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Kasparov Wins Game 3 Against X3D Fritz 434

Vulcao writes "Garry Kasparov just brilliantly won game 3 in the Kasparov vs. X3D Fritz chess match, which pits man against machine. Kasparov created a positional advantage on the queen side with a very strong pawn structure to which Fritz didn't have an answer. The result is now 1.5 - 1.5, and the last game will be this Tuesday, Nov. 18."
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Kasparov Wins Game 3 Against X3D Fritz

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  • The game of Go ? (Score:2, Redundant)

    by Thinkit3 ( 671998 ) *
    The ancient game of Go could be played in a virtual environment too. At 13h (nineteen) square, it would be a bit bigger. But there are only three states for each square--black, white, or empty. Go is mentioned in every slashdot article on chess, but that is only because it is in many ways more elegant than chess. And even with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.
    • by Space Coyote ( 413320 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:07PM (#7489934) Homepage
      I always wonder how long it takes in any chess thread before someone who thinks they've discovered the lost city of gold pipes up about go. And the answers they get are always the same, it's a totally different problem. We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go. A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.
      • by nodwick ( 716348 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:27PM (#7490024)
        I think it's a knee-jerk reflex against an inferiority complex. I mean, sure, they can beat us at chess, but what about GO?

        Kinda like how your average Slashdotter watching the crowd go wild over Barry Bonds breaking the home run record is secretly thinking, "Oh sure, but can he put together a Beowulf cluster of Linux boxes?"

      • by wfberg ( 24378 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:37PM (#7490083)
        We haven't built a robot to play tennis either, tennis is simply a different problem with a much much larger data set, just like go.

        A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent. Well, maybe with a hole in there for serving.

        A chess game with a 19x19 board would send a computer into shock too.

        Less so than Go, since with Go the number of possible moves at each junction in time is larger than in chess - Go on a chess-sized board still features a larger search space than chess. Just like 110 in binary is less than 110 in decimal.
        • Re:The game of Go ? (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.

          Actually, no it won't, because it would still have to use a regulation-sized tennis raquet. If it couldn't move the racquet to hit the ball fast enough, it would actually lose all the points, since a tennis player loses the point if the ball strikes any part of their "body".

        • I would think that if you were playing against a wall shaped oponent, it would be reletively easy to make them hit the ball out to the side or off the edge of the court. Only a moron would lose
        • by sholden ( 12227 )
          A simple wall-shaped opponent pressed right against the net, with a large enough surface area, will beat any opponent.

          And building a chess program to beat any opponent is pretty simple, by making all the computers pieces queen king mixtures, so they move like queens but the computer only loses if *all* its remaining pieces are in checkmate at once.

          But it's generally only interesting when you restrict the computer to actually following the rules of the game.
        • by syle ( 638903 ) * <syle.waygate@org> on Sunday November 16, 2003 @11:56PM (#7491011) Homepage
          "The depressing thing about tennis is that no matter how much I play, I'll never be as good a a wall. I played a wall once. They're fucking relentless...." --Mitch Hedberg
    • Re:The game of Go ? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Pakaran2 ( 138209 )
      Correct me if I'm wrong - but isn't Go proven to be EXPSPACE-Complete?

      Meaning that no computer anywhere is going to be decent at beating a human on a relatively large board?
      • Maybe a perfect game of Go has been proven to be so. I don't know, actually. But beating a human at Go is something else. There is no way to construct a proof for how hard it is to beat a human at Go. It might be a linear problem for all we know.
      • Re:The game of Go ? (Score:3, Informative)

        by JamesKPolk ( 13313 )
        Ladders, one tactical aspect of go, have been proven to be PSPACE-complete. http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tromp/lad.ps
    • Re:The game of Go ? (Score:3, Interesting)

      by cornick ( 724699 )
      I just got back from the 15th Mid-Atlantic GO championship about 30 minutes ago where we discussed this. (Images on my site). Apparently the largest GO board that's 'solved' is 5x5. One could imagine building a quantum computer that could solve a larger board using 3 state q-bits (q-trits?) -1 = black stone, 0 = empty, 1 = white stone. Then a simple 361 'q-trit' system could represent a 19x19 board. (And be in a superposition of all states at once). Just a thought, though the quantum computing guys I work
    • Re:The game of Go ? (Score:5, Informative)

      by tniemueller ( 169193 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:32PM (#7490055) Homepage
      This [ai-depot.com] gives a nice introduction to Go and AI and why it is so hard to play for a computer.
    • And even with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

      Especially with quantum computing, Go computers won't be beating humans anytime soon.

