Kasparov vs. The World: It's all different

Faber@FICS writes "I just checked how the match Kasparov vs. The World has been covered here. Today, more than fifty moves into the game, it is interesting that nearly everything that was said about this has been shown to be wrong. (1) This was no easy win for GK at all -- quality chess at its best, with very good drawing chances for the world after fifty moves. (2) Computers, although heavily used all over the net, did not play a significant role in this game so far. (3) This is no longer Windows-only -- Microsoft removed that requirement rather early in the game without comment. Surprise, surprise... Read a very insightful interview with Irina Krush, one of the official expert analysts, and check out the World Team Strategy BBS, where the world is at work. "

Comments

Proverb

[tuxedo-steve]

I think the phrase "too many cooks spoil the broth" applies here. The combined skill of the world's chess players is not cumulative, and I'm sure Mr. Kasparov knows it. ;-)

Re:Proverb

[SteveX]

How can you say this?

The world may score a draw with Kasparov. This is no easy achievement - that's better than almost every computer (every computer?) has been able to do, and it's completely against what was predicted of this game (by the people here on Slashdot at least).

"A consensus of chess intermediates will suck compared to a single chess expert", a quote from the earlier Slashdot thread on this.

I've been hoping from the start that this would work out - and maybe someone should look into whether the combined efforts of so many people contributed to a larger strategy that none of us could have created alone. Isn't that how the mind works? Isn't this what so many Sci-Fi books have pontificated on?

- Steve

Re:Proverb

[mischief]

Too many cooks spoil the broth is a proverb because they all fight over what's going in the actual "broth"; with an organised system lots of cooks would theoretically make the perfect soup. Because there's an voting system for choosing the next move, the world should hopefully be able to filter out all the bad moves, and be able to at least draw with Kasparov (which it seems might be a possibility now).

--

Democracy

[Kinthelt]

It was still kind of a one-sided match. I mean, the way the World chose moves might have been the best way to get alot of people involved, but it did not produce the best moves.

I would warrant a guess that the majority of people who play chess are average players. And almost everybody is a worse player than Kasparov (there might be some undiscovered talent out there). So, the grand majority get to choose moves that will ultimately lose, while the few genius moves will be out-voted.

This didn't happen as much as it would have since there were advisors on the World's team. And people never voted for a move that was against the advisors. So this wasn't really a match against the world, but against a few selected chess players. The voting mechanism was just to formalize everything and make people think their ideas counted.

Re:Democracy

[mischief]

That's assuming that all the "not so good" players (ie the majority of the world) are going to be wrong all the time. The majority of the "not so good" players are probably going to be right in their decision, so statistically it's more even sided than you say.

--

Re:Democracy

[Possum Man]

It is true that advisors were essential in this game. In fact, the world basically followed Irena Krush's game (I'm not sure whether there's a single move against Krush's advice). However, it is important to note that Krush paid a lot of attention to the players' suggestions. She posted lines of play on her web site developed by a variety of different players on the internet. She constantly upgraded her opinion based on what different players suggested. She herself freely admits that she could never have played a game of this strength without her huge support base.

I would argue this method reflects the development of the Linux kernel (and other free software). The Linux kernel has an obvious leader. This leader would not have gotten very far if not for the respect and support of various people putting in almost as much as him. These giants in turn would not have gotten very far if they hadn't had the support of a much larger group of somewhat influential designers. These people in turn were supported by a much larger group of slightly influential people.

Originally I thought that the democratic element of this chess game was unnecessary. Why not just put one person in charge, and let the world advise them. But, as in the development of the Linux kernel, it is necessary that the people get to choose their leader. The other three advisors did not pay a lot of attention to the world-team players, and therefore were not listened to nearly as carefully as Krush was. The democratic element allowed the world to choose a leader who would represent them.

Re:Democracy

[cout]

I would warrant a guess that the majority of people who play chess are average players. And almost everybody is a worse player than Kasparov (there might be some undiscovered talent out there). So, the grand majority get to choose moves that will ultimately lose, while the few genius moves will be out-voted.

I am inclined to disagree. The problem with an average chess player is not that he makes average moves, but that he makes brilliant moves less often. So the only way a group of average people will will make average moves is if they all make average moves at the same time.

Re:Democracy

[MindStalker]

So, what your saying is that if we could ever get our representatives to listen to us, and vote on thier ultimate suggestion, we could have a kick ass government. I like it. As it seems we could never get our (my) government to do something like this, (they only pretend to listen). Who out there is all about creating an island of oil tankers and see how far the slashdot effect will take us :)

Distributed Computing vs the humans

[Possum Man]

The next interesting experiment to try is distributed computing vs humanity. Clearly computing power can defeat any single player, as was evidenced in the Kasperov vs Deep Blue game. And this new Kasperov vs the world game has shown the power of collective human chess playing.

A distributed set of PC's throughout the world should be able to create a player easily capable of defeating Deep Blue. Wouldn't it be a great match to witness (and play): the human world vs. the PC world?

Open Source Chess

[Glytch]

Makes me wonder what a real community effort can do. Instead of having a few moves voted on, everyone could contribute a move.

Of course, the organizers would probably get flooded by suggestions, and unable to choose the best one... maybe some kind of program to filter out obviously ineffective moves would be useful. Oh, well. Just wondering out loud, folks.

