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Kasparov Draws Game 4 and Match Against X3D Fritz 408

Posted by michael from the whew dept.
jaydee77ca writes "Garry Kasparov survived opening danger and played very precise, technical chess to draw Game 4 with black against X3D Fritz. The final match result is a 2.0 - 2.0 draw, proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived."
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Kasparov Draws Game 4 and Match Against X3D Fritz More

Kasparov Draws Game 4 and Match Against X3D Fritz

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  • I dunno. The thing is, even though it didn't beat him outright all four games, it did beat him.

    I think that's saying a whole hell of a lot, even if this is a specialized application.

    • Re:Special. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wankledot ( 712148 )
      It's saying a whole lot that it beat him? I would hope that a machine calculating trillions of moves would be able to. Like a lot of articles I've read, the machine can often pick excellent moves at any given time, but it lacks an understanding of the overall flow of the game, and big-picture strategy. Those kinds of things are hard to figure out for a machine without a soul, even with near-infinite cycles to spend. Until the machine can prove the game and calculate a way to draw every time no matter wha

      • Re:Special. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by An Onerous Coward ( 222037 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @08:00PM (#7506845) Homepage
        Yeah, thank goodness for my soul. I'd hate to see how badly I sucked at chess if somebody extracted my soul.

        I hate this sort of thinking. If the question is, "What is it that allows humans to think abstractly and formulate efficient and creative strategies in the face of novel situations?" answering, "a soul" is just sleight of hand to avoid admitting that we don't know. Positing that every human being has a soul explains nothing, and tells us nothing that we didn't already know. Slapping a label on a phenomenon isn't the same as providing an explanation.

        Now, regarding "near-infinite cycles," ask your math teacher about the logic inherent in the phrase.

    • Re:Special. (Score:2, Interesting)

      by CaptKilljoy ( 687808 )
      The question in my mind is: Kasparov won the last two games. Had there been more than four games in the series, would X3D Fritz have won any games other than the initial two or has Kasparov figured out a strategy to beat Fritz?

      • Re:Special. (Score:3, Informative)

        by mr_sas ( 682067 )
        you've got the results wrong, they were:
        Game 1: Nov. 11
        Kasparov 1/2 - 1/2 X3D Fritz

        Game 2: Nov. 13
        X3D Fritz 1 - 0 Kasparov

        Game 3: Nov. 16
        Kasparov 1 - 0 X3D Fritz

        Game 4: Nov. 18
        X3D Fritz1/2 - 1/2 Kasparov
    • Realistically it's proving it is not yet the time of the machines against this one awesome player. Hell I cannot beat chessmaster from my Apple //e, much less a damn supercomputer.
    • Yes, but the one victory for X3D Fritz was made possible due to a blunder. Humans can choke sometimes, computers never do anything that stupid in one move. Of course, that's something we already knew.
    • "it did beat him"

      Yes, but that proves one thing still: Humans can apply different strategy against different opponents, computers have yet to do that. I think Kasparov would have applied a different strategy playing a human player. That is something a computer is not capable of.

      Plus, Kasparov lost the first game and then learned his opponent strategies, another thing computers are not capable of.

  • one move (Score:5, Interesting)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:44PM (#7506238) Homepage Journal
    The series ended in a draw essentialy because of one move. The move 5. ...a6 in game 3 by the computer is very interesting/controversial. A computer needs to be programmed to play to its strength, i.e open positions. This move reveals a fundamental flaw in the program. The computer chose this even though 6. c5 is among possible replies which forcibly closes the position. So, the programmers did not incorporate best algorithms to avoid closed positions. Instead of 5....a6 why did not the computer choose 5....Be7 which is more in line with convention and less likely to lead to a closed position? But, whatever might be the case, it was a good show by Kasparov. He showed that computer software has a long way to go more than computer hardware to beat humans.