    • Actually, the computer could win if the axiom of choice happens to be true. Even if that isn't true, a computer could still beat every human on earth.
      • Actually, the computer could win if the axiom of choice happens to be true. Even if that isn't true, a computer could still beat every human on earth.

        --
        Be incomprehensible. If they can't understand you, they can't disagree with you

        Are you trying out an application of your .sig here?

        Because (1) the axiom of choice only applies to infinite sets, whereas the number of possible games of GO is huge, but not infinite, and (2) The axiom of choice is not an open question that may "happen" to be true or n

  • by r_glen ( 679664 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:03PM (#7489917)
    • The fact that the server you're pointing me to can't deliver the page you intended doesn't exactly increase my trust into your ability to judge the probability that a certain calculating machine will do the right thing.
  • I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:05PM (#7489927)
    ...with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man".

    Computer chess games deal with statistics and historics of previous games to decide how they will move their next turn. Usually they analyze hundreds of thousand of differents moves, even dumb ones !

    When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.

    I would call that efficiency and if computers where as efficient as human, they would win easily without requiring huge processing power.
    • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Informative)

      by yerricde ( 125198 )

      When a human player take a look at the chess board, he rejects the vast majority of the possible moves and concentrate only on very few of them.

      This is called pruning the search tree. Computer chess players do this too; see a description of alpha-beta pruning [ic.ac.uk].

      • Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Chess_the_cat ( 653159 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @09:30PM (#7490296) Homepage
        I play a lot of chess and I can tell you I've never once in my life 'pruned a search tree.' Humans just don't play that way. When a human rejects the vast majority of possible moves he's not even considering them. Pruning a search tree--what a computer is doing--entails actually exploring each move on the tree as far as it can. Then it assigns it a numerical value and orders the moves. Humans, on the other hand, have the ability to instantly spot whether a move is worth exploring or not. Whereas I would be able to eliminate a move like moving my knight back to its original square within the first three moves, a computer would actually have to examine the tree that a move like that would generate (barring an opening book which in my opinion is not an example of chess playing at all.) At any rate, programmers love to think that since a computer does something one way, and computers are 'electronic brains' then the human mind must work the same way. Newsflash: brains are not digital computers.
        • Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Informative)

          by be-fan ( 61476 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @10:55PM (#7490740)
          Its not so much a matter of computers doing things one way and humans doing things another way, but a matter of both being bound to the rules of computational theory. There is a large solution space, and both humans and computers have to decide what parts of the solution space to search and what parts to ignore. They have to do this, even if they do not do this in the same way. That's all that pruning the search space really means.

          Now, just because you don't do it conciously doesn't mean you don't do it. Your brain does an incredible amount of processing behind your back. Think about visual processing or auditory processing. All of that goes on completely outside of your concious thought.
      • Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Informative)

        by Bi()hazard ( 323405 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @01:31AM (#7491391) Homepage Journal
        When humans play they rely primarily on pattern matching rather than searching a tree (unless they suck). Computers tend to be very poor at pattern matching, and humans tend to be extremely good-that's why a small child can look at photographs and categorize them instantly, but the most advanced computers have great difficulty with that kind of task.

        Most skilled human chess players apply pattern matching by looking at the board and identifying interesting things. They start with nothing and add new options to the list until they feel they have a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of the situation.

