Men vs. Machinery

It behooves man to maintain his superiority over the thinking machines of his own creation, or else risk becoming their slave - like all those poor saps who succumbed to the temptation to use computers to cheat at chess, and thus allowed chess programs to rule their minds like the Phantom of the Opera. Cheater_1 made a valid point when he agreed with us that chess is war - but he still seems to be missing the point when it comes to the war between humans and chess computers, which is that we humans are supposed to be on the same side!! In this forum I intend to do my humble best to help alleviate the problem of chess cheating by contributing some free sample games showing how to make short work of computer chess programs using a little good old-fashioned human ingenuity, and I hereby invite everybody to do likewise. Don't anybody go calling old Sunny_Jim a  bright guy or anything, but I would venture to speculate that this is the single best way to go about removing the temptation to cheat at chess online - by showing cheaters (and their unsuspecting and unprepared victims, if they're paying attention), how to defeat any chess programs easily and consistently. You can always find weaknesses in a chess program if you delve deeply enough, and subsequently exploit them by building a repertoire of openings so as to beat the program with either color on any line it might play against you. After which you can safely consider yourself to be a better chessplayer than the chess program, and who in their right mind (always assuming of course that they had a right mind to be in) would ever want to rely on the dubious and misleading advice of a proven inferior, when instead they could personally hog ALL the credit for winning their chess games? If ego gratification is the motive, that approach obviously yields a much juicier reward. Now I don't want to hear anybody whining about how they've already reached their chess "Plateau", just because they're too lazy to climb the rest of the way to enjoy the breathtaking view from the summit of chess here with the rest of us true men. It's only a little ways further to the top, and you can make it if you try - even on your wobbly rubber chicken legs, trust me! Page 1 of my fabulous new chess book at unorthodoxchess.com offers a fine view from the summit of chess, which took yours truly many long hard years to scale. But boy, was it ever worth it!! (?) Because since I've gone ahead and BLAZED THE TRAIL and secured the rope ladder, the way is easy now for the rest of you to follow in my bold and dauntless footsteps. Can you imagine how upset those poor feeble-minded cheaters are going to get when you beat their chess programs fair and square, using only your very own God-given freshly souped-up and fine-tuned Herculean chess brain? They're not very good sports about it, trust me. So don't expect any online handshakes or anything. I'm afraid any ego gratification you are likely to derive from the event will have to be strictly self-administered, as usual. So what else is new?

In the sample games that follow the computer made demonstrably inferior moves, so in my footnotes you'll be able to see exactly how it fell short in its computerized thinking process, and how full advantage was taken of its mistakes by me, its vastly superior human opponent. 

I realize of course that this old Radio Shack 1850 my Dad bought for $100 many years ago doesn't put up the best possible resistance, but at least it's a starting point. Now it only remains for all you chess experts out there to submit your contributions of victories over stronger chess programs. No matter what, our goal as the chess-playing faction of mankind should be to work together as a team and stop at nothing to find ways to defeat every existing chess program and to post those victories here, so we can win the war against online chess cheating once and for keeps by proving that anybody who takes sides with artificial intelligence in this war of chess is choosing the losing side.

BTW, just to refute some stupid reviews my book got from critics, when sample games are offered in a chess book as pure learning material, the origin of the sample games chosen for the purpose is entirely irrelevant; and if the author of the book for the reader's benefit sees fit to omit all superfluous details such as players, dates, or locations where the games were presumably played, or if he chooses to draw on as his source material records of actual games played, variations on actual games, or even games that were purely composed in the manner of a chess problem, then it is entirely within his artistic license to do so and can in no way be construed as dishonest, or even as disreputable underhanded shabby practice. I realize how much all those stupid critics out there like to try to look at things that way, but I'm afraid that's just not how it is, okay? It's NOT the same thing as cheating, by any stretch. I'll have you know my book is a perfectly legitimate stab at a would-be humorous chess book, which in disguise could secretly prove to be the most powerful chess learning tool ever written for anyone who wanted to improve their game badly enough to actually sit down and read the darn thing thoroughly cover to cover, studying carefully every last sample game in it. Just when you thought you'd reached your chess plateau, next thing you know you'd find yourself gazing down from the very summit of Mount Chesserest! (You'll be able to catch your first awe-inspired glimpse on the very 1st page.)