Re:Open Source Chess

[Sabalon]

Seeing how there will probably be moves that will be submitted by more than one person, simply take the move suggested the most times.

Sure, only one person may suggest the best move in the situation, but the most popular move is the one that best represents the community.

Re:Open Source Chess

[SteveX]

That's exactly how the game vs Kasparov going on now works. You don't vote on a move - you pick your own move, and the move that gets picked the most is the one that is used.

- Steve

Re:Open Source Chess

[Crazyscot]

> Makes me wonder what a real community effort can > do. Instead of having a few moves voted on, > everyone could contribute a move.

The BBC tried this once, some (perhaps 10?) years ago, with a TV programme entitled "Your Move" and a system called "BBC Telechess".

It worked like this:

• After the chess "professional" moved, viewers (this was late at night, 11pm-2am IIRC) had three minutes to call the BBC's system and suggest their moves.
• An on-screen board was annotated with digits which were used to encode all possible moves. It was something along the lines of e2-e4 becoming 5254, to pick a random example. (I forget what criteria they used to decide the "people's move".)

I don't remember much else about the show, but it didn't last long. Anybody wanna set up "Open Move Chess" on the net? :-)

The One Bonus Humanity Has

[Skyshadow]

I see a lot of posts which point out that the world can't beat Kasparov 'cause they're, taken together, the most average chess player possible.

While this may be true, they have one very major advantage: They must be very difficult to predict, which is what these chess types count on to decide their next moves.

That plus they have a couple of grand masters helping them out.

----

Re:The One Bonus Humanity Has

[Bob Dobbs]

Predicting the next move isn't really what chess players at this level count on. You play assuming that your opponent will make the best move in reply.

It's true that prediction can be a factor in opening preparation at the Gradmaster level, but this game is well out of the opening.

Re:The One Bonus Humanity Has

[XDG]

While this may be true, they have one very major advantage: They must be very difficult to predict, which is what these chess types count on to decide their next moves.

This is, I believe, a misconception about the game of chess, that shows why human/computer matches are often misunderstood.

For humans, chess at the highest levels is not played by considering each move, predicting a response, and continuing through some search depth. Instead, chess masters always assume that the opponent will find the best response. To the extent that the response to a move must be "predicted" -- the master must find the one, single best move in response. This is why the "predictiveness" of the world is irrelevant -- the combination of the grandmaster coaches and collective voting push the game towards correct responses.

The real question is how to develop a strategy in the game that leads to small advantages. Each move, particularly early on, has effects on various factors: space, material, development, etc. This requires the ability to understand the balances and imbalances inherent in the board at any particular snapshot.

That is the difficult part of programming the computer. Searching out combinations is just a matter of power. The trick is programming the computer to analyze a snapshot of the board in order to determine the relative balance. Then the computer can use that information to examine in further depth the stronger lines.

If the programmers do a poor job of programming the analysis of the snapshots, a human player can exploit that. In several of the Kasparov vs computer matches, Kasparov's first few games were all about him examining how the computer was programmed to think, then exploiting that in the later games. For example, if the computer over-valued material advantage, Kasparov could use that knowledge to "convince" the computer to take a sacrifice that on the surface looked to offer a material advantage but that would lead to a positional imbalance that would favor Kasparov later.

(This is one reason that Kasparov is annoyed that the programmers never released information on how they programmed the computers.)

Further, the earlier comment about the effect of grandmaster coaches was dead on. One of the things that made the game so interesting to chess afficionados is that Krush pulled out a move she had been preparing for some time and "discovered" a new line in the old opening. (Look at Kasparov's comments on this.) If you look at the history of the analysts commentary, the voting became a personality contest between the analysts taking quieter approaches to those taking active approaches.

As a final note, another comment in the history is that Kasparov mentioned at one point that he was doing something less that ideal because didn't want to give away certain preparation he's making for his world championship match against Anand.

My overall take:
Is GK vs The World interesting? Yes.
Does it "mean something"? Not particularly.

XDG

What does this undertaking show?

[jabber]

Well, besides the exercise of getting so many voices contributing to a strategic decision, a'la online voting?

This is a way for Kasparov to get his 'face' back, by defeating the collective chess expertise of the world single-handedly.

What I would like to see next is the world vs. Deep Thought. If the greatest chess mind in the world, capable of defeating the whole world, was himself defeated by a computer, does transitivity apply? Can the world be beaten by the computer? What would be the result on the human psyche, to be defeated by a machine? Would governments halt AI research funding out of fear as thoughts of the W.O.P.R. and SkyNet dance in their heads?

Yes, we all know that DT was coached, and in fact designed, specifically to defeat Kasparov. It was programmed with Kasparov's strategies and game history... But still, it makes one wonder how the collective ego of humanity would respond to having it's collective hinny wipped by it's own invention.

Re:What does this undertaking show?

[monsoon]

Ahem - if the collective ego of humanity were at stake, I as a member of that collective, would rather a single representative take on the threatening assailant, than allow the mean of all humanity to do so. As long as we have n>0 humans who can beat DT (or its successors), I think our collective hinny is safe indeed. And we all know there are several GMs out there who would have done pretty well against DT...

Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[wass]

I don't really like these chess matches because it judges who has mastered this particular game more, and who has a better feel for how the pieces move and different strategies. It does not judge who is better at abstract thought and general strategi thinking. IMHO, of course.