    • For those of us without flash... (Score:4, Informative)

      by Davak ( 526912 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:47PM (#7506271) Homepage
      [Event "X3D Man-Machine World Championship"]
      [Site "New York"]
      [Date "2003.11.18"]
      [Round "4"]
      [White "X3D Fritz"]
      [Black "Garry Kasparov"]
      [Result "*"]
      [ECO "A00"]
      [BlackElo "2830"]
      [Annotator "Greengard,M"]
      [PlyCount "54"]

      {60MB, DELL8200} 1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. Nf3 e6 4. e3 Nf6 5. Bxc4 c5 6. O-O a6
      7. Bb3 cxd4 8. exd4 Nc6 9. Nc3 Be7 10. Re1 O-O 11. Bf4 Na5 12. d5 Nxb3 13. Qxb3
      exd5 14. Rad1 Be6 15. Qxb7 Bd6 16. Bg5 Rb8 17. Qxa6 Rxb2 18. Bxf6 Qxf6 19. Qxd6
      Qxc3 20. Nd4 Rxa2 21. Nxe6 fxe6 22. Qxe6+ Kh8 23. Rf1 Qc5 24. Qxd5 Rfxf2 25.
      Rxf2 Qxf2+ 26. Kh1 h6 27. Qd8+ Kh7 *
      • THis is game 4 sorry! Game 3 is here [Event "X3D Match"] [Site "New York USA"] [Date "2003.11.16"] [Round "3"] [White "Kasparov,G"] [Black "X3D FRITZ"] [Result "1-0"] [WhiteElo "2830"] [EventDate "2003.11.11"] [ECO "D45"] 1. Nf3 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 d5 4. d4 c6 5. e3 a6 6. c5 Nbd7 7. b4 a5 8. b5 e5 9. Qa4 Qc7 10. Ba3 e4 11. Nd2 Be7 12. b6 Qd8 13. h3 O-O 14. Nb3 Bd6 15. Rb1 Be7 16. Nxa5 Nb8 17. Bb4 Qd7 18. Rb2 Qe6 19. Qd1 Nfd7 20. a3 Qh6 21. Nb3 Bh4 22. Qd2 Nf6 23. Kd1 Be6 24. Kc1 Rd8 25. Rc2 Nbd7 26. Kb2

    • Re:one move (Score:5, Interesting)

      by PK_ERTW ( 538588 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:51PM (#7506312)
      I disagree. The series may have ended in a draw because of one move, but it certainly wasn't that one. The most significant move in the game 32...Rg7 in game 2 by Kasparov.

      Kasparov was trying to hold on for a draw in this game, while playing the disadvantaged black. He screwed one move and the computer pounced on him. Had he managed a draw in that game, he would have had an overall winning record for the series.

      pk

      • Good point. If the software was smart enough to beat him, it should not have played 5....a6 in game 3. Yes, he would probably have come out winner but for the blunder 32...Rg7 in game 2.
      • Which is the basic difference between playing chess against a computer vs playing chess against a human: the computer may fail to find general winning strategy without a clear short-term advantage attached (see game 3, the infamous f-pawn), but it will never make a horrible mistake like hanging a piece. (see game 3, 14...Bd6. Every commentator laughed it up over that one, being such an obvious trap, and I saw it a couple seconds later. With a human, you pause for a couple seconds - was that a blunder? did h

    • Re:one move (Score:5, Interesting)

      by TrippTDF ( 513419 ) <{moc.liamg} {ta} {dnalih}> on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:01PM (#7506412)
      He showed that computer software has a long way to go more than computer hardware to beat humans.

      No, computers have a long way to go to beat the masters.

      I was an avid chess player in high school. I played on a national level a couple of times even.

      I've since stopped playing as much, but I do play from time to time. i keep a chess program on my palm pilot. Some dumb free thing I downloaded from the internet. Even when I'm concentrating on the game, I still get my ass kicked on the higher levels.

      Now, i am no champion by any account. I don't think my USCF rating when above 900 ever. However, I can still beat your average Joe that I sit down to play with. I doubt any average person would do so well against the palm pilot, either.

      So when people say that this is finally where computers take the advantage over humans, i have to disagree. Computers took the advantage over humans a long time ago. Now it's just icing on the cake.

      • Re:one move (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Theobon ( 691491 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:20PM (#7506555)
        I get my ass kicked by most chess players I go up against but I have still beaten every comp player I have gone up against. Sure these aren't great programs but GNUchess is pretty powerful and has beat many 1000 rack players that I have asked to play it. The key is that you can trick a comp very easly. YOu hid your self behind many move victories so that the tree doesn't see it before it is too late. Comps are good at repetitive testing of piles of options but it has no innovation and the inablity to see what is happening in the game. If you look at game 3 from this match Fritz didn't have a clue it was loosing until the end. All it knew was it evaluated the game to -1.5 which is meaningless when you can see it's impending doom easily.

      • Re:one move (Score:2, Funny)

        by Mantorp ( 142371 )
        I'm not a chess player, I'm an impatient gamer all around. I used to get my ass beat by a chess computer back in the early 80s.
    • So in short, the draw happened because the computer wasn't stronger than the human over the match?