        Search tree pruning, by contrast, starts by including the entire space of potential moves and identifying courses of action that can be eliminated. Alpha-beta pruning is a particularly poor example here since it has the useful property that all a-b pruned subtrees are guaranteed not to be optimal. However, humans often ignore superior courses of action and choose suboptimal ones that "feel right" or match prior experience.

        There have been various experiments on the limits of raw pattern matching ability with chess pieces. An interesting one involved asking participants to memorize an arrangement of pieces and reconstruct it a minute after the arrangement is removed. Participants included people with little or no chess experience and masters.

        Those without experience memorized it as raw data, and did as well as they would have if asked to memorize random numbers instead of chess arrangements. The masters were more interesting. They did about the same as the beginners on random arrangements that could never actually happen in a game, but they were infinitely better at reconstructing realistic arrangements that often show up in games. The experiments proved that masters can recognize groups of pieces and evaluate them collectively.

        In a game situation this means the master looks at the board, and certain parts of it just stand out. The master will pay no attention to areas that don't grab his attention, and doesn't need to evaluate whether any of those individual pieces are worth moving. Interestingly, this means that playing with nonstandard rules (such as changing piece movements) will likely devastate a master's ability while only slightly reducing an amateur's skill level and leaving the computer's ability unchanged.

        Even though I think the parent is a troll, here's [uncoveror.com] an academic article detailing some other experiments on the topic.
        • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by mikera ( 98932 )
          I have to say that I still think that humans and computers use essentially the same algorithm. Even the very best chess players search and prune a tree of moves.

          Of course, grandmasters don't think of this as searching and pruning a tree, but that's what they are doing subconciously. If they didn't, they'd get obliterated in tactical exchanges.

          The main difference between the human and computer tree searches is simply that the computers are far better (faster) at searching while the humans are far better at
    • Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by GauteL ( 29207 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:11PM (#7489952)
      "...with people saying that if the computer wins over the human it means that "That's it, here we are, computers are more intelligent than man"."

      Well, that is just a stupid thing to say anyway. If a computer consistently beats humans in chess, the only thing that has proved is that it is better than humans in chess.

      Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence.
      • Re:I disagree... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by hawkestein ( 41151 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:37PM (#7490085)
        Chess, is not as some people seem to believe, the absolute sign of intelligence.

        Well, it used to be, back before people really thought about how to build a chess program. One of the problems with AI is that we don't really know what "intelligence" is. Every time we are able to write a computer program to solve a problem that we thought required intelligence, we conclude, "Oh, then that can't be what we meant by intelligence" rather than "The computer has now achieved intelligence."

        • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by cca93014 ( 466820 )
          After studying AI and Cognitive Science at University, the best definition of Intelligence that I heard was:

          "Only intelligent beings can make stupid decisions"

          It kind of encapsulates the problem with AI really nicely; whenever you try and define it, all you are really doing is pushing the definition requirement into another area.

          People have been arguing this since Plato, and IMHO have not made much headway since. If anything computer models have only confused the issue. Until this problem is solved, you
        • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by iabervon ( 1971 )
          A computer will be intelligent when it is capable of learning things which are entirely new, by applying its knowledge, trying things, general reasoning, and developing new representations. Chess is fine, go is fine, but I'll be impressed when a chess program goes on the internet and learns to play go.

          There have been a series of problems that people have posed with the idea that they couldn't be solved without giving the program the ability to figure out the problem. Each time, however, people figure out h
    • Re:I disagree... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Pakaran2 ( 138209 )
      Well, the thing is a chess computer can ONLY play chess - a human with the same degree of intelligence can do many other things. Kasparov could have become a doctor, a lawyer, a programmer, or a Go player. Or he could have developed a different aspect of his intelligence and been a poet.

      I think computers need true intelligence [singinst.org] before they're equal to humans, no matter how well they play one classic board game.
    • Re:I disagree... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by nodwick ( 716348 )
      I agree that just because a computer can beat a human at chess, that's not a basis for saying that they're "more intelligent" than us. Intelligence incorporates things like creativity, self-improvement, etc. which are not demonstrated by a chess program.

