k.a. not Deep Blue.
Don't bet on it. Deep Blue was designed in 1996. That was 17 years ago. A modern laptop has more computing power than Deep Blue had. Chess algorithms have also improved. You can download free chess programs from any app store that will play at grandmaster level.
Playing chess against a computer is like having a weight lifting contest with a forklift.
You're correct that ELO ratings are based on wins, draws and defeats. But there's definitely a correlation between ELO rating and what kind of moves you make. After all, you're not going to win a game against a quality opponent with only rookie moves, or even just a majority of rookie moves. As a result, you can definitely say that certain moves correspond to certain ELO ratings, and that you expect someone with a specific ELO rating to largely make moves that correspond to that rating.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
There is no reason for the algorithm to do as you indicate. Computer chess programs have for years (even back in the 70s) checked for and claimed drawn positions.
Just another day in Paradise
I thought it was more if you win playing the same moves that a computer would make you are cheating.
In the old days, beyond student level, you had to play against tough human opponents to grind out experience, slowly learn to play like your human opponents, and with any luck you'd advance beyond your human trainers.
In the new day, because the computers are the strongest players and always available etc, you'll grind your experience out against a computer, slowly learn to play like your computer opponents, and with any luck you'll advance beyond the programmers of your computer trainers.
It seems inevitable that in a couple generations human chess will look "computer" to a current player.
In the "old days", when I used to play in USCF tournaments (1980s), most all programs played from an opening book, and once taken out of the book moves, utilized a brute force tree search, rating each position with a score as it went. down the tree. The longer they were given to "think", the more moves they could "look ahead". This caused programs to be very good at tactical play, as they wouldn't miss any obvious errors that were within the next few moves. It did leave them susceptible to being overpowered strategically. Learning to post your pieces in good strategic locations is something that isn't a simple heuristic to program. A great book on how grandmasters see things was written by Sammy Reshevsky (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_Reshevsky), and titled "Think Like a Grandmaster".
Just another day in Paradise
Computer dominance of chess will surely end when tournament organizers realize how rampant doping is, and kick those silicon fuckers out.
What does it even mean? NP is the class of problems that can be decided using a non-deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time.
"Polynomial time" refers to the class of algorithms that run in O(n^c) where c is a constant.
The "n" in O(n^c) refers to the size of the input. Big-O notation is only meaningful when talking about asymptotic behaviour (as n approaches infinity).
But chess is a given, specific problem, where n=8 (let's say), and there is no asymptotic behaviour anywhere. N is always the same - it's a specific problem, with a specific input size. So talking about NP in relation to chess is simply meaningless. It's only relevant to chess on an NxN board, but who plays THAT? (and more importantly, how many computer programs play NxN chess? What are the rules? How many bishops are there on the NxN board?)
I also played (back in the 80s...never got beyond a 1500 rating myself). Your comment that most openings didn't go beyond 7 or so moves is incorrect. Look up "The Encyclopedia of Chess Openings", and you'll see what I mean. It was a five volume set of books back in my time. As you pointed out, you had to learn to play a whole set of openings. As black, learning the Pirc (e4 opening), Grunfield (d4 opening), and English (c4 opening) covered 99% of all the games I ever played. Beyond that, learning strategic positioning, and basic endgames will allow you to win against nearly anyone who doesn't play regularly. There's a lot of pattern recognition necessary to play well, which requires a lot of practice. Also, learning to pick out "candidate moves" (see "Think Like a Grandmaster" by Sammy Reshevsky), and how to analyze them helped me a lot.
Just another day in Paradise
Board games are for children. Men play poker.
And we are not amused.
Yup, I use the same trick. Or play them multiple times and see if they continue using fools mate instead of varying the opening.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Once again, here is the statement I was responding to:
Every game ends in a finite number of moves, therefore the permutation of all games is also finite.
It is simply incorrect to state that every chess game ends in a finite number of moves. That is the statement my post responded to. That his conclusion may be true for -an entirely different reason- than his supporting premise, is irrelevant to the accuracy of my statement.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Thanks for noting the broader points originally posted in this thread by... me, but once again I was in no way stating that a finite algorithm is impossible, especially by -stipulating- that the algorithm will make the -not mandatory choice- of claiming a draw. I was stating that the claim that every chess game ends in a finite number of moves is incorrect, which it is, per the rules.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
The point I was replying to is that it still makes the game non-NP. It's a finite game because it has finite states.
Great. Maybe reply to a post that claimed otherwise, instead, then? ;)
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
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Sorry, that is not the way it works. Humans playing computers rather learn to play "anti computer" chess. You cannot learn to do the dumb calculation of all variants to depth >20 ply by playing a computer, even though the computer will do this. It just does not work that way. The human advantage is about "understanding" positions, and if you do not use this ability you will not get very good.