      You can imply that it was a single goof that ruined the computer, but we've twenty years of single goofs. These kinds of things are why the human mind is still in contention even after this many years of moores law.

    • Re:one move (Score:3, Insightful)

      by trb ( 8509 )

      The series ended in a draw essentialy because of one move. The move 5. ...a6 in game 3 by the computer is very interesting/controversial.

      You are avoiding the fact that the computer (Deep Fritz, a highly regarded piece of chess software) has no idea how to play the position after 5. ... a6. That position isn't lost, Fritz just handled it poorly because of the difficulties in programming the machine to deal with horizon effect. Any average chess player could have played the position better than Fritz did,

  • Seems to suggest, he had to think like a machine, to beat (or pull a draw) against a machine. Fascinating. Also, nice pic of him with the finger on the site. :)
    • I think his strength is rather the opposite. IIRC when he played against Deep Blue he lost because the machine made a "human" move according to him - i.e. he said afterwards that one move Deep Blue made was impossible for a computer to calculate and thus he completely lost concentration because he was so sure that there was some cheating going on, i.e. human assistance behind the scenes - and there have of course been rumours about that afterwards and Deep Blue has been scrapped so nobody can prove them wro

  • Negative Computer Bias (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pez ( 54 ) * on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:45PM (#7506252) Journal
    proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived

    Sigh. Such an obviously human-biased conclusion to what is indisputably one of the great achievments of computer chess. The fact that Fritz, running on rather modest hardware, drew Kasparov, is an incredible feat. The obvious followup is that the days of a human world champion are numbered. And most likely that number is most conveniently expressed in months, not years.

    Running on an Intel Xeon server with four 2.8 GHz processors.

    • Kasparov runs on limited hardware, too (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Pac ( 9516 ) <paulo...candido@@@gmail...com> on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:58PM (#7506378)
      I am not trying to dismiss the feat, no. Chess as a human standing place against the machines are over since Deep Blue. But give credit where credit is due, the feat here is Kasparov's, one of the few humans alive today still capable of beating the machines anytime, anywhere.

      It is an interesting coincidence that during the same few years computer chess entered adulthood the best chess player ever born was alive to hold the fort for a while longer. Probably not a coincidence, either.

      • Anytime, anywere... as long as the game is played using the traditional time rules. Nobody even tries to play against the top computers in 5-10 minutes per player games. Even the top players get smashed.

      • By looking at the games of this match, and the previous one where Kramnik played against a computer program (which one? was it Deep Fritz?), it seems to me that most of the computer's wins are due to terrible human blunders (see this match's second game, or emotional imbalance (as when Kramnik, after defeating the computer soundly in an early match, suddenly shifted to a very aggressive style, and lost badly). Hence you could attribute most of the computer wins to "defective hardware" on the human side.

        Ma

    • Re:Negative Computer Bias (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Le Marteau ( 206396 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:58PM (#7506379) Journal
      The obvious followup is that the days of a human world champion are numbered.

      The world chess champion will ALWAYS be a human, not a machine. A fork lift can lift much more than a human, but do we say that forklifts hold the world lifting record? A car can go much faster than a human, but is a car listed in Guinness under the fastest mile? Likewise with chess.

      Just because computers are new doesn't make them any more or less a machine than a car or a fork lift, and calling a machine the "world champion" of anything is ludicrous.

      • Guess what.... (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Eevee ( 535658 )

        but is a car listed in Guinness under the fastest mile?

        Yes.

        The one-mile (1.609-km) land speed record is 1,227.985 km/h (763.055 mph), set by Andy Green in Thrust SSC in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, USA, on October 15, 1997. Thrust SSC (Super Sonic Car) completed its record-breaking run in a matter of seconds, but was the culmination of six years of work and a six-week on-site campaign. Two and a half years of research went into the shape of the Thrust SSC, and building the most powerful car ever too

      • Re:Negative Computer Bias (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Migrant Programmer ( 19727 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:17PM (#7506525) Journal
        The world chess champion will ALWAYS be a human, not a machine.

        The world checkers champion is a machine [ualberta.ca] Why not chess? Why not a forklift? There can be separate champions for "human" and "world".
      • Chinook [ualberta.ca] is called the World Champion of Checkers, though usually they say Man-Machine world champion.