I have a different idea of a wits game, and I've talked with some serious chess players who say this would be a very interesting test. What you do is to have a chess match like this, but change the rules, maybe even only slightly. This would more adequately match wits against wits. For example, let's say you change the moves, such that knights cannot jump over other pieces, or that the queen can only extend moves up to a range of 4 squares, or that you can teleport from the left side of the board to the right, a la pacman. You get the idea. It would drastically change the strategies that many chess players have already memorized.

Even more interesting would be a human vs. computer match like this. Say you give each party maybe a few days or 1 week to prepare for the game. The human tries to get a feel for the game, the computer guys re-program the computer's code during this time. I bet you'd find in this case that the computer demolish the humans. Kasparov has had 30 someodd years to memorize all these strategies and moves, but given only 1 week I think he'd be just as much a newbie in a changed game as I currently am at normal chess.

Has anybody ever heard of competitions like this, or do you think people would be willing to try them? I'd be very curious to know how chess masters compare to newbies at the altered games.

Re:Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[smillie]

This has been done already. The most common change (I think) is to swap the positions of the knights with the bishops. Changes the game significantly.

Re:Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[ajakk]

A very interesting version of the game that I saw was one where your opponent couldn't see what pieces were what. There was no check, you won when you captured the king. You could place the pieces in any order in your initial two rows. It really seemed like a combination of chess and Stratego.

Re:Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[Shanoyu]

"Who has mastered this game more", Ugh, this is like holding up a big sign that says "bring weapons, i'm a troll" to chess players. =P

First of all, it's been proven thru tests of all sorts that high level chess players are intellectually very strong. For existance the Grandmaster and World Champion Emanuel Lasker was a good friend of Einstein and talked with him on par about Einsteins theories and all kinds of subjects.

On the flip side of the coin, Chess players can be extremely autistic and/or not so socially responsible, For instance Bobby Fisher today is insane and also an Anti-Semetic who claims that the Jews are out to get him, (You can hear his radio interviews at chess-space.com , I think.)

You don't Memorise games, you memorise lines, admittedly for the opening lines this is a pre-requisite to do well in chess, but this hasn't stopped people from developing new openings like the Pirc Modern and the Dragon.

However memorising these opening lines is pretty easy, and if you are going to be playing on a tournament level, studying the major lines, (Indians, Kings pawn, etc.) isn't really that much of a pain. More important in chess are concepts and general strategies.

Chess is a studious game, and people who study chess play better, and on the higher levels of chess a large vocabulary of opening lines is required, but believe me, games would most likely have the same result given these 'altered rules', I could mention bughouse and myriad other variants but I wont, needless to say, it has little effect as long as the general strategic concepts are the same, and in chess they are sweeping.

"Good god man, you're addicted to chess and now you are going to take up bridge? Once you get the hang of bridge you'll be useless for any worthwhile occupation!" - Emanuel Lasker


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

Re:Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[Anonymous Coward]

Chess is not about memorizing it's about analysis. Chess masters would win your new game of 'wits' because of their superior analytical abilities. I'm a master strength player and I've spend zero time memorizing chess. A weak player who memorizes 20 moves is still a weak player after those moves have been played and he's on his own.

Re:Altered Games, or Thinking vs. Memorizing

[Kiwi]

What you are thinking of are called Chess Variants.

Re:Democracy / optimization / search

[Oestergaard]

Deep though / deep blue consisten of a very large number of very bad chess players (they only knew the rules and how good/bad one move would be). But the were organized so that a good number of moves could be considered (including possible moves from Kasparov - by guessing), and the best move picked.

This is not democracy. The move with the most backing (the move to be chosen) was not the one which most of the ``chess-players'' wanted, but the one that looked best considering the whole set of moves and possible moves.

You can't find an optimal move by distributing the search for single moves to dumb players, and then voting in a democratic way. Maybe this could have worked if the human voters' moves had been considered by a computer (or a human with too much time on his hands). But then again, studpid computer chess-players can produce a much larger number of moves than smarter human ones.

Stupidity parallelizes well, and that can be exploited if it is just reckoned that it _is_ stupidity. Parallelizing intelligence is different. A large number of intelligent thoughts cannot be parallelized only by considering their outcome. You must consider the reasoning behind them too. I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader :)

Is it possible to Slashdot effect the moves ... :)

[dustpuppy]

Is the voting for the moves checked (and vetoed) by humans?

Cos if it isn't, I could see an amusing result if the /. effect was rolled out over the voting form and we had a solitary pawn on the far left of the chess board advancing one square at a time completely ignoring any move that Kasporov made ... ;)

Why bother with Chess?

[Anonymous Coward]

There still isn't a Go program written that can defeat a human master. It's a shame it isn't more popular in this country, I think it would be more interesting if IBM and such put effort into it.

Re:Why bother with Chess?

[Bob Dobbs]

The problem is that Go has such a larger move tree. Why bother with chess? Because it isn't solved yet, but has a smaller tree than Go... Once chess is solved, I would expect Go to be the next challenge.

Re:Why bother with Chess?

[shadow0_0]

Agreed :) I still have yet to find any decent Go computer games on the Net :) any suggestions? even something simple will be great so i can learn from it :)

Re:Why bother with Chess?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what the number of plausible moves would be. If you limit the openings to the ones in the books this number would be greatly reduced.

