Will computers ever solve chess?

 I agree that a good player doesn’t play a dubious move hoping that their opponent won’t be able to find the best move. In fact, in searching for the best move one must look for the best moves on both sides, given the constraints of the clock.  If one sees an inferior move that might trap the opponent if he fails to find the best move, but instead will trap you if he does, then the answer is clear: the player who’s about to move must always assume that his opponent will be able to find the best move.

  However, when you are losing anyway, it might be worth a shot. If the opponent is in time-trouble and you’re reasoning that it would be hard to find it in a few seconds, you might go for it, if, say, you need a whole point to win a tournament, and a draw wouldn’t change anything.

  Also, it depends on other factors. When Kasparov played the best combination of his life, by his own judgment, the one everyone knows about, the 15 move-ahead combination against Topalov, Kasparov simply plunged in. But if Topalov had instead turned down the sacrifice, Kasparov would have reached an unfavorable position. But Topalov’s curiosity was peaked and he went for it, which was not the best move, analysis showed.

  In general, Kasparov always played the man, not the board, being keenly aware of the psychological factors. At one time he was playing exclusively 6. Bc4 in the Naidorf. But against Velimirovic, he chose a different move, not wanting to go toe to toe with a specialist of that line. Even though he was a specialist as well. But he knew his limits. It is this versatility and, of course, new insights into many openings that made him the best. He played a novelty once that Tal felt was especially concocted for him!

   That was his lifelong strategy and his research and memory allowed him to be successful with it. But versus Deep Blue he was faced with a new problem. They couldn’t get any printouts, due to that clause that allows printouts only of the official games, which weren’t any. Then, like you said, they went on to assume that the new machine was similar to the first one, which proved to be wrong. 

 But still, there are differences between machines and humans that one has to take into account. In the opening, they have an advantage and trying to get it ‘out of the book’ as soon as possible might have been worthwhile. He was not afraid of trying that one. 

  In an open position, with lots of tactical possibilities, the machine is superior. So it is logical to try to veer the game into closed positions. 

  There are also other factors that affected his thinking process, because he was not facing a human player. For instance, against a human player he might have found a successful sacrifice which ended the game quickly. But against a strong computer, you can assume that if you found a successful sacrifice, then it is not successful at all, because a machine would not allow such strong play to happen.

  And yet the same ‘stronger and improved version’ of Deep Blue commited a couple of mistakes in the end of the first game, where Kasparov resigned prematurely in what turned out to be a drawn position. Although years later, new analysis with stronger engines changed that evaluation again. That was a big blow, for a strong player to resign in a drawn position.

  Going back to the Caro-Kann, it is true that he played a Caro before in their games, but it is also true that he never played the 4...Nd7 line. I said previously that he played 7...Bd6 against Karpov, but I meant to say that Karpov played that move against him. He only chose 5. Ng5 in the aforementioned line. So he never plays 4...Nd7 before and on the morning of the last game Illescas introduces this very specific sacrifice in case Kasparov who, once again, has never played anything other than the classical line, makes this obscure, premature pawn move...And with IBM hiring two spies...Do we see a connection between the spies and the last minute tweak? 

  He didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. He’d played the opponent before, at least when it comes to openings, but not only (as I have explained above), so now he correctly reasoned that on its own the machine would not sacrifice on e6 without concrete investments. Since he’d never played 4...Nd7 before, he also tried to surprise the machine (and the GMs behind it) with this ‘reversal of moves’ (pawn before bishop, instead of bishop before pawn), reasoning that the GMs would not think of this line which he never played and specifically of an inferior move like 7...h6? He was perfectly aware that after a capture on e6, Black would be in dire straights, not only against a computer of Deep Blue caliber, but also against any strong GM.

  And he almost got away with it. I mean, on that morning Illescas to tweak the code is highly improbable because there would be no last-minute reason to alter a line he’s never played. Unless those two spies had turned out last-minute info about Kasparov’s plan in the opening.

  Now, I can see this in hindsight. But at the time, from Kasparov’s vantage point, he placed all of his eggs in the basket of never having played that line before. Which, despite being logical, is not foolproof.

You might want to read this book ...maybe not.

I would not be surprised to find that IBM hired one or two Russian speakers for the event, but unless you have some footage of them standing behind a marble column with an eavesdropping dish pointed at Kasparov's team, I think that "IBM hired spies" is still considered conjecture in 2019.  If it is true, however, I will say this...also Kasparov's fault.  Don't just assume that all Americans in your general area are uni-lingual .  If they were in Russia at a tournament, they would not have openings discussions within earshot of anybody.  Same applies everywhere.  If you are going to imply that their meeting room and hotel rooms were bugged or what have you, well then we're really heading into conspiracy-land and the burden of proof falls on the accuser, not the accused.