        In our time, we are accustomed to forklifts and cars "out-performing" us and so we take no special notice. We are now on the verge of machines beating us at our own game so to speak. Probably they will have a first and only machine as the chess world champion, then it will be been there, done that and the people who like to play people will continue on as before and the programmers who like to out program
      • This phase will pass. They used to race cars against horses, and for a time they might have lumped them together in a speed record/contest.

        But there's no motorbikes in the Kentucky Derby.

        I think competitive human chess will survive long after machines are much better at the game. It'll be interesting to see if play styles wildly diverge once computers are both better than us and geared to playing each other.

      • Re:Negative Computer Bias (Score:4, Insightful)

        by GlassHeart ( 579618 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @08:48PM (#7507231) Journal
        The world chess champion will ALWAYS be a human, not a machine. A fork lift can lift much more than a human, but do we say that forklifts hold the world lifting record? A car can go much faster than a human, but is a car listed in Guinness under the fastest mile?

        This is psychologically different. Many animals can lift more weight or run faster than we can, and that has been true for as long as humans existed. However, we were the best in chess.

        You can ensure that the word "champion" is reserved for humans, but the honor will be as hollow as the difference in skill between the human champion and the best machine player.

    • Re:Negative Computer Bias (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:02PM (#7506422) Journal
      You know, I see it exactly the other way around. I think it's an amazing testament to the level of complexity the brain can model that something calculating millions (billions ?) of moves by brute force is not eating the human alive. (Possible poor choice of metaphor :-)

      Consider that the brain evolved to keep the person alive (primary funciton), and then think about just how "over-engineered" ("engineered" firmly in quotes :-) it really is for that task.

      People are amazed at what humans achieve using their brains, but it pales into insignificance compared to the brain itself. The only reason it's not given the recognition it deserves is that it's commonplace and mundane. That doesn't make it one iota less remarkable, however.

      Simon
    • We have cars, but we still hold foot races.
    • What is truly most amazing is that a human can beat the computer at all. Though running at a substantialy lower frequency (around 30mhz or so) and not specificly designed to exclusivly play chess.... a man has the capability to play against the sum knowledge of hundreds of engineers combined with many more researchers and millions of dollars of investment in hardware and more.

      You see for kasperov , playing the game is only a tiny portion of his minds capability. While playing the game his subconscious is

  • Deus Ex Machina? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by satanami69 ( 209636 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:45PM (#7506256) Homepage
    proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived.

    Didn't that already happen a few year back when he lost to Deeper Blue?

    • Re:Deus Ex Machina? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:51PM (#7506310) Homepage
      No joke, people were tampering with the machine during that match. IBM even altered its opening book after the game had already started. Some even accuse IBM of allowing on of the programming team--a GM--to enter moves during one game. Why would IBM cheat? Gee I dunno, but its stock price soared the day they announced that Deeper Blue won.
      • Please quote source. Obviously, it certainly appears that humans intervened (at least in one occurance), but I would love to hear any conclusive proof or admissions of guilt.

        --D

      • Re:Deus Ex Machina? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by agurkan ( 523320 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:14PM (#7506509) Homepage
        That accusation is an outrageous lie! Ken Thompson was personally responsible for such a thing not happening and said that the moves had come from the machine not from human intervention. Also IBM did not alter opening book of DB after a game started. Which game is that?

  • It's shoot-out time (Score:4, Funny)

    by qewl ( 671495 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:47PM (#7506265)
    What we need next is a one-on-one shoot-out between Kasparov and a robot, both armed with old German lugers. My money's on the robot.
    • We aren't talking about terminator-style robots yet, bud. Robots are still slow and non-bullet proof, and "see" about as well as I do without glasses swimming in a dirty lake. I'll take that bet and give you odds.

  • Has anybody... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Theatetus ( 521747 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:48PM (#7506277) Journal
    ...ever heard of a game called "Go"? I'm amazed it's never discussed when we talk about computers playing chess.

  • Someone explain this (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Brad1138 ( 590148 )
    I don't understand how a computer that can compute millions of moves a sec. and probably 20-50 or more moves deep in a fairly short amount of time could possibly not win? Even a home computer I would think could compute thousands of moves a sec. How could any person possibly out think that???
    • I don't understand how a computer that can compute millions of moves a sec. and probably 20-50 or more moves deep in a fairly short amount of time could possibly not win? Even a home computer I would think could compute thousands of moves a sec. How could any person possibly out think that???