DeepBlue@Home

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you suggesting some kind of distributed system based on SETI@Home?

- Sometimes the road is long, and then you realise you're on a roundabout

Re:DeepBlue@Home

[seizer]

That's exactly what he's suggesting. There is a slight problem in terms of timescale - with SETI, there's no huge rush to get the results back. If the game was to be played at a reasonable pace, the units would have to be a lot smaller, and therefore less useful as a screensaver. If that makes any sense ;-) I'm not on top form today (or ever)

--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me

Re:DeepBlue@Home

[Possum Man]

As a screensaver perhaps you're right. However as a low-priority process it would work fine. The UNIX/Linux seti@home (which I'm running) works as a background process which processes each time there is an idle CPU moment. Most home machines have a lot of spare CPU time on their hands, so this works fine. This is straight forward UNIX process management. All the Unix-people could thus process this game no problem (maybe they'd be given 1/4 to 1/2 hour chunks to work on). The computer would have to delegate processes out multiple times to compensate for computers not reporting in on time, of course.

Programming something like this for the Windows/Mac people would be somewhat more challenging. But it's not impossible to make some Windows/Mac code that looks at how hard the CPU is working and then decides how hard to work.

It could be done, and would certainly be an interesting study of chess, human collective nature, and distributed computing.

Like open source

[Terao]

This is a bit like open source, a few strong holding things together and alot of eyes looking for bugs.

Change the game...

[jedrek]

I think that you're overstating the 'power' of DT. Humanity won't be 'obliterated' by loosing to a computer at chess. Chess is a very finite game and the number of positions can in fact be calculated, stored and referenced. In fact, I think it's time to take chess down as the 'game of games' - especially when competing against a computer. As computing power grows, chess goes the way of tic-tac-toe.

The problem with Chess

[proj_2501]

The problem with chess is the ease with which a computer can visualize possible moves. Chess is essentially a robotic game. There is a finite number of spaces on the board, and all the rules are well defined. Given the status of the board at any time, Deep Blue could easily make a list of many many combinations of future moves and choose the most advantageous. Now, can a computer write a novel as well as human masters? Or a symphony?
--
"I was a fool to think I could dream as a normal man."
B. B. Buick

Re:The problem with Chess

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard somewhere that there are more possible combinations of "positions" (and hence moves) in a game of chess than there are particles in the universe. Is this true? If so, it is going to take one hell of a tree pruning algorithm to model all these moves.

Re:The problem with Chess

[ajakk]

The problem is the number of possible moves in chess is enormous. The general thinking is that there are more moves possible in a game of chess than there are particles in the universe. Obviously that statement is a bit ahrd to quantify, but we can easily deduce that it will be a while until a chess program can logically find all possible solutions. Deep Blue could work out all of the moves to about 5 moves deep once in the endgame.

Checkers, however, does not suffer from this problem. That is why it is possible to create an unbeatable checkers program.

Re:The problem with Chess

[prumpf]

The problem is the number of possible moves in chess is enormous

Has the number of possible board states in chess ever been exactly calculated ? If not, is it generally thought to be impossible given our limited resources ?

Re:The problem with Chess

[Shanoyu]

WRONG!

Computers have a very horrid way of thinking, There is no computer that cannot be beaten by a Grand Master simply because the computers aren't capable of 'thinking' outside of predicting the move that would be the most likely to bring about the result.

Deep Blue Lost games to Kasprov, by the way, and the reason he lost the second match is because IBM Cheated, they had a group of GM's in a hotel across the street with a monitor of the game and May have had (although it hasn't been proven) a button that says "don't go there"

But i'm not as eloquent at saying all this as Kasparov says it, somewhere on that page He has a nice little rant about how IBM cheated during the match and almost lost points for shrugging at his coach and mother when the computer stalled and they rebooted it, "Do not talk to your player" the manager said to his coach, "But they are talking to theirs" Said Kasparov.


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

Re:The problem with Chess

[QuMa]

Well, with novels and symphonies you still have a finite number of moves.... Discriminating between good ones and bad ones is the problem here.

Re:The problem with Chess

[fidel]

From "Chess, the Records"
(such a definitive guide, I know)

"The number of games 40 moves long is approximately 10^120, which is larger than
the estimated number of electrons in the universe
10^90"...

So, yes you need a hell of a pruning algorithm.
Basically, you use a variant of alpha-beta.
(A generic tree search algorithm where you have
a window of upper and lower bounds of the score,
and finding the variation which makes
alpha \le score \le beta.. You can find it in your
local algorithms bible)

Even so, its still not good enough...

There are other tricks however, which you can
use. Don't forget that a large number of
variations are nonsense...ie those that leave the
queen en prise....

On another note: As for computers vs humans,
there is a large difference in the way the
silicon and carbon play.

The carbon players generally plan and evaluate
the position based on the strategic attributes
of the position, find a few candidate moves and
then calculate those.

The silicon players generally generate all the
moves, order them according to some heuristic
and calculates as far as it can go, which is
about depth 16(8 moves) for commercial programs.

So the results of
Kasparov vs Deep Blue and Kasparov vs World
probably do not scale.

Games like this exist.