That's total bullshit. Any player that knows what a fools mate is can spot it in a heart beat. You're opening the king bishops pawn FFS -- one of the most common points of attack by white against black in Kings Pawn Openings.
But you did say Yahoo chess -- so that explains this useless as fuck solution and why you probably think it "works" to indicate anything.
It might play at "grandmaster level," but it will not play "like a grandmaster." Humans and computers approach chess very differently, which is why this case is so interesting. From the statistical analysis, the guy's either cheating, or he's the not only best player in the world (3000+ level gameplay) but also the first human who thinks like a computer. Well, a human who thinks like a computer so long as a live internet feed of the game is being broadcast, but suddenly plays like a 2200-level human when the feed is cut.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
That's not precisely true. Some savants perform their amazing tricks in ways in ways that far resemble a computer than the rest of us. Our complex neural networks often have all kinds of competing structures and after passing layers of decision nodes biggest/rightest signal wins (with a lot of impact and influence by all those other prior nodes.) A simpler system tends to be more linear (fewer competing nodes) and therefore more resembles (if no duplicates) the behaviors of the far simpler computer (who wins by brute force alone.)
So before we label the player a cheater, check to be certain he isn't autistic or the victim of limited brain damage.
N/2... duh! ;-)
Relax there grizzly. The point is the computer program ALWAYS play fools mate. Because the game ends so fast, it doesn't count against your rating, so a human has an incentive NOT to mate that quickly. Games that end under 15 seconds are disregarded.
Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75. -Benjamin Franklin
Or a computer who looks like a human...
He's not. If you read the article, he's a regular 2200 level master, who ordinarily plays like a human, but suddenly started playing like a 3000+ level computer.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Then tell me how is ignoring the repetition rules is relevant to developing a chess AI? You introduced stupid, unrealistic assumptions and then started complaining about offtopic comments.
I think the point is that it works as a CAPTCHA. The humans are aware that leaving yourself open to fools' mate is a CAPTCHA, and wait a few seconds before playing it to demonstrate that they're human; the bots aren't yet advanced enough and play the mate instantly.
(1)DOCOMEFROM!2~.2'~#1WHILE:1<-"'?.1$.2'~'"':1/.1$.2'~#0"$#65535'"$"'"'&.1$.2'~'#0$#65535'"$#0'~#32767$#1"
Not any more. Garry Kasparov lost a match to a program several years ago - back when he was the world champion. Nowadays it is taken as a given that a top program on adequate hardware will overwhelm any human player. The human may win the odd game but most of the time he will be steamrollered.
Now THAT is going to need a citation. So far your proof is "1 chess champion lost ONE game against a computer (out of about 7 mind you)". Not to mention the human player was started to become fatigued (you would too after over a half-dozen back to back games).
Unless you define something like 'work' in the statespace – so that closed paths can be excised / condensed, regardless of length. Or similarly, iso-utility moves could be ignored. While it would nonetheless remain true that the game, in practice, need not be finite – from an algorithmic perspective it could be treated as such.
Of course the problem is even simpler given that most chess algorithms are presumably intended to win chess, as opposed to producing an exhaustive catalogue of possible games. Iso-utility moves don't breed new trees.
I introduced the fact that the rules of chess do not state that the game ends in a finite number of moves. That is the context of the post and my reply, and the only context that matters. If I wanted to make comments about developing a chess AI, I would have made them. However, I would suggest that knowing the rules of the game would help were one to be developing an engine for it.
The only thing stupid here is your inability to read and/or grasp the scope of statements and their responses.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
Thank you. After this thread, I now understand the notion of complaints of managers about developers' tendency toward extensive and elaborate answers to issues not at hand.
After your analysis and algorithmic suggestions for optimizing the performance of tree searches (I assume you'd include an Alpha-Beta heuristic as well in your proposal), I have also concluded...
As when I first stated it, and representing the full scope of my assertions about the question--it remains the case that the rules of chess are such that a game can have infinite moves.
~ Whence do you come, slayer of men, or where are you going, conqueror of space?
It won't be long when we start getting neural-computer implants. What then, when computer assistance becomes part of ourselves? Chess as a game will be beneath us (though some may still play, neural linkers off, for fun). Hopefully we'll be able to find a strategy game suited to our levels.
I personally don't see the point playing a mechanically simple game, handicapping ourselves by removing computers. We ARE our tools, more than any other species. I would much rather see a mechanically superior game that requires computer assistance to play well. Just imagine: different players relying on different computer helpers, and even some players playing specifically to trip up certain algorithms. That'll leave us to do what we do best: using our tools to maximum effect and in creative ways, as opposed to memorizing a bunch of openings and situations and trying to think algorithmically many moves ahead (which is what chess demands).
Yes but either way I don't think you should ever sentence anyone for cheating based on statistics says he plays like a 300+ computer. IF he cheats he will have some sort of device on him that gives him signals or someone in the audience with a device that somehow signals him.
