Chess - 2070 CPUs vs 1 GM

jvarsoke writes "ChessBrain.net broke the world's record for 'largest number of distributed computers used to play a single game' by holding a chess match between Danish GM Peter Heine Nielsen and the equivalent of SETI@home (which similarly, has some people looking for a Mate). 2070 CPU's from 56 countries aided Black by running the chess program Beowulf, including a couple of University clusters. Their supernode ran Linux, and MySQL. The game was relayed by FICS. Results can be viewed here(1) and here(2)."

For those too lazy to read the article...

[Gogl]

Or in case it gets Slashdotted or something, I may as well note who actually won the game (although I do think that is something that should have been noted in the submission itself but oh well).

Our World Record attempt is now complete. We had serious technical difficulties early in the game, but managed to resolve them! The result of the game was a draw.

Here is mirror of the game :)

[doomy]

Nielsen,P - ChessBrain [E94]
Guinness record attempt, 30.01.2004
1.d4 g6 2.c4 Bg7 3.e4 d6 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.Nf3 0-0 6.Be2 e5 7.0-0 a5 8.Re1 exd4 9.Nxd4 Bd7 10.Bg5 Nc6 11.Nxc6 Bxc6 12.f3 Qd7 13.Qd2 Rfe8 14.Rac1 h5 15.Kh1 Nh7 16.Bh6 Bxh6 17.Qxh6 Re5 18.Nd5 Rae8 19.Qd2 b6 20.Bd3 Qd8 21.Rf1 Nf6 22.b3 Bb7 23.Qc2 Nd7 24.f4 R5e6 25.e5 c6

Bullshit...

[Transient0]

It is very rare that a common opener played at the GM level results in a discrepancy greater than about a quarter of a pawn. And it takes a great strategic thinker to understand the advantages and disadvantages of all the available branches in the opening against different types of players.

Of course, it should be obvious that your line of reasoning is totally bogus. The totality of possible moves in chess is simply incomputable and somehow magically trimming this tree to "good" moves still leaves a fundamentally unmemorizable realm of possibilities even at only ten moves depth.

Obligatory Slashdot Comment

[Crypto Gnome]

It's only a large aggregation, not really a cluster in that sense.

Anyway apparently it worked! (ie not a cluster in that sense either)

If it WAS implemented on the clustering technology we-all-know-and-love as Beowulf, would that make it a Beowulf-Squared?

And, of course, we have to ask the (obvious) question(s)

• Who was 13th [imdb.com]?
• And did anyone Eat their Victims [crichton-official.com]?

PS

[Gogl]

It was a draw by repetition. The human grandmaster had a position advantage and was able to force a draw that way despite being down a significant amount of material.

Re:Bullshit...

[DAldredge]

10^120 is the number of possible chess moves. From a google link.

" If you were to fully develop the entire tree for all possible chess moves, the total number of board positions is about 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
000,000,000,00 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,
000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00 0,000,00 0,000,
000,000,000,000, or 10120, give or take a few. That's a very big number. For example, there have only been 1026 nanoseconds since the Big Bang. There are thought to be only 1075 atoms in the entire universe. When you consider that the Milky Way galaxy contains billions of suns, and there are billions of galaxies, you can see that that's a whole lot of atoms. That number is dwarfed by the number of possible chess moves. Chess is a pretty intricate game!"

Re:PS

[arvindn]

Not exactly. Nielson had a positional advantage but decided to force a draw anyway by sacrificing material to obtain a draw by repetition. Your version sounds more romantic, but is not accurate :-)

Re:GM vs. thousands of humans?

[vec sibarra]

Offhand, I would think not. Tests with monkeys have shown that intelligence is not cumulative. Ten half-power monkeys just can't equal five regular monkeys no matter what, to put it simply. Assuming that each player acts intelligently, i.e. non-randomly, there is about epsilon chance of them winning. Where epsilon is the chance that one of those players does act randomly... and randomly picks the best move... enough times to win. 0.02EU

Re:GM vs. thousands of humans?

[sciencewhiz]

There are many systems like this. Chessworld.net is one, and they just challenged chessbrain to a match. You can see a full list of chessworld.net's ongoing games here: http://chessworld.net/chessclubs/event_show_chessw orld_summary_rowgames.asp

Re:GM vs. thousands of humans?

[barfy]

This was done, in Kasparov v World.

It was done on the Zone.

http://classic.zone.msn.com/kasparov/Home.asp

Re:Here is mirror of the game :)

[wan-fu]

You're missing the remainder of the game:

26.f5 gxf5 27.Bxf5 cxd5 28.Bxe6 Rxe6 29.Rxf7 Kxf7 30.Qh7+ Ke8 31.Qxh5+ Ke7 32.Qg5+ Ke8 33.Qh5+ Ke7 34.Qh7+ 1/2-1/2.

Losing to Computers

[rynthetyn]

It's gotten to the point that even Kasparov is only playing the best chess computers to draws. Of course, he did lose to Deep Blue, but despite all his insistance that IBM cheated, he got beat mentally, not necessarily because the computer was better.

Incidentally, there is a new documentary, Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine [imdb.com] about the Deep Blue rematch, which I had the opportunity to see at the US premier a few weekends back. I'd link to the review I wrote on my blog, but I don't think the sysadmin would be very happy with me if I did.

Re:Bullshit...

[troon]

For example, there have only been 1026 nanoseconds since the Big Bang. There are thought to be only 1075 atoms in the entire universe.

Mental note: <sup> doesn't work on /.

Re:Bullshit...

[product byproduct]

Watch your terminology:

• The number of chess moves is at most 218.
  
• The number of chess positions is estimated to be between 10^43 and 10^50.
  
• The number of chess games is infinite, as the 50-move rule and the draw by repetition of position don't apply if no player makes the claim.
  
• The game tree complexity is about 10^123. That's the number of chess games you may have to consider to play perfect chess.
  

Source: http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess [wikipedia.org]

Re:Understanding vs. Processing

[spun]

You do know FUD means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt", right? I think the acronym you are looking for is "BS."

Re:GM vs. thousands of humans?

[JuggleGeek]

Would a group like this be able to beat a high ranking player?

I seriously doubt that the group would win. Some of the moves suggested by individuals in the group would likely be the best choice. But more votes would probably come in for another move - one which doesn't hold up as well.

Some time back, I saw an average or slightly above average player play "everyone at the event" by allowing anyone who wanted to make one move in the game. Many people felt this put him at a disadvantage. But it actually gave him a huge advantage. 10 people make make reasonable moves - but all it takes is one guy to make a really stupid move, and now the individual has a big advantage over the "group".

Chess is a game of mistakes. If neither side makes a mistake, draws are very common. That's why when you see games between two GM's, you see a lot of draws. In games where both are "average" players (not serious chess players) then mistakes are common, and generally the guy that made the last mistake is going to lose. (Not always - especially if he already had a demanding lead at the time.)

Things that look very minor - or which are not noticable at all to the average player - are very important to top players. Letting 5,000 average players vote on each move pretty much guarantees that any slightly-above average player would win.

Re:Draw game against 2070 CPUs?

[ezzewezza]

of course he wrote "would have" earlier in the post... he wouldn't form a contraction there: "I would've to say." It's less a matter of evolving language and more a matter of improper orthography...