[The Creator]

There are many permutations of the game of chess. One for example is "Giveaway-chess" where you have to capture if you can, and the one who looses all his pieses first wins(no special rules for the king). Then theres "Kinglet" or "Last man standing" as i prefer to call it. It's like normal chess exept the king is just another piece, and the last one to have any pieces wins. Another new non chess-related game is "Hex" where you have a n*n(n is normally 10) field of hexagons and you have to connect across before the opponent does. The good part about this game is that computers generally stink at it. Because of the lack of intermidiate feedback that a computer algo whould need to otimize well.


LINUX stands for: Linux Inux Nux Ux X

Go, not Chess

[Anonymous Coward]

Go is, in computational terms, much, much more complex than chess. This is why it is an interesting challenge; conventional minimaxing is so computationally intensive as to just not work well.

There are many strategies used by go programs including analysis of local situations, conventional positions and heuristics based on conventional wisdom, all of which have shown some promise.

I think the chief interest of Go in this context is that it is sufficiently complex in all its manifestations that it has reached the point where alternative approaches (including pattern matching, fuzzy logic and other so-called AI techniques) might bear more fruit. I would really, really, really like to see where this goes. I have a gutfeeling that if we can write a champion Go program, we will learn an immense amount from it.

A better game to play...

[ywwg]

Is Hall vs the World , with Tom Hall of ION Storm. A much more fun and humorous game, and not Microsoft sponsored.

Windows only requirement

[Anonymous Coward]

It's good that they changed this. Going back to the original discussion of the match, though, I saw lots of comments to the effect of "By excluding people who use real OSs (i.e. Linux)they're stacking the deck and making sure that innovative creative thinkers can't play he he he". Unfortunately, they probably excluded very few serious chess players this way. Serious players MUST use computers for research and analysis now, and the best software for this is ChessBase (database) and Fritz (integrated playing program). These aren't even ported to the Mac except for a weaker version of ChessBase(the database). Perhaps the market for serious expensive chess software is so small that it's not even feasible (i.e. profitable) to port these programs. So the chess situation is like games as a whole: lots of people use Windows just to run game software. I understand that lots of people are working to make Linux support video games better now though. I got my Mac about a year before I really got into Chess. If I had appreciated the software situation I would have bought a Wintel box.

Chess players and programmers?

[igjeff]

>On the flip side of the coin, Chess players can be extremely autistic and/or not so socially responsible,

Interesting...this somewhat harkens back to the previous /. threads talking about some programmers being at least somewhat autistic. Very interesting parallel there IMHO.

Jeff

Chess can't be "solved"

[Lucius Lucanius]

It's been mathematically proved that the number of all possible combinations of chess moves is greater than the number of atoms in the universe, approximately 10^ 80. This is why the concept of chess being solved once and for all, so that once the first move is made, all the future moves are computed by the other side, resulting in a game with an obvious ending, is not a real possibility.

This is what makes chess interesting.

L.

Democracy, with all the pitfalls

[Enoch Root]

If you look closely at how this works, this isn't truly Kasparov vs. the world. It's Kasparov vs. four chess masters, with a randomising factor thrown in to determine whose move is selected.

If you truly did a Kasparov vs. the world, you'd just invite everyone to vote for the move they want, without any advice. Then, indeed, you would have Kasparov vs. the world, and the world would be a very, very average player indeed.

Rather, this is more like democracy. Four masters "suggest" moves, which means the clearer (or cryptic and brilliant-sounding) their analysis is, the more likely they are to sway the majority in their favour. Oh, sure, you can vote for another move that isn't suggested, but when the average player has a chance of going with one master whose opinion he believes he shares, or thinking up his own move that none of the four masters thought up, what do you think he'll do? And even if he does, will there be enough votes from the other players? No.

So the little genius sitting at home and ready to beat Kasparov is not going to weight much in the balance. He doesn't have access to a visible, publicised advice posting like the other chess masters have. He could post on a BBoard, but what if he really sucks at English and cannot communicate his analysis properly?

So, what is left, is the ability to sway the crowd. Chess ability matters, but when the average player can't figure the game out one move ahead, he's gonna go for the more convincing, not necessarely the better one. And so, we're back to good old democracy: don't elect the one you know to be the best qualified, because you yourself are not qualified to make that call. Just elect the candidate that sounds the most convincing and seems to know where he's going. And he'll take care of the rest.

Interestingly enough, this is the only way the world can win (or draw, by looking at the game) against Kasparov. If there was no expert vote-swaying, it would be anarchy. Now it's democracy.

This game is a statement on human politics!

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

Re:Democracy, with all the pitfalls

[Possum Man]

The intention of democracy has never been that people should make votes without discussing ideas with other people. Democracy has always depended on leaders who listen to people, and people who are empowered to vote for those that represent them best.

Re:Democracy, with all the pitfalls

[Enoch Root]

That's exactly my point. By depending so much on discussion, it drowns the statement in the fashion in which it is carried, so that in the end, it is the ability to sway a certain category of people that matters, rather than the statement itself.

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

Re:Democracy, with all the pitfalls

[0xdeadbeef]

So how do you know it isn't the "statement" itself and not the presentation that sways that catageory of voters?

It's the same old excuse. When the vote goes my way, it's due to enlightened leadership and an educated citizenry. When goes the other way, it's because politicians are manipulative and the masses are dolts.

In reality, both situations are somewhat true. No one is an expert on everything and no one is the definative expert on anything. But everyone has the capacity to think critically, and learn, and to judge the credibility of those who claim to be experts.

