The Computer Age In Chess

In the 1900s, chess was viewed as a congenial pastime, except for the small handful that would trust their future into the 64-square board game. These players who would excessively play the game would always have a fiery ambition to get stronger, be able to memorize more tactics, and over time they had achieved a state where you had needed to play your whole life just to be able to get a draw against these masters.

These masters would mold the shape of the game forever, or forever until the computers came. Unknowingly to these masters, a new era of chess was around the corner. The era of computers.

The first fully functioning chess computer was introduced in 1951, and at this time it was ever so aberrant to optically discern a computer consummate a task with relative ease, while humans had to have played their whole life to match the adeptness the computers have.

One particular example that we can remember is the Deep Blue chess AI. Over the years, there have been attempts to make a chess computer that could play (and beat) a top-level GM. All previous computers failed, but this all changed the day when some university students announced they had created a computer, that could triumph over the current reigning world champion.

This, of course, was unthinkable at the time. There were computers generations before this new development, but none of them had claimed to be great enough to match current world championship holder, Garry Kasparov's skill When news got out about this new supercomputer that could beat one of the greatest players in history got out, it had swept the world in awe.

Gary had wanted to defend his honor, so he had taken up the challenge.

The AI had beaten the titan, with a 3.5/6 record, and with these wins carried the idea that these computers can and will, take over chess.

Before I go any further, I must explain what the essence of chess is. More specifically, what keeps the magic of chess alive; what keeps it from falling into the same fate as checkers? some say it is because of the infinite possibilities, while others say it is the delicate practice of war that keeps it alive, because, like many things, chess can be viewed in a variety of ways, molded by the player's intentions.

If you play to win, a certain attitude and playstyle must be learned, but this would result in a disregarding manner for the gamer's beautiful purposes. But if you play to preserve the intellectual beauty of the game, you must learn to harvest a different playing style, one where you seek out the now-called theory. These two playing styles are what make chess amazing. Two opponents, with opposite intentions, sat down to enjoy a peaceful war game. This is what makes it interesting, is the fact that the game is not only limited to competitive players, but also to players who play to remain the greatness of the game.

So what happens when a player who is either one of these two, meets a computer that had no intention of either of these, with the only intention to dominate the chess world?

That brings us back to the Kasparov-Deep Blue match. Of course, Deep Blues moves were made by a human, who would then enter the moves into the computer. Unbeknownst to the Deep Blue team, Kasparov has the advantage in the game. The advantage was that it gave the impression that he was playing a human and not a computer. It may be difficult to comprehend, but we will perform better against a human, with a human face, than play against a lifeless mechanism. It just simply gives it more of a down-to-earth vibe.

With the advantage that Kasparov had, he had still only managed to get 2.5 wins out of this. That was considerably well for playing a computer with an estimated rating of 3300. not bad Kasparov, not bad at all.

After the victor of Deep Blue over Kasparov, chess engine programmers hunkered down with the task of creating an even better engine. This is the arise of the biggest giant in computer chess, Stockfish.

Stockfish is a completely free and open sourced chess engine, who is ranked first in terms of chess super-computers. So how did humans create something smarter then themselves? to learn that we must go back to stockfish's origins.

Stockfishes program had been inspired by the glaurung, a chess engine back in 2004. Four years later, Marco Costalba had wanted to create a beast, something to match glaurungs skill. He had named this new-to-be engine stockfish, because it was "produced in Norway and cooked in Italy" And after that fun naming process, it had took him less than a year to fully finish the coding and all. I will not go into how he had coded something that is better than humans, because neither you or me will be able to understand that. 

But in 2011, one of stockfishes main developers had quit to work on their own chess app. This was certainly a bump in the road, and the production of stockfish has halted for a little while. it took about nine years of hard work and programing to make an engine with immense strength. This was the 12th version of stockfish, and it had showed strength stronger then anything ever before.

As stockfish arose, many other chess engines came to be. They had all wanted to play against themselves, but not against humans. The intention of this was to preserve chess; to make sure that computers wouldn't over run the game. This was the starting point of the world chess computer championships, where computers would play each over for hours at a time. You can still see it live here.

This event was extraordinarily brilliant. Even more dynamic then the world championship, even more blazingly spectacular if Fischer and Carlsen where to play a match. These computers were so masterly accomplished, that they had achieved a ranking of 3800+.  We are privilaged that we are able to watch these super-computers play against each over.

2018 was the first year that chess.com hosted the first computer chess championship, and it came with many great moves. The two finalists were Houdini and stockfish, both super strong engines. The finalists played best out of 200 games, with stockfish winning 120/200. Stockfish demonstrated how to demolish the kings gambit in some of the first games in the final matches

Nobody would even think to play that opening like that. The brilliancy of the computers shook the chess world.

With stockfish 15 coming out, we certainly do not know how advanced chess engines would be in the future, but what we do know is that computers have reinvented the game.