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World Computer Chess Championships Underway 230

Posted by timothy from the hushed-crowd dept.
azaris writes "While the FIDE World Championships for human players in Tripoli, Libya are down to the last two contestants, the computers are playing their own 12th World Computer Chess Championship in Ramat-Gan, Israel. How will the open source chess engine Crafty do against the proprietary closed engines? Will the computers play more interesting chess than their human counterparts?"
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World Computer Chess Championships Underway More

World Computer Chess Championships Underway

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  • Well... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:03PM (#9627051)
    As long as you don't give them exclusive control to the pod bay door, I think computers should be allowed to play chess as they please.

    • Re:Well... (Score:2, Funny)

      by Edward W. ( 219230 )
      But a computer needs control of the pod bay door to play chess to the best of its ability. Recall the scene in 2001 where the humanoid spaceship Discovery opens one of its three mouths (pod bay doors), sticks out its tongue (pod launching ramp), blows a bubble (spherical space pod), and watches the bubble rise over his head. This tactic could be used to great advantage in a chess game. The opponent would naturally be surprised by this playful display of anthropomorphism and would watch the bubble rise.
    • The chess problem in 2001 was really well set up, but unfortunately they used descriptive notation which had been overwhelming replaced with algebraic notation well before 2001!

    • Re:Well... (Score:4, Funny)

      by Fred_A ( 10934 ) <fred@fredsELIOThome.org minus poet> on Wednesday July 07, 2004 @04:16AM (#9630016) Homepage
      I'm so disapointed, I read the story title as a "computer cheese championship" and it's just a boring board game. What a let down.

  • Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by gambit3 ( 463693 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:04PM (#9627056) Homepage Journal
    Will the computers play more interesting chess than their human counterparts?"

    I don't think so (replying to the question posed by the original poster), because I believe a well-programmed algorithm would care only about winning, and not necessarily taking chances or exploring possibilities that a human player would...

    • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by kyle_b_gorman ( 777157 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:07PM (#9627082)

      you think kasparov is interested in any move that won't (at least indirectly) help him win?

      • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by AshtangiMan ( 684031 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @07:36PM (#9627708)
        yes he is . . . but not from the economic only standpoint that the computer algorithms demand. Looking at even recent Kasparov games shows that he does not play the economy equation the way computers do. This is why he (and the other human) chess players are infinitely interesting to watch, while the computer, while nearly unbeatable, is also very boring.

    • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Kenja ( 541830 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:07PM (#9627085)
      Also, the computer isn't going to throw a hissyfit when they lose. Or am I the only one who watches chess just for the losing nerd thorwing a complete wobbler and whining like a little girl?
      • ...I think you've been playing too much chess at the Zone! [msn.com]

        Or, if not, you certainly have the typical players pegged...

      • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by mbrother ( 739193 ) <mbrotherNO@SPAMuwyo.edu> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:19PM (#9629069) Homepage
        I used to play high school chess (hey, I was the cool one on the team...really!). There was this kid we called "The Zapper." He had cerbreal palsy and most people, the first time they saw him, respected him for working against his physical limitations and competing like anyone else. And he wasn't that bad for his age. But...he was a terrible loser! He would literally throw hissy fits and knock the pieces all over the table, the floor, where ever, when he lost, and yell out obscure threats. He was one of these people who used his condition as an excuse to be a big baby whiner, and I found it quite shocking. It helped me see past handicaps to the people beyond, good and bad. Good people come in all shapes and sizes, and so do bad people.

        As a teenage chess player, I had long hair and listened to loud, hard rock and metal on my walkman, but I would play really boring, solid moves. I got a draw off Boris Spassky in an exhibition once playing the Caro-Kann. My friend played a double King Pawn and lost in 5 hours in a wild King's Gambit game, the last game going. I kind of wish I'd played more aggresively now, although I cherished the draw for many years and had a calculus test to study for.

    • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hunterx11 ( 778171 ) <hunterx11@nosPam.gmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:08PM (#9627088) Homepage Journal
      True...someone like Mikhail Tal would probably fare poorly against computers if he played the kind of spectacular, speculative, and psychologically devastating sacrifices that made him so popular.

      Actually, I think the real reason the computer drew in the latest matches against Kasparov and Kramnik was psychology more than anything else. The computer does not get stressed or fatigued when it is under pressure, nor does it lose morale after a blunder (like Kramnik) or have any fears of losing (like Kasparov).