Re:Democracy, with all the pitfalls

[Enoch Root]

I am not saying that the fact that presentation sways the vote is any indication on the expertise of those presenting their opinions. I do believe the experts suggesting moves are just that, experts.

What I am saying, however, is that rather than properly network the minds of the entire world into one player, this process uses a somewhat flawed method to process the various expertise. Certainly presentation is a factor; I'm not saying it's the only one.

An ideal form of networking minds would mean that the greatest mind in the lot is the minimum standard; in small groups, that works if everyone is open-minded. The brain of the group provides proper advice on a level, and the others, while not understanding everything, still manage to recognise the intelligence of a particular idea, then network on it to put it forward.

But in large groups, on the scale of this contest or a nation, this process is more and more difficult, because it is difficult to recognise particular expertise amongst the members. As a result, presentation plays a role, and it is possible that a form of expertise is lost to the fact that the number of participants is simply overwhelming.

And so, I don't believe that this chess game properly represents the sum of all the players in the world; it is something less than that. Same for any democratic process: somehow, expertise is lost by representation, and it is a sad fact that most geeks know, that often genius is buried under statistics and lost to anonymity.

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

Uh okay.

[Shanoyu]

I've never heard of a Knights to Bishops exception in any tournament annoucement myself, so I don't know what you're talking about personally. The most common change is actually the time controls, and if you don't count that, theres always Shogi (japanese chess) and Bughouse (team chess).


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

I doubt it.

[Shanoyu]

It wouldn't be that intresting or even that useful as a result. Generally speaking it depends on who writes the better engine with a better opening book. You see you can't just get an engine and throw it into a game, it'll lose in the opening unless it's given a 'book' of openings. This is simply because in the opening the number of possible moves is just so incredibly high that the 0.0001% or so of relevant moves just don't get processed, this was possible with DT and DB, but i'm not sure if it was done, if I had to guess i'd assume it was, though, it's a standard caveat with chess engines.


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

Re:I doubt it.

[Possum Man]

I was assuming that the distributed computing chess engine would be competently prgorammed of course ;-)

Re:I doubt it.

[Shanoyu]

Hehehe, now we get into the evil of chess players, are you willing to try to convince a high level GM to do it? How much are you willing to pay him? Keep in mind chess masters are starving so they are always looking for $$.


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

Negligable.

[Shanoyu]

Essentially the filter would just turn into another chess engine.

This is the standard of chess. It is one person and their opponent, sure team play is possible in chess but it always boils down to you against someone else, it's a fairly solitary and poetic game, and it wasn't created for or ment to be played in matches like "Kasprov V World" (which of course is really Kasparov V Polling Engine w/ Chess advisors)


-[ World domination - rains.net ]-

It makes me think about another community ...

[jalbinet]

Take a huge random group of people who have interest in one subject ...
Of course, without interaction between them, the average response/behaviour have no chance to achieve anything good.
But we've seen that with a real-time communication media (the net) between them, the global response of this group consists of the brightest ideas, that can emerge from anyone, not only the brightest members !
Isn't /. and it's moderation system the best example ?

Just my .01 FF

Re:It makes me think about another community ...

[Anonymous Coward]

If the move that is chosen has the highest moderation point score, the choice is only as good as the moderators recognition of a good choice.

If there are no top ranked chess players moderating, this game is as predictable as playing tick tack toe with a computer.

Open source the algarithm

[Possum Man]

Developing a project like this as Open Source could quite quickly develop some powerful results, assuming it got interest. A competent chess player / programmer could start it off, and very quickly more knowledgable people could add in their own algorithms. Perhaps the project could splinter off from the GNU Chess program.

Chance at a draw == none.

[foodini]

ERGH! Damn browser.

Anyway, The world blew it when they advanced the
pawn to force the white rook to take. Had the
other pawn been pushed, the world would now have
GK in check and have tempo. As it is, GK will
soon have another queen and we're dead. Game
over.

I am farily convinced that GK just wasn't taking
this game seriously early on. Everyone just has
their hearts so committed to patting themselves
on the back that they fail to see this.

Don't overlook, either that this game was 5 advisors against GK, everyone just voted for the advisor that they believed the most.

Isn't Kasparov already dead in the water?

[Hard_Code]

By the board I see today, it looks like Kasparov is already dead in the water. He has a pawn and queen, while black has a queen, and two pawns very near the end of the board. Are the rules different...can't black just turn a pawn into another queen or previously captured piece?

Re:Isn't Kasparov already dead in the water?

[Mark J Tilford]

No... the board is turned so that black is advancing up the board (look at the suggested moves). So black is very far from promoting, and white is almost ready to get a second queen.
-----------

Re:Isn't Kasparov already dead in the water?

[Anonymous Coward]

The two black pawns are near their own starting side of the board...they have to march all the way across. For some reason the king and queen from both sides have moved across the board.

Nope. Black should play to draw.

[chazR]

White's pawn is significantly further developed. White has a slight problem with the position of the King, but has achieved a very strong threat of a discovered check. I'd say this game is 75% draw, 20% White 5% black. But then I'd be trying to predict the outcome of a Queen endgame, which is daft. Nobody really understands Queen endgames.

Re:Nope. Black should play to draw.

[Anonymous Coward]

Black has NO winning chances. This has been said by commentator Grandmaster Danny King. I'd say about 85% winning chances for garry, 15% drawing chances for the world.