      While the computer can be programmed to "look ahead" for N moves, the computer must also be programmed to pick a move eventually, what is programmed to be the "best move". And all this programming is done by humans.

    • Do you want the real explanation, or the easy one?

      Basically it breaks down to the fact that the computer doesn't know (and isn't learning) "strategy". It's choice of moves are based largely on analyzing the possible outcomes and choosing the one that is most likely to result in victory.

      However, since a human can form their own strategy (often, and why I don't like man vs. computer chess, in a way that just confuses and/or plays on the computers weaknesses), the human has an inherent advantage that obvio

    • 1) Kasparov is really good at chess.

      2) People don't play by accurately calculating probabilities and choosing the most mathematically-likely-to-be-propitious move; they do something else. Whatever that "something else" is--and no one yet understands it in a pure-mathematical, mechanically reproducible way; and maybe that's not even possible--the computer's strategy isn't better.

    • Re:Someone explain this (Score:5, Insightful)

      by pavon ( 30274 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:08PM (#7506467)
      It could only look 12-20 moves into the future, and Kasparov played in a manner to limit what the computer could see by looking ahead. Since the computer had no strategy, but rather always took the best move he could see at the moment, Kasparov could keep him blind and cornered so it didn't see anything usefull to do in the short term, so it ended up flailing about somewhat (notice where it moved a peice and then moved it right back). Then all the meanwhile he was slowly playing out a much longer strategy.
    • I don't understand how a computer that can compute millions of moves a sec. and probably 20-50 or more moves deep in a fairly short amount of time could possibly not win? Even a home computer I would think could compute thousands of moves a sec. How could any person possibly out think that???

      Computers can look at many more positions per second than a human but that is not as helpful as you would think because most of the positions examined are bad ones. While humans compare poorly in linear computational

    • > and probably 20-50 or more moves deep in a fairly short amount of time could possibly not win?

      Not 20-50 moves deep, closer to 19 half moves. And even that doesn't guarantee victory.

      For a textbook case of how to beat a computer, look at game 3. Kasparov went to a closed position, kept material on the board, and slowly forced it back. Meanwhile, the computer could never see what hundreds or thousands saw - that its only chance was to push pawns on the king side. Unfortunately, even seeing 19 half-moves
  • ... computer beats you- oh, wait, no it doesn't.

    In other news, SkyNet units have been seen closing in on Gary Kasparov. An intercepted transmission read: "take him out, and the humans will be defenseless!"

    -T

  • good for our egos? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by seringen ( 670743 )
    Why man vs. machine is so important to us is a little baffling. While it might be nice for our egos, what does this really do for the game of chess? Does the challenge make people better chess players? Maybe. Should we consider this any more interesting than a normal game between grandmasters? The Terminator mentality somewhat bothers me, that we feel so insecure about ourselves that we have to congratulate people when they can do something better than a tool can! (Personally I root for the block of sil

  • day of the machines (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:49PM (#7506292)
    proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived

    I dunno, seems to me that if a machine can beat 99.9999(ad nauseum) percent of humanity, that day might be here already.

    • Re:day of the machines (Score:4, Interesting)

      by GuyMannDude ( 574364 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:06PM (#7506452) Journal

      I dunno, seems to me that if a machine can beat 99.9999(ad nauseum) percent of humanity, that day might be here already.

      It's also interesting to note that a computer who has defeated almost every human it encounters could, in a matter of seconds, communicate precisely how to do so to other computers. When a person beats a computer at something, they can tell their friends "kinda" what their logic was. But the speed of knowledge transmission and the accuracy of it would be far inferior to what a computer can do.

      All the machines would have to do is give each one a specific problem to solve. As soon as one computer solves its problem, it immediately communicates its results to all the other machines, provided there is connectivity between them. Now all those other machines know exactly how to solve the problem too.

      GMD

    • Not only that, but it would be far more trivial to produce a few million more X3D Fritzes than a few million more Kasparovs.

  • how will chess handle cyborgs? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nizo ( 81281 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:49PM (#7506296) Homepage Journal
    I was just wondering, how will the chess world handle cyborgs? Will people who have electronic "enhancements" be considered to be cheating? Heck, will they even have time to play chess, or will they be too busy taking over the world? What does everyone else think?
  • If the want to determine who is best -- man or machine -- shouldn't they have it out of an odd-number of matches?

    Or would that make too much sense?
    • Then a tie of an odd number of matches could still result in a draw. An even number was probably used because of anticipation of (at least) one draw.

