Chess - 2070 CPUs vs 1 GM 248
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)."
Re:Understanding vs. Processing (Score:5, Insightful)
Losing to computers in chess will be like losing to calculators in a addition match. People and computers aren't really in competition. They do very different things.
Results (Score:5, Insightful)
So what does this tell us? Nothing really, however it would be interesting how the computer will perform in a 5 match series.
Although I still think the GM would win handily.
Re:Draw game against 2070 CPUs? (Score:3, Insightful)
"would of"
Make the hurting stop!
The sad part is you correctly said "would have" earlier in the post.
Yeah yeah, evolving language. Some adaptations should be thrown in the chlorinated pool!
I'm not usually a grammar nazi. But hey, chess is neat. Those fancy chess playing computers are going to take over the world some day, yessirree!
Re:Understanding vs. Processing (Score:2, Insightful)
I do not play much chess but this statement interests me.
Someone replied to you saying that the amount of possible moves is incomputable.
I am just thinking if I was a Master Chess Player. Would I be studying the source code for the chess program before the match? It seems only fair because the creators studied many previous matches and played countless simulations. Will it be the exception that makes the rule on how future masters play? Think of a video game you have played where some rare ocurrence opened up a new way to play that allowed one to defeat the AI in trivial fashion.
Sure the computer can look out 10+ possible moves on any piece on the board, but if the player can manipulate the program from the beginning in some exceptional way, the AI could stumble easily.
After all, it is just an algorithm. I am sure several "bugs" will be found and abused in different variations in the future.
chorus of tortises vs. array of hares (Score:3, Insightful)
"Chess is for computers" - Usenet 1997
Re:GM vs. thousands of humans? (Score:3, Insightful)
Many average eyes only make obvious bugs shallow. You need skilled eyes.
A chess grandmaster aided by a bunch of high powered chess computers and programmes, might be able to beat the world number 1. The grandmaster provides strategy, and tells the computers which paths to look into. The computers provide search depth and protection against stupid mistakes.
Re:Understanding vs. Processing (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn straight. A computer may be able to beat me at chess, but at least I can visually identify a chess set in a crowded room.
Re:Results (Score:4, Insightful)
Why do you believe that over a 5 match series the GrandMaster will win handily?
If you look at the position at move 26, it's obvious ChessBrain is being pressured. In fact the article gives a possible move that could have resulted in ChessBrain losing. Instead Nielsen went for a forced draw because he only cared about not losing to a computer.
If ChessBrain refused some normal traps that computers normally fall for, then could it be the case that the computer is better than you realise. What if the drawn match was a bad one for the computer?
I suspect Nielsen sacrificed the win to see if ChessBrain would fall in his standard tricks, and when it didn't he settled for a draw. With that knowledge he'd probably play the second game much differently, and based on ChessBrain's poor position in the first game, would likely win.
But the fact that ChessBrain didn't fall in those standard traps tells us it's better than most computer opponents.
Re:Understanding vs. Processing (Score:2, Insightful)
I think it is a big deal. 50 years ago, if you'd told someone "I have a machine which can consistently draw with a grandmaster. Is it intelligent?" they would have said "Yes."
50 years later, we say "Yes, but only in a very limited way", or "No, it's doing a very different thing", depending on our point of view. In either case, we're taking a position on what we mean by "intelligent", and our understanding of that word's meaning is deeper than it would have been 50 years ago.
My view is that if the computer and the human acheive the same result, then they are doing the same thing. It doesn't matter that the computer is doing it in a "stupid" but well-understood way, and the human in an "intelligent" but poorly-understood way.
Re:What's the point? (Score:5, Insightful)
Brute forcing a chess game tree based on basic alpha beta minimax for instance is no way to play well against an experienced human player - first of all you won't get many moves ahead, and a good player that know how the computer work can easily set up a trap that will make the board look good X moves ahead, to make the computer to do stupid moves they can't easily reverse later.
Second you face the problem of definining and weighting what a "good position" is. What is a good position depends on the strategy of the opponent.
Most modern chess programs will augment the basic search and prune with a lot of heuristics to guide the search and weighting of choices, exactly for that reason. They also often contain massive databases of games, sequences of moves etc., to hunt for known strategies that humans might try to recycle against it.
Chess isn't "simple". Chess is a game where it's easy to beat beginners, possible to beat intermediate players on modest hardware, and possible to face grand masters if you have lots of time and access to millions of dollars worth of hardware, and you can still expect to be surprised every now and again.
It makes it interesting, because you have a good foundation to research algorithm improvements on, and because a good algorithm will be more and more useful as hardware costs come down, but it certainly doesn't invalidate the need for better algorithms.
It's also interesting because better algorithms might help us appreciate how humans approach the problem, and as such benefit AI research.
Re:Losing to Computers (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
But that's part of the game. You can't seperate the mental part of the game from the psychological part of the game. This is one of the big advantages that computers have, they don't get psyched out. It might be more fair to say that Deep Blue didn't beat Kasparov at his best. The computer always plays its best game, humans only some of the time.