      Having said that, I have to disagree with some of the points in your post.

      Computer chess games deal with statistics and historics of previous games to decide how they will move their next turn.

      How is this different from human players? Most good che

    • Re:I disagree... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Valar ( 167606 )
      But WHY do we reject the moves? Certainly, there is some sort of evaluation going on there, even if it happens very quickly. One thing to consider is that the human brain shows a lot of the qualities of a massively parallel computer. Just because you can only concentrate on a few things conciously, doesn't mean that you don't have 'processing power' going into doing other things. In other words, humans use huge processing power too, it is just of a different kind.
      • " But WHY do we reject the moves? Certainly, there is some sort of evaluation going on there, even if it happens very quickly."

        Well, I for one reject them because I don't know where half the pieces are able to move, but thats just me.

    • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Comatose51 ( 687974 )
      Let me rephrase what McDermott said many years ago when people brought up the same argument. If a computer can beat us by calculating all the moves, so what?

      Just because an airplane does not flap its wings to fly like a bird does, is it really not flying? On the contrary, airplanes are better fliers than birds.

      AI isn't about emulating humans but about matching humans in mental capacity. How it will accomplish that is up to the researchers.
    • Re:I disagree... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by venicebeach ( 702856 )
      Yeah, it's funny that when the human wins it is seen a victory for humanity. It could just as easily be seen as a loss for humanity, since the humans weren't able to build a computer that could beat a person at chess!
    • 1.Computer beats human at chess.
      2.Human proceeds to reach for nearest rock and smash the computer to smitherines.
      3. Human wins next match since the computer can no longer play!

      **DISCLAIMER**Violence against living beings is whacked, but i've been known to slap my computer around on occasions.
  • Checkmate (Score:5, Funny)

    by lewko ( 195646 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:05PM (#7489930) Homepage
    Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with
    a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.
    • by zeux ( 129034 )
      Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with

      a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.


      Actually, that would be the ultimate proof of winning for Fritz.
    • by Wylfing ( 144940 ) <brian@@@wylfing...net> on Sunday November 16, 2003 @10:16PM (#7490544) Homepage Journal
      Subsequently, Kasparov created a positional advantage on the human side with a very strong finger pointed at the reset button to which Fritz didn't have an answer.

      And that is why Fritz sent a Terminator back in time, to get rid of Kasparov before he was born.

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:09PM (#7489940)
    Kasparov created a positional advantage on the queen side with a very strong pawn structure to which Fritz didn't have an answer.

    Well, what can poor Fritz, a cold emotionless computer, do when a handsome russian stallion of a man puts his pawn on the queen's side? Of course he didn't have an answer ...
  • Other AI programs (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ekephart ( 256467 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:10PM (#7489949) Homepage
    For those interested in AI game programming without the insane complexities of chess, Nine Men's Morris is fun. Also a frequently researched topic in AI.

    Play here. [sympatico.ca]
    • by yjlim ( 170531 ) <lim AT yewjin DOT com> on Sunday November 16, 2003 @10:20PM (#7490562) Homepage
      Nine Men's Morris has been solved [nec.com] by Ralph Gasser in 1996 (Draw).

      So has Qubic (4x4x4 Tic-Tac-Toe) by Patashnik O in 1980. (First Player Win)

      Connect Four by James Allen in September 1998. (First Player Win)

      Let's see John W. Romein and Henri E. Bal from that wonderful games research group in U of Alberta solved Awari in 2002. (Draw)

      Read Victor Allis' PhD thesis for a good overview on finding game theoretic results of games. He invented the proof-number search technique that he used to (re)solve Qubic and Connect-Four. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~victor/thesis.html [cs.vu.nl]


      Nine Men's Morris is not researched actively anymore, but Ralph Gasser's paper is often cited in any paper that deals with artificial intelligence in games.

      Of course, even though the game might already be solved, that does not mean that it is not fun to play...
  • by BinBoy ( 164798 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:12PM (#7489958) Homepage
    Kasparov: pwned!