    • Re:A Tie? WTF? (Score:5, Informative)

      by jaydee77ca ( 725198 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:58PM (#7506389)
      The players alternate white and black pieces each game. White has an advantage in chess (due in part to it making the first move). Having an odd number of games would give one player the white pieces in one extra game thus giving that player an unfair advantage in the match.
  • Part of the problem is that Kasparov is this generation's GM. Kasparov plays very emotional games. He's not just looking to beat you in his first match; he's looking to utterly destroy, smash and humiliate you with a dramatic and embarrassing win.

    This is a great strategy against people, but it's not so effective against computers. Kasparov is probably the worst chess master to pit against a machine since Ruy Lopez (I think he's won with the Ruy Lopez opening a few times, case in point: it's a brutal and hu

  • Day of machines? (Score:5, Funny)

    by AvantLegion ( 595806 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @06:51PM (#7506321) Journal
    The "day of machines" is not when a man-made computer can beat a human at chess. Chessmaster kicks my ass all the time, but that doesn't mean my Athlon PC dominates me. I can still turn the bitch off, or program it to eat itself.

    No, the "day of machines" is when machines can create and operate without any human intervention. Clearly, machines can be made to be stronger than humans, and perhaps one day they can be smarter (in everything, not just a highly-specific application). When machines can be both unequivocally stronger and smarter than humans, and do not have to rely on humans to create and maintain themselves, then we'll have a "day of machines".

    Meanwhile, my Windows PC can't manage to stay running for a whole day. My Linux server and my PowerBook can, though. Microsoft is fighting to stem the tide of the "day of machines", but Apple and Linux zealots are pushing it forward and will be the death of us all!

  • proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived

    If this proves anything it is that machines are "smarter" than most of the people on earth. That is if you define smart as Characterized by sharp quick thought; bright.

  • Reminds me of... (Score:4, Funny)

    by CrazyTrashCanHead ( 621556 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:02PM (#7506417)
    Completely OT, but funny as hell:
    (Excerpt from World Chess Championship Game 3)

    1. d2-d4 g8-f6
    2. c2-c4 f7-g6
    3. b1-c3 f8-g7
    4. e2-e4 d7-d6
    5. g1-f3 Qrs-e5

    At this point, Karpov tries a new tack with Qrs-e5 (Queen from right sleeve to e5).

    6. f1-e2 e7-e5

    Kasparov obviously hasn't noticed Karpov's innovative move. Karpov returns to traditional play.

    7. c1-e3 Blb-g3 / JbKS

    Under the subtle cover of JbS (Jackboot to Kasparov's shin), Karpov introduces a third bishop into play.

    8. LIF-KRE d8-e7

    Kasparov responds with his trademark LIF-KRE (Left index finger to Karpov's right eye).

    9. d4Xe5 $^$%#$

    Karpov instinctively howls in pain and immediately offers uncouth theories concerning the likely species of Kasparov's parentage to general audience.

    10. Q - KLN Q-KLN

    Mutual exchange of Queen to opponent's left nostril.

    GAME SUSPENDED FOR TEN MINUTES BY JUDGE

    11. c3-d5 e7-d8

    It appears the hostility between the chess masters has subsided.

    12. SsKH BRHAKH

    It appears the judge was mistaken. 10-pound sledgehammer swung by Kasparov in a bold attempt to pin down Karpov's head.(SsKH) Karpov immediately falls back on the classic Beretta Defense (9mmRc-HsAKH - 9mm pistol removed from concealed shoulder holster and aimed at Kasparov's heart)

    13. KRMcC ...

    Kasparov revs hidden McCulloch chainsaw.

    GAME DECLARED A DRAW BY OFFICIALS

    14. KRTT-JF KRTT-JF

    Both express extreme displeasure at judges' decision and cunningly respond with the little-known Rin-Tin-Tin Gambit (politely urinating at judges' feet)

    14. KKRF-AP

    Kasparov and Karpov removed forcibly from arena by angry policemen.

    Game 3 is obviously over. Now, for a play-by-play analysis, Mikel Erickson and Michel Joseph from the World Chess Federation.

    Erickson: You know, I really feel that Kasparov took control of the match when he attempted to pierce Karpov's cornea. I thought that took real determination, and proved Kasparov's dominance in the cutthroat world of chess.

    Joseph: Unfortunately, I can't agree with your assessment of the situation. I'm squarely behind Karpov here. Kasparov didn't display any of the personal integrity I think is critical for a champion. I liked Karpov's honesty with his fifth move, but the way Kasparov concealed that sledgehammer just goes to prove you can't judge a book by its cover.