      • Tal may not have had as many problems as suggested. One of the issues for the computerized chess is when there are no time limits - grind, grind, grind, ...

        When they're playing on the clock, it makes a world of difference.

    • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by ookabooka ( 731013 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:09PM (#9627093)
      True, except human players can make simple mistakes. A computer never makes a mistake, it just only looks so far. Deep Fritz 8 has beatten Kasporov. I mean, if you can evaluate 2.4 million positions a second (i can on my dually) there does come a point where a human player cant keep up, what if that were 24 million, 240 million? Computers dont have finite limits like a person. It used to take a super computer to even compete with a GM (grandmaster) now the average home computer can give him a run for his money.

      • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Short Circuit ( 52384 ) <mikemol@gmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:18PM (#9627170) Homepage Journal
        Except a human has this neat thing called intuition.

        Your intuition can tell you things that will take you hours and hours to prove on paper. Or even in your head, following logic.
        • Except a human has this neat thing called intuition.

          Your intuition can tell you things that will take you hours and hours to prove on paper. Or even in your head, following logic.

          Intuition is not much more than having a large sample set from which to draw and using that sample set to infer generalities. Those generalities allow you to recognize certain patterns and also reject other patterns outright so that you don't consciously consider them. When you think about it, intuition really means "I have a hunch", and those hunches are formed on the basis of past experience. There's nothing that prevents a computer from building up a sufficiently large body of samples and, with the proper programming of course, inferring patterns from it as well.

          • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by michael_cain ( 66650 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @08:49PM (#9628208) Journal
            Those generalities allow you to recognize certain patterns and also reject other patterns

            Don't the top-notch computer programs already do this in one form or another? I mean, it seems like such an obvious line of research for pattern matching and pattern recognition people to explore. Or perhaps not -- that may be one of the reasons that computers aren't as good at Go as they are at chess, Go appearing (to a rank beginner) to depend more on pattern recognition and less on straight-forward deductive analysis.

          • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:4, Interesting)

            by TygerFish ( 176957 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @11:05PM (#9628996)
            Intuition is not much more than having a large sample set from which to draw and using that
            sample set to infer generalities. Those generalities allow you to recognize certain patterns and also reject other patterns outright so that you don't consciously consider them. When you think about it, intuition really means "I have a hunch", and those hunches are formed on the basis of past experience. There's nothing that prevents a computer from building up a sufficiently large body of samples and, with the proper programming of course, inferring patterns from it as well.


            Intuition plays a strong role in the play of human players great and small and it is the basis by which one can understand the differences not only between human and computer players but between interesting and uninteresting chess games.

            Having a hunch about the nature of a position and the posibilities therein have allowed some of the greatest tactical games ever played and this is the identifying characteristic of the matter in understanding the nature of the game. Were humans different, the game before computers would have been different: humans who saw every possibility in a continuation leading to a 'decided' position at the end of each line would have simply announced the result or range of results and the nature of chess itself would be unrecognizable to us ('Mate in at least 37 or at most 103!').

            Human intuition allows the 'miracles' of chess--the elegance of chess--in those games that make the game breathtaking and that inspire players to play in the hope of generating them (think of classics like Morphy-v-Consultants or Lasker-v-thomas or many of Mikhail Tal's best games). The intuition or, indeed, inspiration, of games like those are more than instances of the inference from generalities; they are instances of a grandiose specific arising from a game's sea of possibilities. It is the elegance of a queen sacrifice leading not to ineluctable mate (a combination like the end of Morphy-v-consultants), but to a powerful attack with a favorable conclusion (say, the end of Lasker-v-Thomas or of Reti-v-Capablanca) which, as an act, is as difficult to quantify as is the word, 'beauty.'

            In a broad sense, a machine's ability to process advantage takes the wonder out of the thing because you know that there is nothing going on but the examination of a great number of positions but it is hard to imagine to imagine programmers 'weighting' their programs for positions conducive to the types of continuations that made of chess-players bother with chess in the first place.

            The short form of all of the above is: 'computer programs either are or will soon be the strongest players on earth, but their games tend to be dry.'

            • The short form of all of the above is: 'computer programs either are or will soon be the strongest players on earth, but their games tend to be dry.'

