Humans or Computers?

Engines are stronger overall but top humans have their own trumps in better planning and positional understanding. Either way, I don't care too much and I am not as interested in playing against computers.

This isn't true.  Rybka had stupidly weakened odds due to the Knight-Rook exchange and Milov STILL only won 3.5 - 2.5.  This shows that the computer is playing at a much higher level than Milov and it doesn't matter how much time he had to prepare for it, he wouldn't beat the same setup that one the computer chess world championship... ever.

This match is void imo for that reason, it's like if I played against a weaker-graded player but one of my Rooks started as a Knight and one of my pawns was missing.  That's what we are talking about with the above match.

artfizz wrote: Chess learning computers are quite interesting - provided that they have started out from not even knowing how the pieces move - in the same way that people have to. 

Loomis wrote: Maybe you like to torture new players, but I always teach them how the pieces move and the object of the game. Surely computers (even "learning" ones) deserve the same courtesy. In fact, when new players show interest in doing so, I'm happy to give them a few strategy tips such as ... I could see arguments for and against letting computers have the same benefit of our learned wisdom. ...

artfizz wrote: There are several different approaches to computer learning. The Neural Net approach is probably the most similar one to the way a baby learns - by trial and error. Rather than burden the computer with any preconceived ideas about 'good' and 'bad' strategies, you could just cut it loose to move any piece anywhere. If it makes an illegal move, it gets penalised. If it makes a legal move, the game proceeds. It will doubtless lose a few games initially, but after a while, it ought to figure out for itself by pattern analysis which moves are legal. After a few million games, it should have worked out which combination of moves help it win games, and which sequences of moves make it lose games.

If you try to help the computer by instructing it, for example, to keep knights away from the edge of the board, that may prevent it from discovering some totally new, alien strategies: "it's OK to have a knight on f7 provided you also have a bishop on e4 and a pawn on g5, and your opponent has ...", say.

(http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/when-chess-gets-solved)

Modify the rules of chess slightly so that you have to say something interesting every few moves - and see how well Rybka does then!

GO ME DA HUMAN

Meh, who'd want to play a machine anyway? The games are always so boring.

Still, if we are talking about a battle of 'wits' go > chess, or at least so I have heard from the go players. ;) Supercomputers are easily beaten in that game because it does not follow clear and cut rules. Therefore humans still beat computers when it comes to intelligence and we do not need to feel inferior.

The only reason computers beat humans is that they can look to the end of the game, with any combination of moves in a split second. They have eternal memory, and therefore, if the programmer says "start each game with e5" the computer will never forget that. A computer can be told the best move in any given situation. When it gets that situation, it simply checks which move is best and plays it. It's like having a cabinet of every possible position, with the best move in all of them. The only way a human can beat a super-computer is if he knows a better move than the programmers. If both sides are evenly matched, and the human makes no mistakes, white, having the advantage, will win. Good chess playing requires making no mistakes.

I wonder what'd happen if we'd let a supercomputer calculate every single possible chess position, upload them to another supercomputer and let those two play against each other. What kind of play would this result in?

Computers don't really play chess at all... at least not in the same manner as a human being.  To a computer, chess is about numbers and nothing more.  Each piece is assigned a value, each position analized and assigned a score.

A computer tackles any chess position as an equation with a solution, and given enough power and time, will eventually find the solution.  Victor Allis esitmated the number of possible positions to be roughly 10 to the fiftieth power.  While it isn't possible for a modern computer to analize even a fraction of of those positions in a reasonable amount of time, the computers of the future will be far more powerful... How long before your average desktop becomes powerful enough to "solve" the game of chess?