    Erickson: Oh yeah! Well, let me tell you what I think of a certain chess commentator I'm being forced to share this mike with!

    1. ertt-jf

  • What's the big deal? (Score:4, Funny)

    by jht ( 5006 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:03PM (#7506424) Homepage Journal
    I, for one, welcome our new grandmaster-level chess machine overlords.

  • Machine, make theyself (Score:3, Insightful)

    by billtom ( 126004 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:03PM (#7506426)

    As long as the best chess playing computers are still made by humans, I'll feel confident in the superiority of our species.

    It's when the best human-made chess playing computers are routinely beaten by the best computer-made chess playing computers that I'll be worried.

  • Not quite true (Score:5, Funny)

    by toddhunter ( 659837 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:03PM (#7506428)
    The day of the machines is the day we try to play chess with them, and they tell us to piss off because they have better things to do.

  • Ranges... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by danielrm26 ( 567852 ) * on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:04PM (#7506435) Homepage
    The easiest way to describe why Kasparov loses to a computer is because he is human. How often does he play his best chess? Not often - he's human.

    The computer, on the other hand, always plays its best chess. So we are often comparing the computer's best vs. Kasparov's weak or mid-level chess, i.e. *mistakes*.

    I don't think that Kasparov playing his best and making no mistakes would have any trouble with current computers. But *with* mistakes and fatigue and such...sure.

    So the question really becomes, is it as fun to have the computer win when Kasparov makes a mistake? I don't think so. I think the real fun comes when he plays the best he can, is sure he can win, and has the computer do some wicked shit that no one has ever seen. When they staring thinking like humans - only better.

    That doesn't seem to have happened yet. They simply have gotten good enough to be able to pounce on GMs that make mistakes, but not on good GMs that don't.

    Hell, that's just my observation - I'm no chess or chess AI guru.

  • Man vs machine in chess and Kasparov vs. Deep Blue (Score:3, Informative)

    by jaydee77ca ( 725198 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:06PM (#7506447)
    Statistician Jeff Sonas has an interesting article on chessbase.com [chessbase.com] discussing the history of man vs. machine chess. As for the defeat of Kasparov by Deep Blue, Kasparov had some interesting comments in the Wall Street Journal [opinionjournal.com] on that match.
  • I always considered electronic chess a programming challenge. Hardware should be secondary to it, we pay too much attention to it. A supercomputer with inferior software is fast inferior computer. Let the programmers be the heroes, not the hardware.

  • Theoretically, if both sides play perfectly then every match will end in a draw. So what if Kasparov plays perfectly? Obviously he's lost before, so he doesn't all the time, but it's certainly possible that he could, at least for one game (people play less-complicated games, like Tic-Tac-Toe, perfectly all the time). If so, then no matter how good the computer played it could only draw him. So really, I think chess isn't really an accurate indicator of when 'the day of the machines' is here (or not).
    • > Theoretically, if both sides play perfectly then
      > every match will end in a draw

      Where did you pull this "fact" from? Chess isn't like noughts & crosses (tic-tac-toe); it isn't possible to map out every combination of every move and prove that a draw is guaranteed if each player makes the right moves.

      It's quite possible that a "perfectly played" game will end in a white win; it's generally accepted that there is a small advantage to playing white. Alternately, it's plausible that a perfect ga

  • What does it all mean? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by YouHaveSnail ( 202852 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @07:12PM (#7506496)
    It was a pretty big deal when Babbage built a machine that could do basic arithmetic. I'm sure people thought of his Difference Engine as being a "smart" machine, particularly since it could generate tables of numbers a good deal faster than a human. But if you looked at the machine, it was all cogs and shafts and springs and levers... I'm sure that once you got over the astonishment that a machine could do this seemingly difficult thing, you'd look at it and know that it really was still just a machine, and not truly a thinking thing.

    We consider ourselves to do this mysterious thing we call "thinking," but we don't understand in a precise way what this means. It could be that our brains work in an algorithmic fashion, or at least that our brains can be simulated by a machine that works in an algorithmic fashion. The former seems unlikely to me, the latter very likely. Is there a difference between actual thinking and simulated thinking? It's hard to say.