The worth of Human Communication.

[Thomas Charron]

If anything, this contest was a good experiment in what the internet can provide. It brought EVERYONE who submitted moves together to determine what would be a good move to make. This would simply not have been possible without the internet.

It's not giant Beawulf clusters that did it, it was a giant parallel processing human network that did it..

Re:The worth of Human Communication.

[cout]

It's not giant Beawulf clusters that did it, it was a giant parallel processing human network that did it..

I disagree; humans don't process in parallel. Or rather, we do process in parallel, but we process in such a way that we repeat who is processing what. This is different from a computer, in which what is being processed is only processed once.

It would be interesting to play this differently by selecting different people for different jobs. "Joe, you be in charge of strategy and help move us in a specific direction. Jeff, you analyze all the positions that can follow from PK4. Jane, you analyze the positions that follow from PQ4. Jack, you analyze...." We could have redundancy to check to see if the analysis is correct, and have a variety of jobs for people to take.

The problem I see with this is that with it we would be moving the direction of the Borg, which is something that I think we would all rather avoid.

Agreed...

[Anonymous Coward]

The game chosen has *a lot* to do with this situation.

For example, a computer can pretty much always win a game of reversi (Othello) against a human, but will rarely win at "Go" (an oriental game of some sort, I think... I only read this stuff in my AI class textbook).

Humanity has no reason to get upset if it loses a chess game to a PC. After all, no one gets upset if they lose a tic-tac-toe game to a pc.

The only time that we'll ever have to be upset is if we build an AI machine that is capable of building AI machines that are smarter than the AI machines we are capable of building...

Re:Agreed...

[bcaulf]

The only time that we'll ever have to be upset is if we build an AI machine that is capable of building AI machines that are smarter than the AI machines we are capable of building

That wouldn't upset me--it would please and excite me to no end. That event will be the beginning of post-evolutionary development. I can hardly wait.

Re:Agreed...

[Firehawk]

The only time that we'll ever have to be upset is if we build an AI machine that is capable of building AI machines that are smarter than the AI machines we are capable of building...

if an AI machine builds an AI machine that's smarter than itself, that machine could build another machine smarter than *itself* ...

would this be the beginning of the end?

Chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe??

[skaladin]

First off, I think Kasparov has the game locked at this point. I let Chessmaster play the game out between itself and after about 10 hours and some 50 moves later, Kasparov won with a queen and a King. He has much better positioning. Now my other thing is sort of a question. Judging by the fact that chess is all based on mathmatics, I have heard that there is a specific algorithm for the game. So I have been told that there is a specific set of moves (not known by us or even the fastest computer) that will always result in a win or a tie but never a loss. This is the tic-tac-toe theory. Does anyone have any comments or info on this subject. I don't completely buy it but I would like to learn more about it. Anybody heard of this theory before?

Re:Chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe??

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be the same Chessmaster, that even in the recent Chessmaster 6000 version, still cannot perform the basic K+B+N vs. K mate? Sorry, but I
don't put much stock in Chessmaster's analysis of endgames.

Re:Chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe??

[Anonymous Coward]

Chess is exactly like tic-tac-toe in the sense that it is theoretically possible to follow each and every move to its logical conclusion. The problem arises when you look at the specific amount of computation required to do so. A simplistic algorithm would proceed like this:
White begins with 20 moves, with none resulting in checkmate. So now we must examine blacks 20 replies leaving us with 400 possible board configurations, of which none result in checkmate. White has 20 or so replies to each of these 400, which lead us to 8000 different boards and with 20 or so replies from black we are up to 160000 after only 2 moves! In fact the combinatorial explosion is so great, that you can rest assured that chess will never be "solved". Knowing this, it is absurd to state that white can always win or draw. It is simply impossible to know (unless God tells you!). For all we know, white begins the game in zugswang.

Re:Chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe??

[Anonymous Coward]

An algorithm which guarantees a win or draw in a chess game? LOL. try to think of an algorithm yourself and realize they STILL can't prove a win or loss in the current Kasparov/World match (and there are only 7 pieces left on the board). With all 32 pieces on the board, there is nothing even close to a winning chess algorithm, although there are many good ones.

Re:Chess as trivial as tic-tac-toe??

[skaladin]

I didn't say there was a winning chess algorithm know, I just said it was possible for there to be one.

World played outstanding chess!!!

[sbandyo]

Whatever is the result world played outstanding chess certified by many strong GMs including Kasparov himself.

If you play these moves by urself, look at the latest position and play the queen pawn ending you will know what I am talking about.

Look at the latest world move Ka1...which can only be played by a GM of very high rank...CM6000 with several hours of computation couldn't find the move...Deep Blue wouldn't have found it too!

So all of the above ( u said ) is wrong. This is outstanding chess...

thanks, sbandyo.

Re:World played outstanding chess!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. But, Ka1... was NOT voted upon by the world. Every now and then, you just want to chuck democracy, grab a piece and move it ;)

Re:Is it possible to Slashdot effect the moves ...

[Ralph Bearpark]

FIRST PAWN!