On the Caro Kann...as we now know today, if you know your opponent is going to play a certain defense, you are going to prep all the major lines, not one.  Since this knight sacrifice would not have borne fruit within Deep Blue's event horizon, it's possible that they hardcoded that particular sacrifice rather than trying to teach Deep Blue how to "value" it correctly, which might have thrown it off on several other fronts unless they spent a ton of time tweaking and testing it.  I guess you could argue that this by itself constitutes cheating, but to me it's no different than one GM telling another "hey, watch out for the poison pawn variation tomorrow...".  If telling Deep Blue that a single move in single position is the correct one to make in advance of any game occurring, then surely the entire opening book would also have to be considered "cheating".

 I’m afraid you haven’t read what I wrote. IBM did not hire ‘one or two Russian speakers for the event’, they specifically hired two Russian-speaking spies. 

  This is not a conjecture. GM Illescas, one of the GMs in charge of Deep Blue’s opening repertoire and play in general, revealed that publicly. They all had a non-disclosure agreement and once that ended he was free to speak about it.

   Again, you don’t have to reason your way here and infer that maybe it was “possible that they hardcored that particular sacrifice rather than try to teach Deep Blue how to ‘value’ it correctly.” There are no maybes and it’s not a possibility. Illescas did it. No maybes. He’s the one who did it.

  Now, the other point is incomplete: yes, he played the Caro-Kann before, but he had never played 4...Nd7. Never ever. That’s one point. The next related point is why all of a sudden, in the last possible moment, would he insert this sacrifice, which no one bothered with in the previous games from the same match when Deep Blue was White, in a fairly obscure line? 

 Do you understand? In the last game of the match, during the same day that the game took place! And with two spies hired as a fact, not as a conjecture. It’s not cheating because he tweaked it in the last moment, that’s not what I’m saying. The question is why in an obscure line belonging to a main line which Kasparov never played before and why in the last day of the last game of the match (and not before, whenever Kasparov had the black pieces)? After we establish these facts and the fact of IBM hiring two Russian-speaking spies, the conjecture between the two sets of facts is rather strong.

If these "facts" are verifiable, I am sure that they will turn up in the Wikipedia entry for Deep Blue vs. Kasparov, you know, someday.  This aspect of the match isn't available from any other reputable link online, either.  Meanwhile, you have a Spanish GM with his own incentive to make money and generate publicity and...what other source or actual proof?  Because right now, this would be hearsay.  It wouldn't be the first time that an interview anecdote that gets somebody a lot of attention evolved over time into a fantasy bearing little resemblance to reality .  Did you know that Al Gore invented the Internet?  Also, unless the team at the time asked for and negotiated expiration dates for their NDAs, it would be uncommon for IBM to just offer an expiration by default when they don't have to.

Will computers ever solve chess? In short: hell no.

Chess is already solved „weakly“. Humans don’t stand a chance, the one or another draw at best.

Only the 7-men TB is a „strong“ solution, a brute-force solution godlike.

Right now there’s no „strong“ evidence that the basic position a piece up is a win...

    The interview ‘anecdote’ didn’t evolve into anything. It’s still the same 2009 original interview, taken nine years ago. It didn’t evolve into anything new. It’s an interview that remained the same interview.

  If you want to question the integrity of a rather strong grandmaster who once beat Karpov in a brilliant modern classical line of the...Caro-Kann, then there’s nothing else to say. Cheating or not, Kasparov’s logic was solid, but it only went so far. Then he took a leap of faith and somehow he lost that bet. Cheating or no cheating.

  That said, I still don’t think Illescas made enough money to warrant a loss of his integrity as a person and state something which not only went against the mighty IBM—they never issued a rebuttal—but also corroborated with Kasparov’s line of reasoning... 

   Is it a game of strategy?  Even to Kasparov 99% of tablebase moves in some positions are ‘completely incomprehensible’, as he put it. He looked at several six and seven-piece endings that require over 200 moves to solve. He found that during the first 150 moves he could detect no patterns at all, as if nothing was really happening on the board. Only during the last 40 or 50 moves could he see a method ‘in the machine madness’.

  By the way, the seven-piece tablebases take months to generate and take up 140 terabytes of space!

  The point is that perfect chess is likely to be incomprehensible to humans.

 After stressing the main point I was making—in the last sentence—I thought that at least the reader would fill in the blanks.

  If perfect chess may be incomprehensible to humans, then it’s not a game of strategy, as stated in the post I was replying to. Oh, boy, I thought chess players have at the very least one thing in common: logic.

You saw an interview in 2009.  It stands to reason that this was a far reaching interview for him since it's the only one you've seen?  You have no idea how many times that story was told and to how many people before it made to the big leagues...or mediocre leagues since chess has no big league media ...sorry if you failed to pick up that I meant that it evolved interview by interview prior to the one you saw, not just randomly over time afterwards.  The former seems a lot more logical.