Instead of sentencing someone based on statistics, use the statistics to indicate him/her as a cheater and then find the devices. If he/she cheats there has to be a pretty powerful computer somewhere sending signals, which can be intercepted, detected or blocked.
It will be bulky enough that he can't hide the entire device on his/her person, so the signal has to be transmitted wirelessly to him/her.
Thus either a Faraday cage or a signal jammer in the wireless spectrum would cause problems for his/her cheating and if it's somone in the audience giving him/her signals they either have to sit in his/hers field of vision or have a way to project whatever information somewhere in his/her field of vision, if so then anyone else can see the same thing under the right circumstances.
The first series (1996) was a PR scam. It is incorrect to say he was playing 'Deep Blue'. It is far, far more correct to say he was playing a team, comprising many of the top players, who used Deep Blue to test their moves before implementing them. The programming on the machine changed daily. In the second series, the program was - according to IBM - only changed between games ... although there was a serious question of a mid-game change (Game 1) that led to the computer's loss.
... not so much. Deep Blue's 'innovation', such as it was, was simply to numerically rate a sequence of moves, discarding the lowest scoring, and then continuing its computation from that point. (...and it was a supercomputer) Contrasting with the previous 'Brute force, try all possibilities, select the best after _n_ moves.' As chess is, practically, a finite game, once computers reach the level of _n_ that is about the end point of all games, they aren't going to lose anymore. A lot of the modern chess programs that are free/cheap follow the brute force model, not the more analytical method pioneered by Deep Blue. The top machines do have better coding that Deep Blue ... more importantly, the number of plies has improved, due to better weighting (far more situational / far less point oriented).
That said, yeah, a lot of modern machines leave their predecessors in the dust, computationally. Chess algorithms
Here's a New Yorker article on chess prodigy Magnus Carlsen, one of the top players, who has come of age in the post-computers-beat-humans era. Interestingly, Carlsen makes the point that even though computers always beat any human nowadays, computer play is "not interesting" in relation to the human game.
"Carlsen said that for him, great chess playing is less the “scientific search for the best approaches” than “psychological warfare with some little tricks.”"
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/03/21/110321fa_fact_max#ixzz2I7RhfaJW
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I play both. Does that mean someone needs to open the box I'm in and see what game I am actually playing to determine my level of manliness at any one point?
No.
If you're living in a box there is no need to check your manliness.
You're looking at what chess is rather than what it could be. If we randomized the start positions of each piece, or had more pieces/squares, the problem would vanish, or at least lose its sting.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Actually, no. The only things limiting the length of the game for permutations where each side could, say, begin moving a few endgame pieces back and forth endlessly, are the "50-move" and "draw by threefold repetition" rules. However, claiming a draw by either of these means is -not mandatory-, so unlikely as it may be practically, both sides could elect to never claim a draw under either rule and the shuffling of pieces could go on infinitely.
Well, OK, but if you made the "50 move" and "threefold repetition" rules mandatory then the game would be theoretically finite, which it is in practice already (i.e. enforcing the two rules would make absolutely no difference to how chess is played).
That would still leave the option of both players alternately moving their two knights to row 3 and back again infinitely, but now we're just being silly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Board games are for children. Men play poker.
"There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games." (Hemingway)
If you're going to be an internet tough guy, at least try to do it properly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If we randomized the start positions of each piece, or had more pieces/squares
Yeah, chess just isn't complicated enough is it? I bet you're an AI from the future come back to mess with the brains of humankind to distract us from the Singularity.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
If you do memorize a whole chess game from both sides you are of course good, so maybe it's not cheating, but it's a way to rig the game into what's hopefully your favor. As long as the computer responds with known responses you can stick to the memorized moves
Memorizing one whole chess game isn't that difficult. Actors have to remember far more than a 50 move chess game for a leading role in a play.
It's memorizing every game that's ever been played that's the problem.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
This guy could have studied his opponents, he could suddenly understand the game in a new way, or the competitors in the tournament could share some fundamental link to a decision tree he's found. I'll admit this is unlikely, but one can attribute such vast differences to not only cheating or genius, but also competitive stagnation.
Where genius and insanity become confused true wisdom is found
Sounds like the purest of pure bullshit to me. From TFLA "The really dangerous part of neocheating is that it requires no special skills; only the secretive, special knowledge on how it is done and few hours of practice."
Yeah, and I bet there are many people willing to sell you this priceless knowledge for a bargain price.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
It's actually looking for Sarah Connor.....after this game. Just one more!
Defining Statistics and Social Research
There is nothing new about card cheats being able to deal crookedly to an accomplice or themselves.
And it has zero relevance to chess anyway.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I think I understand ... does it have something to do with the time cube?
Everything has something to do with the time cube!