    Programmer: No way! Look at my ping. It was lag!

  • Whew! (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ChicoLance ( 318143 ) * <lance@orner.net> on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:18PM (#7489987)
    There is a lot of relief here to me, as a spectator. The first game had Garry as white with a strong opening and everything looked good, then due to some dubious moves, it was a drawn game.

    The second game on Thursday had Garry as black beat pretty much from the beginning. Garry fought back very well and might have drawn the game, but then foolishly blundered which cost him the game almost immediately. You could see the frustration level just go through the roof, as he's still trying to prove that he's better than the computer, but only to be beaten by the slow, steady computer approach.

    But today, he's redeemed himeself. Although the match is now tied, he has shown that he can win against the computer. I feel better. :)

    The last game will be difficult for Garry as black. But the fact that he won an game, and didn't draw them all has got to have him elated.
  • by zokum ( 650994 )
    So, does anyone know when all this fancy AI will be backported into Battle Chess?
  • Eight Pawn Chess (Score:5, Interesting)

    by __aanonl8035 ( 54911 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:21PM (#7490000)
    I play a little chess. When I was younger I had a 1600 rating. I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo. So I practiced and finally became good enough to beat the computer (albiet only a Nintendo) What I learned then (and seems to be common knowledge among chess players) is that when playing a computer, you stand a much better chance if you keep all your pawns on the board and manouver your pieces behind them. Computers think about the game in a very different manner, and I think eight pawn chess highlights where their weakness lies. They do not have a plan. They do not start the game with a long term plan to the ending. I believe that in the past, Garry was a true sportsman and did not play eight pawn chess against the strongest computers. He played real chess. He played what he would play against another Grandmaster. I really think he could probably beat the computer almost all of the time by playing eight pawn chess.
    • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:26PM (#7490020)
      I wanted to play because I was humilated at getting beat by the chessmaster on Nintendo.

      Good thing you latched on the chess game cartridge, otherwise you'd have grown a moustache, started wearing red overalls and sporting a strong Italien accent, and become a plumber ...
    • 1600 is nothing (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jbellis ( 142590 ) *
      Fritz has grandmasters working for them. They're not stupid and neither are the programmers...

      Kasparov tried playing "anti-computer" chess against Deep Blue and got his butt handed to him. After losing to Deep Blue Kasparov really, Really, REALLY wants to beat Fritz (after helping hype him as "even better than Deep Blue"). If it were as simple as you describe, he wouldn't be wasting any time doing it now.
    • Yeah and 3 Card Monte REALLY confuses the fuck out of them
    • Not a terribly convincing syllogism there. It is highly likely that Fritz is more competent against your eight pawn strategy than your Nintendo.
  • Televised Chess (Score:5, Informative)

    by porp ( 24384 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:22PM (#7490006)
    For those who receive ESPN/ESPN2, the sports network has televised all three matches and will televise the fourth on Tuesday at 1:00pm. I've watched all three games on there, and it's actually very entertaining, if only for the humor of seeing history's greatest chess player in action and wearing those stupid X3D goggles. I just hope Garry can pull off Game 4 with a win.

    porp
    • The telecasts have begun on ESPN2 at the start of play, but so far all of them have been kicked over to sister network ESPNews because they ran longer than their allotted airtime. Today's game, however, got bumped off of ESPNews to make room for NFL highlights today, so the chess coverage was regulated to two-minute live updates during the football coverage. Why did ESPN allow a match to be scheduled for today knowing that they would have run out of networks on which to put the full telecast unless an early
  • by purplejacket ( 581360 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:28PM (#7490036) Homepage
    I wrote an email to chessbase two months ago and actually got a response from Fred Friedel (the Chessbase president). I then replied to him about two classic articles I'd seen on chess as I was interested in seeing more of such in regard to the current match. They did some interesting statistical analysis (here's part five [chessbase.com] of a series, it links to the other parts) but, of course, I'm still hoping for more more more. Here's some of what I wrote in my email:

    In replying to my original email you asked if I had any specific thing I miss. I can reply that over time I've seen two really good articles on computer chess. The first was the cover story from Scientific American in 1990:
    http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=0005CCF 5-D9D7-1CF6-93F6809EC5880000
    It was about Kasparov vs. Deep Thought. The second was in 1997 from Byte Magazine:
    http://www.byte.com/art/9707/sec6/art6.htm
    The thing that stuck in my memory from the second article was this information:
    "Hsu told BYTE that his team chose the RS/6000SP because it was the best available IBM system for the job, even though its P2SC processors don't have the best integer performance. Although the P2SC lags in raw integer horsepower, the RS/6000SP largely makes up for it by uniting 32 of the processors in a parallel system architecture with high-speed, low-latency connections."

    I would be very interested to see the above sort of coverage of the current chess match. To put it in colloquial terms I'd like to see a big fat writeup of the workings of fritz, how it's design is broken down, how it makes tradeoffs between one kind of technique vs another, how it works with the intel architecture, how it uses null-move ordering, RAM caching, and how it fits into the history of human-chess matches.
  • by Valar ( 167606 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:32PM (#7490052)
    because they bring out so many people who bitterly complain and make excuses and want to challenge Fritz to a game of poker or something because it would give the human the advantage.

    This is far from the end of our species, chill out. Even if we are worse at chess than the computers, it doesn't make the experience of being human meaningless. It doesn't mean we will be welcoming our new robot overlords any time soon.

    Anyway, would it really be so bad, if AIs started getting better than humans at a lot of things? I think that in the end, we could take our greatest joy as a species in knowing that we created something better than ourselves.

    Of course, that is an issue so seperated from computer chess, that many of you are probably complaining to yourselves.

    That's how I feel when I read the excuse making and naysaying.
  • Is Fritz learning? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by LostCluster ( 625375 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:34PM (#7490068)
    Does Fritz learn from today's defeat... or could Kasparov repeat today's win simply by repeating today's move sequence on Tuesday?
    • by geekoid ( 135745 )
      well, the next match they will switch sides. It would be interesting if the computer tried his own stratagy against him.

      I am curious to find the answer to your question.
    • No, because the computer will both keep evaluating today's match, and play another opening tomorrow. Apart from that the colors will be reversed ;-)
    • by kavau ( 554682 )
      No, Fritz does not have a learning algorithm. The developers will surely analyze today's game and tweak Fritz accordingly, though.

      However, Kasparov won't be able to reproduce this exact game in the next game for two reasons:

      1) He has the black pieces in the next game, and

      2) Even if he would be playing white again, Fritz chooses opening moves and variants from his database with a random element. So it's very unlikely that two of the games will turn out exactly the same. In one of the previous matches,

  • Human (Score:5, Funny)

    by cfuse ( 657523 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:35PM (#7490072)
    Does Kasparov play human beings anymore? or is he too good for us?
    • Ducking Kasparov (Score:3, Interesting)

      by amightywind ( 691887 )

      Does Kasparov play human beings anymore? or is he too good for us?

      Ponomariov held out for more money (non-existant) in a sheduled match with Kasparov that would have led to a championship match between either Kramnik or Leko. Neither match ever happened so Kasparov headed back to New York for another payday with Fritz. The problem is not Kasparov playing other humans but other humans having the guts to play Kasparov. Kramnik has not defended his title in 3 years. The FIDE stripped Fischer's title after

  • by Sprunkys ( 237361 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:35PM (#7490073)
    To quote (from memory) the online commentator Mig Greengard:
    "If X3D Fritz lacks a clear target it plays like a braindamaged lemur"

    As Fritz moved its pieces back and forth throughout the game, Kasparov could make several free moves. That isn't brilliant, that's just making use of the other guys mistakes. Kasparov dominated the whole game, while Fritz had no clue at all what to do. According to one of its makers, X3D Fritz reached a new record of reading deeply (19 ply if I'm not mistaken) since the number of possible moves was so small in the cramped space they were building up their positions. This, however, didn't help a bit and I had a few giggles over bishops and knights moving away and then back again to the very same place they were coming from.

