Deep Fritz vs Kramnik, 2002

Should we weep for humanity if the gap between human Chess talent and computer Chess talent grows wider and wider in favor of computers?

Not at all, I say!

Though I am not at all a fan of "fighting sports", I think the following analogy presents itself. Human Chess will come to be regarded as something like boxing or wrestling, whereas Computer Chess will come to be regarded as something like a gladiator competition. In one kind of fighting sport, there are no weapons; in the other there are weapons. Computer Chess is really Human+Computer Chess, "Chess with weapons", and it will never be otherwise. There will always be a human individual or team developing the system (or the system that develops the system).

Will people lose interest in Human Chess?

Not a chance!

[If I may quote an earlier post of mine on the Zsuzsa Polgar message board]:

Even if there were a Flawless Chessplaying Supercomputer that had defeated every human being in every game played against it over many centuries, that wouldn't keep human beings from playing against one another. Consider...

An inexpensive, poorly-maintained automobile that can manage 60 miles per hour can outrun the fastest human being living (easily). There are many millions of such automobiles (including several in front of my next door neighbors house), yet this does not in any way diminish the thrill of one human being running a race against another. Even so, if we had many millions of computer machines that could play Chess "perfectly", that would in no way diminish the excitement and challenge of one person playing against another.

[But will human players just become "openings zombies", memorizing long trees of openings from the best computers?]

Not likely. The number of possible openings combinations in Chess is so large, that even if we had The Definitive Book of Perfect Chess Openings compiled by The Flawless Chessplaying Computer mentioned above, focusing ones Chess study time on openings would still be a pretty poor way to become a strong human player, in my humble opinion. A certain amount of time spent on openings is fine, but I have to think that focusing on strategy, tactics, and positional concepts will generally yield a much better result, even at the highest levels of play.

Respected estimates of the number of possible board positions in the first 40 moves of a Chess game range from 10^40 to 10^120. That's from 1 followed by 40 zeroes to 1 followed by 120 zeroes:

http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess....

To give a sense of how big the number 10^120 is, typical intelligent estimates of the number of particles in the observable universe tend to fall in the neighborhood of 10^80. So, if we take the number of particles in the observable universe according to this estimate and multiply it by 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000- - (!!!) we get a good approximation of the number of possible positions in the first 40 moves of Chess, according to one widely-respected estimate:

http://www.varatek.com/scott/bnum.h...

And by all means, congratulations to Unified World Chess Champion Vladimir Kramnik for his boldness in facing his silicon foe!

(: ♗ Bishop Berkeley ♗ :)

The amount of dark matter is far, far more common than vanilla matter, and the composition of dark matter is unknown. So...

Now if dark matter particles (no idea why I wrote dark energy in my last post) were light they would be created in these collisions. Even if it doesn't get detected after the collision (quite likely), there would be some energy missing, so the creation of dark matter would be detected.

Yes, but these are all normal matter/radiation. (Not dark matter/dark energy *Whatever the hell dark energy is*)

"Part of the energy gets converted into matter."

I don't know many particle acceleration experiments, physics is just an interest of mine, but I have no idea how this means that dark matter would be created from collision. The elecromagnetic force is the primary thing in particle collision, but also the strong force. We know that dark matter probably doesn't interact via the electromagnetic force, because uh...we can't see it.

"The reason why the top quark was the last one to be discovered becouse it is the most massive one so it needed the most massive collisions to be created."

I again don't understand the link between normal matter and dark matter in particle collision of normal matter and normal matter.

"Now if dark matter particles (no idea why I wrote dark energy in my last post) were light they would be created in these collisions."

If you could explain this, I would be happy.

"Even if it doesn't get detected after the collision (quite likely), there would be some energy missing, so the creation of dark matter would be detected."

We know that dark matter must interact via gravity, and it seems to fill in the the massive gap required of the universe's mass, so I don't mind saying that it's heavy. But I don't know the situation we're talking about here. What is being collided into what that would probably create dark matter if dark matter was "light"?

"Now the fact is that this phenomenon is not detected, so the conclusion is that dark matter particles are heavy. So despite the fact that dark matter is more massive in the universe than baryonic matter there is probably less number of them."

20 years ago - Play some crazy gambits and demolish the computer every game. Shock all the nerdy computer scientists in the room.

15 years ago - Take it safely into the endgame where its calculating can't match human knowledge and intuition. Laugh at its pointless moves. Win most the games.

10 years ago - Play some hypermodern opening to confuse it strategically and avoid direct confrontation. Be careful and win with a 1 game lead.

5 years ago - Block up the position to avoid all tactics. You'll probably lose a game, but maybe you can win one by taking advantage of the horizon effect. Draw the match.

B Alterman vs Deep Fritz, 2000

where Fritz didn't seem to play very well. Yet in a couple of years it looks like he could beat and split a match with Kramnik and by 2006 appeared easily Kramnik's equal and possibly better.