[slightly offtopic] DB not strongest chessplayer

[Anonymous Coward]

After reading many comments from people commenting on the Kasparov-World match, I realize that there is a serious misconception here that hasn't yet been addressed. People are talking about being interested in a Deep Blue-the World match, since Deep Blue beat Kasparov in a match. Though this did happen, any strong chessplayer observing the match will note that Deep Blue is *not* the strongest chessplayer in the world, not by a long shot. The computer is probably among the top 10 right now, but there are at least half a dozen chessplayers in the world today (including Kasparov, if he was given the chance) who would demolish Deep Blue in a longer match, say 10 games. This is not to say that a computer will eventually become the strongest chessplayer in the world. It just hasn't happened yet.

Technically not democracy, but rather republic....

[kayser_soze]

Sorry to be technical, but actually the voting system is a Republic or representative type government system (a la U.S.A.) as opposed to a Democracy. A Republic employs reps. voted by the people to "stand in" for them at the actual decision-making level, whereas a Democracy employs all of the people at the decision-making level (with the most popular vote winning out...). -- kayser_soze -- "If it's not one thing...it's probably not that thing." "He who laughs last has probably killed everyone else."

i stand by my original comments

[conform]

my original post on the matter is here.

Okay, I may have been wrong about Kasparov winning, but... Any of you who have ever followed grandmaster chess know that the most common outcome is a draw. The world team has done better than I believed it would, but the reason for this is that a) they followed the analysts more closely than I thought they would, and b) the analysts communicated more closely than I thought I would.

There have been a number of comments suggesting a Deep Blue-vs-the-World match. I believe that Deep Blue has been dismantled, and according to IBM, will never play again. Which is strange, and in my opinion, leads some credibility to some of Kasparov's claims about the thing. For those of you who don't know, Kasparov suggested a man-inside-the-box approach was being taken by the IBM team after their last match. He's a poor loser, and had obviously been demoralized by the time the match was over, so I initially dismissed his claims. But in light of IBM's refusal to release any documentation of Deep Blue's move analysis, and then taking it apart (they needed those RS/6000 chess daughterboards somewhere else?)... the questions seem more reasonable now.

Anyway, I certainly wouldn't want to play against the world, except maybe in a 5 minute blitz game. But the "rebuttal" of the World naysayers like myself seems a little premature. Nobody gets crushed, no wild antics, Kasparov has the initiative the whole game. Essentially what I predicted.

Ka1

[Anonymous Coward]

Ka1 didn't win because of microsofts insecure voting method. On any non-windows system you only have to enter an email address to vote. Apparently someone entered something like 500+ votes for b5, which is why it won. :/

Re:Ka1

[sbandyo]

Democracy sucks!!

But there was a discussion in BBS ( chess discussion ) that this incident ( fake votes for b5) happend on the same day when first article on Kasparov event appeared in this group. As per your article a Linux user can give a fake vote but not a windows user.

But Microsoft confirmed that there was no fake vote ( they have to :-) )

hmmmm! Is there a connection here?

thanks, sbandyo.

Irina Krush naked and petrified (was Re: chance..)

[fidel]

: Don't overlook, either that this game was 5
: advisors against GK, everyone just voted for the : advisor that they believed the most.

Belief? More like the advisor they liked the
most.

Irina Krush naked and petrified, oh yeah...

(Sorry, just had to jump on the ol' bandwagon)

Perfect Chess Algorithms ...

[Crutcher]

... are taught in 2nd year Computer Science.

They Exist, They are simple.

Then again, so are nuron simulation algorithms.

The problem we have is that they have HUGE costs in space/time, and we dont have computers that can run them (yet).

But rest assured that they do exist, and they are provable.
-Crutcher

Re:Perfect Chess Algorithms ...

[Anonymous Coward]

"we dont have computers that can run them (yet)."

This seems to imply that someday we will have a computer that is big enough and fast enough to handle this problem. This is not true. The fact is that there are a class of problems where the search space is so enormous that it is simply impossible to find the solution. When I say impossible, I don't mean hard or not likely or maybe someday. I mean provably impossible. Never. Nada. No way. The textbook illustration of this is the so called "traveling salesman" problem. Chess seems to fit into this class.

Re:Technically not democracy, but rather republic.

[Enoch Root]

I'm not so sure... My impression is that you can vote for every move you like, but four choices are presented to you. So that's a Democracy.

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

Distributed chess might be a bad idea.

[Luis Casillas]

I don't think a distributed chess engine would be a particularly good one.

Why? Response time. It would take a fair amount of time and resources to distribute and receive back the analysis of the game with all the participating computers. Which means that the game would develop at quite a slow pace, a factor that is well-know benefits the human players and hurts the computer. When there is relatively little time to think over each move (say, a blitz game), the computer's superior calculation power is what makes them powerful-- the computer will make no obvious mistakes that can be exploited in a fast-paced game, while the human will make many mistakes and oversights that the computer can quickly discover. Also, with little time, the human does not get the chance to come up with elaborate plans, or subtle endgame play.

But as you crank up the time available for analyzing each move, the situation changes. The human makes less blunders (and if there are multiple people participating, "ore eyes catch more blunders), and his strategic outlook over the game is given free rein. The computer, in contrast, has no sense of strategy, and when faced with an opponent that makes no obvious mistakes, can not formulate a coherent plan to try to win.

As a matter of fact, as far as I can recall humans are the supreme champions of correspondence chess. This is quite a good demonstration of my thesis above.

So, I really don't think a distributed chess machine could play chess at a pace quick enough to meet a time control where it had a realistic chance of beating good human opposition.

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