As for the GM integrity fallacy...GMs are just human beings, with inherently no more or less integrity than anyone else.  Chess is not some noble vocation, nor is it really a game of kings.  That's a truckload of BS.  It's a game, a popular game with more history than most.  That's all it is in reality.  People do attach intellect and integrity to the game, but that is a falsehood.  Someone who plays and studies chess all day is no better or worse than someone who plays Counterstrike all day.  They are both purely leisure activities that carry no intrinsic value to humanity or to individuals that play them.

Arguably, you could say that GMs (and any other chess player) that spends inordinate amounts of time studying a game rather than interacting with the world in general is *on average* likely to have some slight degree less integrity, less respect for social convention, less manners, etc. 

IBM not issuing a rebuttal...why on earth would they?  They have nothing substantive to rebut, and drawing extra attention to conspiracy theories is not a smart course of action.  

The part you are missing from your very first post is that this 400+ page thread *is* about solving a "puzzle" by a clear set of defined criteria (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solved_game), so if you don't think you have anything germane to add, then...maybe better to not contribute platitudes and vague nonsense.

  I was not talking about perfect human chess. I was talking about perfect chess. Your insertion ‘human’ is yours alone, after not understanding that the tablebases are the result of Russian researchers using a Lomonosov supercomputer at the Moscow State University. Not of human chess players.

  Computers solving chess—not ‘solving’, but actually solving it—is perfect chess. Therefore the OP, you and I were all talking about perfect chess, not ‘perfect’ human chess. A chess that humans might not understand. Which contradicts what you were advancing here, that ‘perfect chess is a game of strategy’. It’s not that hard to follow, if you go step by step, and not making it into a personal game of insults, getting angry simply for being contradicted.

Another thing you failed to understand is that I didn’t say anything about ‘seeing 200 moves ahead’. I clearly said that Kasparov studied such forced, perfect mates, involving 6 or 7 pieces ending. He studied them. Do you understand what that means? He looked at each move and tried to find a scheme, a plan an idea. And for 150 moves he couldn’t find any, after going into it move by move, slowly. He probably looked ahead as far as he could and saw nothing, as well as no plan. Perhaps then that those moves were preventing forced mates that were beyond Kasparov’s horizon, or the computer’s he was using.

  I will begin with the points you made with which I agree. 

  IBM? Yes, it would be bad publicity.

  Intellect and integrity? Yes, no connection. The trap is to equate intelligence, which implies integrity, with intellect. In reality, they ar separate things, intelligence and intellect. I didn’t imply that Illescas had integrity because he’s a chess player. If you don’t accept integrity, what about self-image? Why would he tarnish his public image for a louzy interview which apparently nobody seems to have heard of?

 Before the interview? There was nothing before the interview, in that direction. Which is why Kasparov’s reaction when he found out about the interview—the very next day—was hysterical and he uttered ‘a stream of profanities in Russian, English, and other languages not yet invented’! 

  It’s not like he reacted with: ‘Oh, I’ve heard that one before, nothing new.’ It was something totally new.

New to Kasparov and new to you...he may have told that story at events and dinner parties a hundred times gathering small crowds prior to that, embellishing as he went, for all you know.

That conclusion that it was new—not to him, me or anyone else, but simply new— is rooted in the logical assumption that for 13 years Kasparov or anyone from his entourage would have heard something. Kasparov is not quite nobody in the world of chess. Somebody from such a party would have eventually leaked that info to him, before it appeared in a newspaper, 13 years after the fact.

Maybe it stayed in Spanish circles quite a while, due to the language...no idea really.  The point is, I really have nothing to defend or prove, unless something else comes out on this theory.  It's written and done.

The point is that it could have happened that way. I mean, it’s a possibility that we can’t rule out 100%. Just because the written story didn’t include it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen that way. There is a strong possibility of it having happened. Wikipedia is not my authority.

Wikipedia is not my authority either, but the fact is that if anything real had been forth forth and verified it would have trickled its way to Wikipedia in the decade since this interview...

So yeah, I'm ruling it out.  Case file closed unless new evidence emerges.

I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for Wikipedia changes. Wikipedia comes with a disclaimer: ‘ We do not expect you to trust us’, adding that ‘it is not a primary source’ and ‘because some articles may contain errors you should not use Wikipedia to make critical decisions.’

I don’t care about it not being ‘a primary source’ or not being able to ‘make critical decisions’ based on it, but the fact that it may contain errors means also errors by omission, in other words, facts not included in it.

 It is irrelevant whether a fact makes or not into Wikipedia. They may have never heard of that interview, which perhaps was only found important by Kasparov himself—since his former team had long been dismantled by 2009.

  That doesn’t make a fact into a non-fact.

 In fact, I myself found out about this revealing interview not in ‘09, but only last year, from a third party. If Wikipedia people think like you—case closed, long time ago—they may have stopped looking for new evidence.