    Only at the very end did Fritz realize it was losing, throughout the whole game it couldn't see what was glaringly obvious to the audience.

    I've been told that this was proper anti-computer chess. The cramped position makes it tremendously difficult for a computer program to play properly while a human can easily see what's to be done.

    All in all, it wasn't brilliant, Fritz just didn't have a clue

    What am I discussing all this chess for? Let me get back to KGS...
    • by Mulletproof ( 513805 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @11:36PM (#7490926) Homepage Journal
      Now I'm not one that thinks chess is the end-all-be-all of society, but some might consider it brilliant that he was able to absolutely dumbfound the pinnical of chess technology. Yeah he made use of the other guy's mistakes... That's called "winning". Since the computer is brute forcing it's way through the chess match by trying to calculate ever possible senario per move, I consider it brilliant that he found a way to neutralize that huge advantage, even if the games was rather one-sided. Now to continue to win using the same motis operandi is cheesy simply exploitng a blindspot, but to find that blindspot [i]is[/i] brilliance in and of itself.
  • but I have a long history of getting my ass kicked at chess. The only time I *ever* beat a computer at chess was when I played the easiest level on Chessmaster 2100 on my Apple IIgs. I celebrated for days.

    I played chess all the time with pals about 10 years ago. We were all at about the same level of bad. I thought I would prove my chess-skilz one day and played some guy at the local coffeeshop. After 3 moves, I was checkmated. My middle eastern opponent turned to my friend and said, "Your friend is stupid. I will not play him again.", swept all the pieces off the board, got up, shook his head and left.

    That stung. So You Go Gary! I must live vicariously through you! Kick some ass! Then I must go back to OS X gnuChess which mocks me every time I play, "You are stupid. I will not play you again."

    /me weeps into hands.

    • After 3 moves, I was checkmated

      Don't feel bad...sure, it's embarassing, but it turns out there are only a few ways to checkmate someone in the first 10 moves of the game, and it only takes about half an hour of instruction to learn how to avoid all of them.

      In other words, you could almost instantly become unbeatable! Well, within those first 10 moves, anyway. :-)

      The next level of difficulty after that is to learn the basics of opening development -- how to get all of your pieces out and mobile while

    • haha, thats is a damn funny story.

      I remember one time, I was tossing darts, and won a game of cricket in the fewest possible throws.
      By the time I was on my last toss, everybody in the bar was gathered around. My last toss landed perectly, the crowd goes wild. I had a great reputation, free drinks when I retold that story, and I never, ever, threw darts anywhere near that bar again. heh.

      A matter of fact, about 10 years latter, I meet a guy at agaming clubg. He kept looking at me funny. Then one day he looks at me and runs off. about 30 minutes latter he returns. Turned out his father was the guy a beat, and gave him a picture of me tossing that last dart. the caption:
      "With practice comes perfection."

      I was laughing so hard, I had tears rolling down my cheeks.
  • That game was a beautiful demonstration of anti-computer chess strategy. Kasparov pushed his pawns early to close the game, gain a space advantage, enhance the power of his knights, and play long term, while the computer thrashed around without the ability to detect these abstract strategic moves AKA a _plan_.
    See here [slashdot.org] for more info.
  • ...or does that not get any press?

    I play chess...since 3rd grade but I don't follow tournament play. Does he get more money to play the computers?
  • Obviously these kind of matches are very interesting for chess players. But I wonder if there is any other significance, in theoretic science or in the computer science depts.

    In other words, why should we care who wins? I don't want to troll, but the machine vs human chess player story is getting a bit stale. If the computer wins, that will mean, what? It's such a specialized field that you can hardly call it a milestone in computer science.

  • by dandelion_wine ( 625330 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @08:46PM (#7490133) Journal
    Al Gore: You already know Stephen Hawking. Also with us is Nichelle Nichols a.k.a. Commander Uhura.

