Hello! People!
I'm new here and this is my first post. This has been a fascinating thread to follow and I would especially like to thank "FirebrandX" for your very insightful contributions. I used to play (2012 CFC) in the early nineties but life and other such things made me move on.
Sorry if this is OT, I'm not even really sure what the original topic was anymore...
What I have observed (I'm sure many others too) is that chess has traditionally been about beating the other "person". There exists in chess a long history of "preparing for a specific opponent", "anti-computer strategy", and psychological aspects of gaining the upper hand. As opposed to search for truth (best possible play). It seems pretty clear to me that "centaur" chess (as described by FirebrandX at least) is about finding best play. This is evident in a couple of Judith Polgars quotes:
"Chess is 30 to 40 percent psychology"
"I can't confuse the computer"
I used to truly enjoy studying beautiful winning combinations. But now I kind of think these combinations belong in the footnotes to the "mistaken" moves that led to them.
Also, I think that it is a MYTH that chess equates to human intellect. Kasparov bought into this whole heartedly and it was impossible for him to believe that he had been beaten by a computer. What surprised?
him was that IBM was playing to WIN. They probably consulted a team of psychologists (I would have at least) to plan the event. "Possibly?" they deliberately dumped the first game to psyche him out then played at full strength for the rest of the match (OOoohh another conspiracy... Those damn Freemasons and their secret hand shakes :-) ) Either way Kasparov was totally psyched out and humbled publicly. Hence... They must be cheating... In light of computer chess domination today, this seems unlikely.
Remember the "ICC Fischer hoaxes"? Even Short was 99% sure it was really Fischer. It was pretty clear to me that this was some guy with a computer (I'm in the IT field). What really interested me the most about this
was the preposterous openings that "Fischer" played yet won every game. (Granted these were 3 min games, however Short was one of the worlds best players at that time). This has kind of led me to question human
understanding of opening theory.
What I would be interested in seeing is the strongest engine (I think Houdini 2, though not sure) playing on ordinary hardware (quad, hex core) WITHOUT an opening book or tablebases at classic time controls,
perhaps as a competitor in a strong tournament.
This would potentially be very embarrassing. Has this ever been done? I would love to play over the games. When I used to play I found that I could play pretty much anything based on general opening principles and
solid moves (not obviously detrimental) and still expect to win against an opponent 500 points lower than myself. Granted I was only rated 2000 that means an opponent of 1500, so I'm sure this could steered into
a seperate discussion but I suspect the same situation is true for a 2800 rated person against a 2300 rated opponent. While these are generalisations I would love to put this to the test. This also would eliminate those "better prepared opening book" and "engame tablebases" arguments (excuses???).
While this proposition cuts both ways... the computer has no opening knowledge except for some "general principles" tweaked algorithms (if even that). The human is also out of book pretty quickly and has to play
for real much earlier in the game with the same old "burden of proof" and the clock ticking.
Thanks for reading my long winded post... these are just some of my reflections.
I apologise if I have double posted this but when I first posted it did not appear in the thread after about 5 or 6 hours so I reposted. Good thing I saved most of it in a file! Cheers!
To Answer your question, Houdini would be just as dominant without an opening book as with. Its all in the computation. Of course how powerful the machine its running on is also a factor. A 15 year old laptop together with no opening book might even the odds a little.
Look how well computers play Chess960, for those that say the opening book gives them to much of advantage. It doesn't seem to be any easier to beat them in Chess960 then it is the regular chess.
. Please say it isn't so... say you accidentally posted a game vs your vacuum cleaner and the real game where you beat houdini will be posted shortly.
Actually, I think docjdan is correct on this. We don't have computers coming close to putting out art that can compare to the Mona Lisa, David, Hamlet or Beethoven's 9th. The problem is that this doesn't apply so much to chess computers. In chess certain moves work or don't work depending on the position, and this formula doesn't change over time provided that the rules remain the same, but in the arts this static, extremely processed approach doesn't work. For example, terrible sounds that have no bassis to go together, which lack any form of logical explanation from music theory, can combine to create a great work of music.
I agree. After taking some classes dealing with programing and digital logic my current concept of computer intelligence is this:
Imagine pressing down on one end of a lever and watching the other end come up... would you call that lever intelligent? Or turning the knob on a faucet and watching water come out. Is the faucet intelligent? We're about as far away from creating human level AI as the neanderthals were.
We are very good though at making fast calculators and giving them a bunch of instructions to carry out.