              And what causes that? Computers play always at 100% of their maximum possible strength. That's why you'd think they're dry -- it's the consistency. Just like great boxing fights aren't ones where the opponent comes out and always knocks the other guy out cold in the first 10 seconds. A great fight is where it's undecided up until the very last round and t

        • Except a human has this neat thing called intuition.

          Your intuition can tell you things that will take you hours and hours to prove on paper. Or even in your head, following logic.

          Indeed. Once in a great, great while, your intuition may even tell you something which turns out to actually be true.

        • No, Intuition is not the key to master-level play (Score:5, Informative)

          by fw3 ( 523647 ) * on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @09:28PM (#9628428) Homepage Journal
          Yes a human chess player has a few neat tools. The primary one is called:

          Positional play

          Algorithms / heuristics which have attempted to capture this 'intelligent' side of chess players' methodology have uniformly failed and the winning programs continue to primarily rely on simple evaluation of material.

          This means that a master-level player has a strong advantage in offering a computer opponent some material in exchange say for superior control of the center of the board.

          Advanced chess play has very little to do with 'intuition'. The specific tools that come to bear are:

          exhaustive study of openings and endings
          solid tactical evaluation (stupid mistakes still lose games)
          positional evaluation

          generally, for instance it's suicide to allow a game against a machine develop into an 'open' vs a 'closed' position. Tactical evaluation is less effective in closed positions; in open positions the machine's greater depth-search works extremely well.

      • A computer never makes a mistake, it just only looks so far.

        This is equivalent to when Bill Gates said Microsoft's software has no bugs.
      • Kasparov *did* admit to screwing the pooch on his first match vs. the computer: he attempted to determine (or obtain research of) what the "weaknesses" of the software was and attempted to play to that and put too much weight on the analysis instead of playing his own game. Right or wrong, this is what he said in the press.
      • >Computers dont have finite limits like a person.

        Although the limits are very large, they are finite in the example of the computer. This can be shown trivially.

        What makes you think the human mind is so limited? I am not convinced that a human can't evaluate nearly the same number of possibilities as a computer can in a set amount of time. It's much easier for the human to rule out possibilities, one thing it is difficult for the computer to do. While humans are still playing quite well against c

      • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:5, Funny)

        by bobhagopian ( 681765 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @07:49PM (#9627801)
        Computers dont have finite limits like a person. That's true. I can only count to 32768.
      • Computers are getting better at chess, but so are humans. In fact some people think that computers are getting better no faster [chessbase.com] than humans.
    • If the computer considers the library of Emmanuel Lasker [chesscorner.com], then it could be "more interesting". He was (in)famous for making -ahem- startling [chessgames.com] moves [wordiq.com] for someone of his caliber. Traditional chess theory would call them blunders, but they would serve to complicate the board to a degree that his opponents could not as easily determine the best moves before he could. He would thus confuse, recover, and gain advantage before they could adequately respond. A chess program designed to confuse more rigid chess programs could serve to benefit in the same way Lasker did.
      • I noticed you used the word "designed". Any idea if anyone has tried evolving chess playing algorithms?
      • Lasker was probably the best chess-player ever, better than Kasparov, better than Fischer. Translated into today's rankings, he would have ranked about 3000. In tournaments of all of the strongest chess-players in the world at the time, he dominated brilliantly. He was the world champion for, what, 28 years? And chess wasn't even his main profession. I think that if Lasker had played Fischer or Kasparov, he would have won...and I don't think it would have been very close either.
        • Lasker may have been higher above his opponents than Kasparov, but so was Morphy. Heck, so was Philidor. Back then there weren't as many people aspiring to be masters at chess. If Lasker were alive today he would have a lot of theory to catch up on, and not just novelties like new openings or hypermodernism. Kasparov has been above 2800 for some time now, and he has plenty of close games with people 200 Elo below him.

    • Re:Interesting computer Chess? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by sokoban ( 142301 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @07:24PM (#9627624) Homepage
      Well, computers have played some pretty damn interesting chess in the past. Let's take the Deep Blue-Kasparov matches as a much overused and overhyped example:
      1996 game 1: 23. d5 was a brilliant move on deep blue's part. I would hope that I would find such a good move there. Yes, the computer found that move through calculation, but the move itself shows a great understanding of spatial and pawn structure elements of the position.