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
at least not yet. They follow algorithms. A game is way more than algorithms.
It's emotions and conventions like fear and excitement, having a poker face, intimidating chitchat, joking, awareness of losing or of losing face, anger or disappointment for failing strategy; also bodily functions (distractions) like sweating, being cold, nausea, annoyed at a small draft aso.
A grand master's move is not just the what but the how and the why. Computers still just do the first. They are not artists because they have no self-identity, pride, integrity etc. No "soul" if you like.
Yes, a computer may cook a meal but is not a chef. At least not yet.
Defining Statistics and Social Research
NSFW
Do you work for the Taliban or something?
It's a bit of cleavage, a bit of bra FFS.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Yeah, for all the press the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue game got, most didn't tell the whole story.
In one game Kasparov made a 'finger fumble' - he moved the wrong piece in an opening - Deep Blue just followed his preprogrammed lines well into the middlegame at which point Garry didn't stand a chance.
In another game, Kasparov resigned from a known drawn position.
Chess is a game of perfect knowledge - as such it has been mathematically proven to
a) Have a solution - a line of 'best play' for both sides
and
b) That solution is 'solvable'.
I fully expect the game of chess to be solved within my lifetime.
Tape delay it so you don't let people outside know a move until the opponent has made their subsequent move.
I'm sympathetic. (honestly)
At risk of another overly-elaborate answer, I suspect what's happened is a bit of a confusion of levels. The parent to your original assertion, who claimed all games were finite, was indeed technically incorrect – as you pointed out. However, what they presumably meant was that in practice all games will be finite. I think everything that followed was a fairly pointless back-and-forth between the spirit and the letter of the argument, with no one (myself, regrettably, included) bothering to worry about the fact that there wasn't any actual disagreement at all...
Still. I can appreciate your frustration. Sometimes simply pointing out a fact can lead to all manner of trouble.
TFS goes into a lot of detail on this. Basically, if there's a 1-in-1000 chance a human would play this way, that's only evidence that the tournament runners should look closely for real evidence (after all, there are 1000 or so published master-level games every week). If there's a 1-in-1,000,000 chance a human wuld play that way, that's actual evidence of cheating. Or at least, that's the proposal he's asking for feedback on.
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there's nothing the Arrogant Loser wants more than the promise of a magical path to excellence which he can use to finally prove that he is as great as he imagines. selling such a thing is extremely simple.
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I am not sure where you got this, but chess is easily solvable in finite time.
Where did YOU get the idea that "finite time" has something to do with NP or not?
There are NP complete problems. They are "known to explode" and other NP complete problems can be transformed into them such that solving one solves the other NP complete problems. Chess is not NP complete: The chess board is finite, which means that it is impossible to transform say a large "traveling salesman" problem onto a chessboard.
NP is nonderterministic Polynomial. Say the traveling salesman problem has to be reformulated a bit. The "easily understood" form says: what's the shortest route. The formal question is: "Can you traverse these cities with less than xxx km?". Once you come up with a route that solves it in xxx km, you can easily check if the condition is satisfied.
A formulation of "the" chess question: "does white win?" is likely not even NP. The NP answer would be: Look if you do these moves, you always win. With games like "tictactoe" you can do that sort of thing.
Looking at it from another point-of-view: Chess is a finite game. The board is finite. So if there is a strategy, it is bounded by the size of the board. Chess can be solved in constant time. The problem is: the constant is quite humongous.
Chess will go this route. No Master of any rank will be allowed to exceed their 'reasonable' ability.
no.... This incident is a wakeup call. People showing such a sudden over-achievement should not play games that have a live broadcast of their moves. Or maybe live broadcasts of moves should be stopped altogether.
What we suspect from this incident is that he cheated. If he cheated, the "live broadcast on the internet" helped. Cut that route off. Consider other routes. e.g. people in the crowd doing a private "live internet broadcast".
So: We now know that advanced technological cheating might be going on. So tournament organizers should take apropriate (better) precautions.
It's a bit like some rat-research in the nineteenthirties. People were teaching rats (or mice?) to go to the right or wrong portal with the cheese behind. Turns out that the rats were a) smelling the cheese. b) hearing the cheese by listening to their feet hitting the floor of the arena. There was a widely ignored article about how the rats cheated, NOT solving the puzzle the humans had set up but going for the cheese anyway. Knowing THAT cheating might be going on and knowing some of the routes that this might be done helps in providing a fair competition.
Where did you get that I said that finite time has anything to do with NP? I simply corrected his assertion that the game could not be solved in finite time. I even said that the time solved with today's technology would be greater than the lifespan of the universe but finite. So, not sure why you are taking issue with my post.
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How about when they are granted super-user access and can see everyone's hole cards? Can't help but remember the Absolute Poker and Full Tilt cheating scandals. Correlating moves was eventually how the culprits were caught. But only well after the fact.