    When you look at these chess-playing computers, they're pretty amazing. They can certainly play one hell of a game of chess. But when you get right down to it, they're really solid-state versions of cogs and shafts and springs and levers. Are they thinking? (I want to say 'no', but I can't prove it.) Are they simulating thinking? (Maybe... it's hard to say since we don't know what thinking entails.) Is there a difference?
  • proving yet again that the day of the machines has not yet arrived.

    Right, so I guess we are all communicating via smoke signals or pigeons, no machines involved ... not even levers. Yep, no machines here, just us cavepersons ...
  • So let me get this straight, we send out best guy in and he plays to a draw and so the days of the machine aren't here? WTF are you smoking? Kasparov draws and you think you or I or some other chess hack (yeah, I play some games online, gone a few rounds with the chessmaster) has a snowball's chance in hell against Fritz? No way. Fritz is like the terminator robot, you have to pull his plug and squeeze him in an industrial press for you or I to beat him at chess, either that or dip him on hot lava.
  • Did anyone else think the "3D" part of this was complete BS on a level that would have made Barnum proud? It seemed to me that the whole point of this match was to show off the stupid display screen.

    I got to see a bit of the fourth round on ESPN during lunch (without being in audio range, and it wasn't closed captioned either) and it was amusing how much it really was like watching paint dry without the commentary, and it was also amusing how dorky Kasparov looked with the goggles on.

    And this isn't an is

  • An Interesting Match. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by TygerFish ( 176957 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @09:14PM (#7507387)
    One thing that has been pointed out by numerous posters is the belief that the final result of the match is the result of one bad move in one of the earlier games.

    This is not necessarily meaningful. Either player could have played better or worse in any of the positions that came about in the ensuing games, making the actual match results the stuff of speculation about alternate universes.

    Be that as it may, two things stand out about the match. The first is that the computer opponent is actually a commercial program running on commercially available hardware and not on specialized circuitry out of a lab somewhere. This alone is a very good indicator of how far computers have come as chess players. Not too long ago (at least in geological terms), there wasn't a chess program on earth that could win against the like of me. Nowadays, by contrast, commercial desktop hardware combined with shrinkwrapped software are giving a former world-champion a run for his money.

    The second point of interest in the final game is Kasparov's choice of defenses.

    Kapararov is one of the world's greatest experts on the opening--someone who prepares not just against continuations but against his most likely opponents--and yet, with the game and the match on the line he, chose to not play any of the 'milder' defenses to 1.d4 (for example, trying to reprise the line of the Gruenfeld he played against Karpov in one of their matches) but instead chose to play the black side of the Queen's gambit accepted.

    When I was growing up and studying, the queen's gambit accepted was known to offer white good chances to develop a strong initiative based on black's disadvantages in central space and white's rapid development, and venturing the black side of Queen's gambit accepted was considered risky.

    Apparently, Kasparov knows something I didn't when I was fifteen (duh).

    Still, Kasparov's choice of opening certainly led to a difficult position requiring an accurate defense after white developed significant pressure on black's central pawn and on the queenside. However, the pressure rapidly dissipated following a set of exchanges that even gave black a short-lived counterattack on white's king position, leading to a position with even material and no real sources of play for either side, hence the draw.

    It would have been interesting to see what would have happened in a longer match played under a different winning criterion like 'best-of-ten' or 'first to achieve a given score.'

  • Not going to happen (Score:3, Interesting)

    by cubicledrone ( 681598 ) on Tuesday November 18, 2003 @10:54PM (#7507902)
    When a computer wins a poker tournament, then we can talk about the "day of the machines." Until then, it's nothing more than a series of mathematical calculations, not a test of chess strategies.

  • How to beat chess computers (Score:5, Informative)

    by B.D.Mills ( 18626 ) on Wednesday November 19, 2003 @01:20AM (#7508620)
    If you read the analyses, there's some advice for beating chess computers.

    Chess computers have large opening databases. If they can make a database move, while the human has to think, the computer gets the edge due to the reduced amount of time they need to make a database move.

    During the games, Kasparov tried to play unusual moves in the opening to knock the computer out of its database as early as possible. One example from game 2 is Kasparov's move 8...Re8, which is annotated with "This move by Kasparov had never been played before in this exact position." This knocked Fritz out of its opening database, and forced it to calculate.

    A more striking example of the way to beat chess computers is the great wall of pawns that dominated game 3. Chess computers cannot evaluate such positions properly. If you built a wall of pawns like that, and snuck your forces behind them, you are a good chance of winning because the computer cannot calculate deeply enough.

    Some more info here [demon.co.uk] and here [ntlworld.com].

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