Once we've succeeded in removing the temptation to cheat at chess by teaching cheaters how to beat the very programs they use for the purpose, we'll all still have to learn to tolerate how insufferably pleased with themselves they'll be when they've finally learned how to win games on their own! But at any rate it's still a noble quest in a good cause by all accounts, raising the bar still further by improving the standard of chess-playing skill on all fronts. So let's all gang up like regular desperate futuristic humanoids on those infernal metal man-made thinking machines and crush them into silly confetti using the superior chess wisdom contained in our collective brains, whaddaya say? And every time they try to use our own wisdom against us by teaching it to those confounded chess computers, we'll all just have to rise to the occasion by squeezing out a little more where that came from! (And so the battle rages on long into the night, with no end in sight.) 

Glad to be able to shed some light on the subject....

Gosh, I guess that WAS a bit too much reading for anyone to bother with after all, huh? Excuse me for being an eager beaver and getting carried away with what seemed like a good idea at the time. I told you I wasn't expecting anyone to be too impressed with my humble victories over a weak chess program, they were merely intended as a starting point, to give everyone the general idea - the idea being that then we would proceed to dismantle stronger programs together, as one big happy chess team. Don't forget that Garry Kasparov lost in his match game against Deep Thought only because he was given only ONE chance to win, and not even granted a rematch despite his vehement protestations. So who were the bum sports? The programmers! (As bad as cheaters, if you ask him.) In our case of course we expect to have unlimited chances to find the winning lines against any given chess programs, and thus better arm ourselves against the darkness. Now who's with me? Anybody?? 

War on Bill Gates! Ha :)

I take it that the basics of the Trojan Gambit is to sacrifice a knight for an attack on the kingside, particularly using the rook? It definitely sounds interesting. As for the man v. machine thing, I find that very concerning. Doubtless you know of Eduard Nemeth?

The worst thing about playing against cheaters is that even if you beat them fair and square using only your brain they'll never give you the credit but will naturally presume you must have cheated too in order to beat their programs. So it's really a thankless task playing against cheaters, even when you win.

In the Trojan Gambit, in return for the Knight sac Black gets partial positional compensation for the material in the form of a strong Pawn center and  open lines for his remaining pieces (particularly the open g file), giving him good counterattacking prospects. But when you throw into the mix the psychological edge Black gets by giving White odds of a piece on move 2, a move which is calculated to rattle him not a little into making mistakes, one or two of which is all Black needs to achieve full compensation, it definitely qualifies as a defense to be reckoned with; at least at the casual level at which we play.

SunnyJim,

E. N. appears to be some all round egg-head, who has played many games (some giving small odds) against strong chess programs. He is cited as "defending Man's honour".  Nothing I know anything about, just the scan read results of a browser search, I'm afraid.

Hello there SunnyJim. Looks like you have spent too much time in a small room hunched over RadioShack beasting a nervous sweat. Yup, you've ommited the ladies from this warfare.

There is some dude that has written a book on how to beat computers recently. I saw it on chessbase (i think). I did try to find it but lost my will quickly. However, with a little more determination you'll get it.

 Good luck with the war!!! and think about recruiting women.

"But the most interesting demonstration that computer chess isn't chess, comes from a 43-year old German: Eduard Nemeth who, despite being only a 2100 player, consistently beats the world's strongest commercial chess programs with a unique anti-computer style.
    "Anti-computer style", as we know it, is to set up a closed position, usually of the hedgehog type, and then to do nothing, and to watch the computer also doing nothing until its lack of time causes it to do something wrong. Nemeth's anti-computer style consists of unsound sacrifices and the zaniest gambits you've ever seen."

Are you sure you're not a disciple SunnyJim?  

Tried playing some of those games through my version of fritz and I got killed :P

Interestingly though, I have beaten fritz once as well as scored several draws... my version is Fritz 5.32 which is one of the stronger ones out there although it IS pretty old... known to be a tactical giant although sometimes weaker positionally.

I'll dig a few of my games up... 

The following is VERY interesting:

http://www.xs4all.nl/~timkr/chess2/honor.htm

Ha! That's like saying we could outrun a car. Or, a metaphor more similar to the thing we're talking about, it's like saying we could calculate 10 million factorial faster than a computer. Let's be practical, in chess, machine beat man. You're taking the completely wrong approach to stop cheaters. The correct approach is simply not playing them again. Also, I suspect your 'wins against computers' were faked and not really played against computers, though that does not have anything to do with the main topic. Let me repeat what I said earlier. You're taking the wrong approach to stop cheaters. Wait, unless you do the Boungcloud attack, that is.