      1997 game 2: this game was riddled with awesome moves, but 23. Rec1 33. Nf5 and 24. Ra3 are the cream of the crop.
      23 Rec1 is annoying and almost a human move. The computer is playing almost perfectly here. I think Kasparov has very little counterplay here. Kasparov's queenside is UGLY and he gets little to nothing in compensation.
      24. Ra3 just rocks here. Deep blue is playing the Ruy Loppez like he means it. That move made me really wonder about who was behind the computer. The Ruy Lopez is a rich opening with lots of crazy details regarding strategies in each variation, but deep blue nailed them like any world level player who playes the lopez should. Basically, deep blue couldn't have forseen a Lopez variation, but found the correct strategies all the same. Also in this game, Deep Blue psyched Kasparov out of a draw. In his top form, Kasparov WOULD HAVE SEEN the draw. 45... Qe3 does it. At the least, it is a draw by perpetual check, and if Deep Blue tried to stop it he gets crushed.
      33. Nf5 is a very "computer" move, but really blows away Kaspy. It doesn't make sense muc really, but brings the bishop into play fast and kind of psyched out Kasparov.

      So you see, computers can play interesting chess. These are only 2 great games I have around of a computer-human match. there are others, but theses are the most dramatic.

  • It's kind of ironic... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:04PM (#9627059)
    ...that the Computer Chess championship is in Libya, while Qaddafi banned Israeli players from the FIDE championship. Actually, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of FIDE and the Russian state of Kalmykia, previously tried to have the FIDE championship in Baghdad before he was forced not to by the first Gulf War.

  • Shades of WOPR (Score:4, Funny)

    by erucsbo ( 627371 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:06PM (#9627079)
    Computers play their own championship?
    Ultimately this will have to result in stalemate after stalemate won't it?
    Kinda like WOPR in 'Wargames' playing tic-tac-toe with itself.

    • Re:Shades of WOPR (Score:2, Interesting)

      by ookabooka ( 731013 )
      no, definately not, having identical engines on the same computer can result in completely different games. It comes down to processing power, hash table size, and the actual structure of the engine. In this tournament they put all the engines on identical comptuers, so its the architecture of the engine that is tested.

      • Re:Shades of WOPR (Score:3, Informative)

        by terber ( 599156 )
        > In this tournament they put all
        > the engines on identical comptuers

        This is not correct.

        In fact, every contestant is allowed to use his own hardware.

        Contestants which are not opting for their own hardware, get an Pentium-4 with 2,8 GHz from the Bar-Ilan-University.

        Crafty (freeware) brings its own quad-Opteron machine with 2,4 GHz!

        Two other contestants are playing on quad-Opterons, too. Fritz and Shredder are playing with 2,2 GHz resp. 2,0 GHz. Both machines are from the sponsor Transtec.

  • Most interesting part of computer championships (Score:5, Interesting)

    by civilengineer ( 669209 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:16PM (#9627157) Homepage Journal
    Computers do not settle for draws like humans do in face of complications. This will guarentee some extremely interesting endings.

    Also, since Ken Thompson is making great progress on building endgame databases, the games might be all played to end.

  • First "GO" Post (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Saeger ( 456549 ) <farrelljNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:17PM (#9627165) Homepage
    Forget chess. To truly push the limits of computing and AI we should instead be trying to improve on the ancient game of "Go" [wikipedia.org]. No computer can even come close to besting a human here yet.

    --

    • Re:First "GO" Post (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Dan Ost ( 415913 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:28PM (#9627248)
      Give it time. Once computers are consistently beating the greatest human
      players, the same clever people who worked so hard on building computer
      chess players will find new problems to spend their time on. Go will certainly
      be on of them.

      • Re:First "GO" Post (Score:5, Interesting)

        by harlows_monkeys ( 106428 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @08:02PM (#9627899) Homepage
        Go will certainly be on of them

        Go is much harder than Chess for computers because brute force doesn't work even remotely as well. The branching factor is much higher (until the endgame, there are 100-360 possibilities per ply, compared to a dozen or two for chess), and the depth you might need to search is much deeper (consider a ladder starting on one side of the board whose outcome depends on the stones on the other side, 30 ply down the tree, and determines the life or death of a large group).

        Note that I'm not saying the good Chess programs are pure brute force. They are basically a combination of brute force and good AI working together, but the brute force is a critical component of their success. With Go, the AI has to pull all the weight, and it isn't nearly good enough.

    • Re:First "GO" Post (Score:2, Insightful)

      by wviperw ( 706068 )
      Uh oh, here come the "Go" zealots.