    Nichols: Incoming transmission from MCI one rate department. It sounds like a limited time offer.

    Gore: Tell them I'm in the tub! To my left you'll recognise Gary Gygax, inventor of dungeons and dragons.

    Gygax: Greetings! It's a...[rolls dice.]...pleasure to meet you!

    Gore: And our summer intern, Deep Blue. The world's foremost chess playing computer.

    Deep Blue: Bishop to knight 4.

    Gore: Not all missions can be solved with chess, Deep Blue. Someday you'll understand that.

  • by bacon-kidney-pie ( 717079 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @09:38PM (#7490345)
    Its ridiculous to say oooh the computer has beaten the human. Whats actually happening is that a human unassisted is being beaten by a team of humans using a tool (the computer). Computers are just tools. What this means is that us dumb humans have figured out a way to model what this really smart (well good at chess at least) human is doing. To me its about as big a deal as saying ooh the worlds strongest man just got beaten by a guy with a forklift truck.
  • by TygerFish ( 176957 ) on Sunday November 16, 2003 @10:10PM (#7490506)
    The game was interesting. It resembled a classic game from the thirties with either Saemisch or Maroczy as white. It underlines the strengths of the human mind versus computers.

    The annotators of the first game pointed out over and over again, that some of each player's decisions were based on the computer's looking over a few million positions, and 'knowing' that it was safe to play the kind of moves that a human's fears and instincts would have made it very uncomfortable for a human to have played (e.g., the capture of the bishop by the king in the drawn game). Games like the first two show the greatest strengths of computers: superhuman ability in positions involving the calculation of tactical complications.

    The current game by contrast grave rise to a position that is possibly the greatest illustration of a human's real strengths: the ability to create closed positions where tactical calculations of severely reduced utility; creating a position where experience and 'instinct' far outweigh calculation.

    In the latest game, the computer's playing, 5...a6 created a 'hole,' a 'positional weakness,' and the rest of the game was a matter of exploiting its consequences while simultaneously giving the computer no chance to balance the game neither by winning back material, nor by a compensatory attack against white's position.

    To put it another way, the nature of the position allowed white to create and exploit a position where the computer's ability to look at millions of positions per second was essentially useless.

    It was clever and precise play on Kasparov's part.
  • by linuxjack55 ( 536587 ) <gdtrfb55@gmail.com> on Monday November 17, 2003 @12:58AM (#7491285)

    The position after 29. a6 was indicative of how paranoid Kasparov was about the computer's tactical capabilities. In addition to the pawn blockade stretching diagonally from f2 to b6, he had marched his king all the way from e1 to b2 and protected it behind a wall of pieces. The king's bunker looked like this:

    B
    N N
    K R Q

    As chess positions go, that one cracked me up.

  • Style. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nicodemus05 ( 688301 ) <nicodemus05@hotmail.com> on Monday November 17, 2003 @01:42AM (#7491432)
    I'm not sure who I should be cheering for.

    On one hand, a victory for the computer means a victory for everything we've been working at for a long time. It means that computers are getting smarter, and smarter, and smarter.

    Call me a hypocrite, call me sentimental, but I desperately want Kasparov to win. I want us to still be better than computers at this game. It's highly mathematical, but there's always been a level of flare, panache, and style to the game. Even though 'Knight to King 4' may not sound particularly interesting, it could have been something intrinsically bold and audacious when done by a human player. When the same move is made by a computer it becomes purely calculated.

    I want Kasparov to win because I feel like it'd be a blow to the game to let an algorithm (albeit a brilliant one with an unbelievable amount of brute force behind it) beat something feeling.

  • by boatboy ( 549643 ) on Monday November 17, 2003 @08:23AM (#7492268) Homepage
    Does this mean Gary could be The One? (spoiler) I expect him to lay down and feed himself to X3D to save us all.

I tell them to turn to the study of mathematics, for it is only there that they might escape the lusts of the flesh. -- Thomas Mann, "The Magic Mountain"

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