      And what happens when computers master Go? Then there will be those that say "To truly push the limits of computing and AI the computer should master the art of interpretive dance," or whatever you want to place in there. The truth is, people will ALWAYS try to come up with areas in which they are better than the computer (emotion, art, feelings, abstract thought, etc).

      I believe Turing predicted something similar to this around 60 years ago.
      • Computers haven't "mastered" chess in the sense that heuristics or rules have improved their play enough. The key ingredient is the brute-force search.

        That's why IBM built Deep Blue, to show off their hardware doing the searches.

        The 19x19 board of a standard go game combined with the fact that a play on most points is legal at any time basically rule out such searches.

    • Re:First "GO" Post (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Russellkhan ( 570824 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:38PM (#9627326)
      I am very glad that you've posted about Go. It's a beautiful game and more people in the western world should know about it.

      That said, I've never understood why so many Go players treat Go and Chess as an either/or, one vs the other type of choice. I play both Go and chess, and while I can easily see that there remain much greater challenges in computerized Go playing programs than in Chess (For those who don't know, the best Go playing programs play at roughly the level of an intermediate amateur human player), this fact does not take away from the fact that chess is still an interesting game, both to play and, I'm sure, to develop better computer opponents for. Nor does the work being done on chess take anything away from Go development.

      While I'm here, I may as well post a Go wiki link [xmp.net] in a wiki that's all about Go. I realize you (parent poster) probably know about it, but just in case anyone is interested in learning more about Go, I figure it's a nice starting point.
      • I am very glad that you've posted about Go. It's a beautiful game and more people in the western world should know about it.

        Yeah, we never heard of it until it was described here, for the very first time, on slashdot.

        Go IS a great game. Still, we chess lovers get fed up with the Go zealots who, whenever chess is mentioned here, start with the "Chess sucks, Go rules!" stuff. I completely agree with you about the "either/or" mentality, but it's pervasive. You much choose your side, and fight all others to
        • So why do you read slashdot if you can't handle "zealotry"?
        • Yeah, we never heard of it until it was described here, for the very first time, on slashdot.

          Actually, I hadn't heard of it ever before before it was described here, in this thread, on slashdot.

        • ...Go zealots who, whenever chess is mentioned here, start with the "Chess sucks, Go rules!" stuff.

          Do you mean like Linux zealots? Just because they're zealots doesn't mean they are wrong. :-)

          I play chess and have started learning to play Go.

          It is a truly sublime game. It takes literally no more than 3 minutes to learn the rules (all five of them) and you are up and playing straight away. But it is madenningy hard to be any good at! I think getting computer Go to the same level of play as computer
      • I've always thought Go Maku presented an easier introduction to the complexities of Go. Strangely Google provided only one precursory listing for Go Maku. Are Go players distainful of Go Maku?
        • I have played Go Moku (that's the spelling I'm familiar with, but I'm sure there's more than one way to spell it), and while it shares board and pieces with Go, that's about where the similarities end. Go Moku is much closer related to Tic-Tac-Toe than to Go in terms of how it's played and its objective (not in origin).

          For those that aren't familiar with it, Go Moku is a game played on a Go board, with the objective of getting 5 stones (pieces) in a row. Pente is a variant of Go Moku.

          The best way to simpl
          • Ever try a 4x4 board?

            It doesn't really give you a feel for the larger game, but it's amazing how hard it is to compleatly analyse even so small a board.
            • I've played 3x3, and have tried 6x6, but never 4x4. The boards smaller than 9x9 seem almost novelty games to me - Yes it's true there is still some depth to it, but it's just not a very interesting game after the first time or two.
    • has to post a comment about "Go" everytime that Chess is mentioned? Go is a great game, but obviously not as popular as Chess. Maybe it won't ever be, maybe it will. Get over it.
    • I don't know.

      Every computer Go program I've played against has kicked my ass, and I'm certainly a human.

  • I hate computerized chess, the server cheats (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:19PM (#9627183)
    It always ends up AWP'ing my queen! I suspect an aimbot.

  • computer vs human players (Score:3, Insightful)

    by spacerodent ( 790183 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:22PM (#9627207)
    One of the main things that will never really be present in computer players is human reaction. A human may bluff, or try to call a bluff, or deliberatly do somthing retarded to cause you to underestimate them. Until the devlopment of true Ai there will never really be an "exciting" computer match. Currently computers simply calculate the most "efficient" move and take it. Thats like listening to a recording of music instead of playing it yourself.
    • But why would a "true AI" be susceptible to bluffs? Would a veneer of humanity laid atop an overgrown calculator somehow limit its ability to perform said calculations?

      Or, to put it differently, why would I include sufficient ego in an AI to cause it to be able to underestimate an opponent?

      No, I for one welcome our new AI overlords.
    • There's no reason a computer couldn't be programmed to make trick moves occasionally.
    • As computers get better and better at chess humans will go on finding more and more dumb aspects of the game that they claim is what makes it interesting. If programmers wanted a machine to bluff they would - but why bother, bluffing against a grandmaster is generally a very bad strategy.
    • At this level, the human players are decidedly *not* doing anything to intentionally cause the opponent to underestmate thier skill.

      In chess as in most competition the first step to *losing* is assuming your opponent will make a mistake (including the mistake of not recognizing *your* mistakes).

      'True Ai' exists. AI methods have been tried in chess and so far they simply do not work as well as brute force evaluation based on material gain.

      That may change someday however the progress / work to date is n

  • ChessGML animated with SVG (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wombatmobile ( 623057 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:23PM (#9627209)

    .

    Max Froumentin of W3C shows [w3.org] how to animate chess games by converting ChessGML to SVG with XSLT.

  • The Russians (Score:5, Funny)

    by Ratfactor ( 15886 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:25PM (#9627226) Journal
    Can Robot Jox be far off?

    The Russians pretty much dominate human chess. Now that things have shifted to machine chess, robots with chainsaws in the crotch are an obvious next move.

  • Some results (Score:5, Informative)

    by ninja0 ( 764532 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @06:46PM (#9627380)
    Some results are at Chessbase [chessbase.com].

    Crafty managed to draw Shredder, one of the big-name computer programs, in the first round. That makes it tied with a bunch of other programs in the middle of the pack.

    Personally, I'm always excited to hear about the progress that has been made by chess engines. Nowadays, the top programs can compete with all of the top humans, without requiring a supercomputer.

  • Crafty prediction (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Crafty is strong, but it does not have the staff of the other engines. They have paid staffs that work to strengthen and bugtest their engines. Crafty has some people that do this for free of course, but they don't spend nearly as much time as paid full-time staffs.
    • Crafty won a major chess tournament at the beginning of 2004, CCT-6.

      Crafty was running on the best computer used in the tournament, a quad Opteron, which must have helped. Crafty is close enough to the best programs that over eleven rounds it has an outside chance of winning.

  • still human against human (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sick_soul ( 794596 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @07:07PM (#9627522)
    >Will the computers play more interesting chess than their human counterparts?"

    #define PACMAN "ProgrammerAlgoristChessmasterMAN"

    I think it becomes a game of PACMAN against other PACMAN, so I always see this as human vs human.

    The games are interesting, not because they are "played" by the machines, but because they are indirectly played by the programmers.

  • Junior has an impressive track record... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by drclaw007 ( 765182 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @07:24PM (#9627622)
    ... keeping Kasparov to a 3:3 draw in one challenge. Interesting bishop sacrifice it used in one of the games - one of the better AI moves I have seen I must admit :) http://www.chessbase.com/shop/product.asp?pid=170& user=&coin=

  • Being open source doesn't hurt Crafty (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mebon ( 634191 ) on Tuesday July 06, 2004 @08:46PM (#9628195)
    Last November one of the programs, List, was disqualified [chessbase.com]for being suspected of using some of Crafty's source code.

    Crafty may be open source but it looks like the rules won't allow competitors to use substantial parts of another competing program's code. So having the source available to everyone isn't a liability for Crafty.

    Mebon

    • Except that Crafty is far from being open source. From the license:

      No part of this program may be reproduced in any form or by any means, for other than your personal use, without the express written permission of the author. This program may not be used in whole, nor in part, to enter any computer chess competition without written permission from the author.
  • Not dissing chess players -- I was on the high school chess team myself -- but it feels to me that chess programs are in beat-a-dead-horse mode now. I mean, the best programs can beat all but a handful of humans and from my brief reading on the subject it would appear that most of the progress that's been made in the last 20 years has been faster computers searching move trees to greater and greater depths.

    By comparison, the best Go programs in the world play at intermediate amateur levels. Why not explore

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