November 29, 2006

• Ban chess? Bonne chance. Dedicated chess players don't even need a board, they can memorize the positions all through the game.
• The Taliban banned (ban?) kite-flying, I believe, so it's not that much of a tribute to the nuanced complexity of chess.
• the correct tense is banndedded.
• Wow- that's one howler of an error from Kramnik! That one enters the History books.
• Who wants to play P-Q4
• The Taliban would ban everything but beards, eyeliner and bumming goats and young boys if they could. As Bill Bailey says, they are the finest minds of the 13th century. I can't play chess though. Even draughts is a challenge.
• I like kites better, but okay. R2-D2.
• erm, Ladbroke Grove!
• Argh: e5
• Bummery of goats? I didn't know that you could mortgage ruminants.
• Yes, but you have to leave a hefty deposit! Eh! EH?! I'm here all week. Try the kalashnikov.
• So this isn't as stupid as it sounded yesterday.
• Mao banned chess during the Cultural Revolution. So much for culture.
• So this isn't as stupid as it sounded yesterday. Looks like they were confusing anti-doping with drug screening, NE. Dopes.
• You sunk my battleshi-*ow!* Okay, okay, geez. N-B3.
• Chess players to face anti-doping measures.
• Hate to say it, bees, but look four comments up from your last one.
• I declare mate in 5.
• I declare Lincoln in '61.
• There is no fifth base. Mate has to be in four.
• Sorry, Northern Exposed, somehow I managed to miss that one. This proposal seems arbitrary and authoritarian for no good reason except a desire to be arbitrary and authoritarian.
• I would think that Speed and its relatives could be an effective performance enhancer for a chess player- I know I could have used it a few times back in the day-though that, of course, would have been unacceptably unethical.
• And for those of us that prefer go to chess, I present: Nakano Yasuhiro's Kami no Itte (at 0:52 in). Something would be lost if all we had was some dry newspaper article... I wonder if there's a similar video of Kramnik?
• Post-blunder analysis
• Post-blunder analysis Hahahahah! Feeeeeeeeb! I say he must be immediately pantsed and closed in a locker! First one to steal his science book and dangle it over his head gets bonus points!
• That Star article contains a reference to the Immortal Game, one of the most famous chess games of all time. It's the first I've heard of it. And there's even a reference to it in the movie Blade Runner, how about that?
• The Immortal Game is indeed a thing of great beauty but those guys would never have played that way in a real tournament situation where money and reputation were at risk. Those latter factors are one reason that there are so many draws in modern tournament chess but there are still a few strong players who aren't afraid of risk. Unfortunately they don't tend to win world championships and we haven't had any successful risk takers at the very highest level since Tal though Kasparov has had his moments from time to time- but nothing on the order of the Anderssen masterpiece in terms of sheer audacity.
• Fascinating. Is it just risk aversion that's driving players to be more conservative? Could it be that the look-ahead is so deep that surprising boldness is no longer possible? It would be neat if someone did a video animation of the Immortal Game. That would be great to watch. I remember a public television show that used to have animated chess games with commentary but can't recall the title....
• p.s. thanks for that link to the post-blunder analysis, merc. This is amazing. And I see you can actually buy Deep Fritz for your PC. Holy smoke!
• SB there are always positions in virtually every game that are incalculable and require a leap of intuition- in such positions Tal was master of sussing out moves, often counter intuitive piece sacrfices that were both risky (and often brilliant with the benefit of hindsight.) These days players of more or less equal strength confronted with those type of positions will generally chooose a path that aims to steer round the complications or towards simplification. The idea of leaping half-blindly into the fray is not one generally embraced by today's top players and the Romantic spirit in Chess is a shadow of what it once was. It's one reason I often enjoy the games of "weaker" players such as English "crackpot" IM Michael Basman. Danish GM Bent Larsen was probably the last world championship strength player to embrace the Romantic ideal but then his spirit was thoroughly broken by Bobby Fischer in the 1972 candidates match where Bobby's steely eyed precision trounced Larsen's speculative play in decisive fashion.
• Here is an animation of sorts of the Immortal Game
• Steely-eyed precision vs. speculative play seems to be the gist of the Star Wars movies.
• Thanks for that kamus!
• The Taliban banned (ban?) kite-flying, I believe, so it's not that much of a tribute to the nuanced complexity of chess. Your statement assumes that all bannings are for the same reason. However, they aren't: The reasons for some of the bans varied widely, often based on reasons that many Afghans say they never understood. Kite-flying, for example, was banned because the Taliban's Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Supression of Vice suspected that boys could use kites as an excuse to climb on rooftops and sneak a peak into the back yards and houses of neighbors. There could be women walking around without their head-to-toe burqas, the Taliban reasoned, and therefore, kite-flying had to be banned. The Taliban also prohibited anything having to do with photography, television, film, or videotape because Taliban scholars believed the Koran forbids any re-creation of the human image. The government made a special exception for passport and identity-card photos. Music recordings, studio sound equipment, radios, and stereos were forbidden because ear-pleasing melodies were considered a distraction from a Muslim's principal duty, the worship of Allah. At one point, the Taliban even attempted to ban the sale or possession of caged canaries or other songbirds. - source
• > SB there are always positions in virtually every game that are incalculable and require a leap of intuition For people, I presume? Every position and outcome is calculable in chess, which is why the machines are getting so good at it.
• Even the strongest Machines are subject to what's called the Event Horizon beyond which they cannot calculate and that is a perrenial source of their "weakness". Probably there will be a point at which future computer's calculating power exceeds the total number of potential positions and on that day, Chess will be "solved"
• the total number of potential positions What sort of number are we talking here? I'm a little surprised the 486 didn't have enough to store & calculate them all, is it a number like 10^26 or is it a matter of speed (i.e. calculating a move before the next millenium)
• The number of potential positions is in the order of 10 to the 128th (10 to the power of 128), which is vastly larger that the number of atoms in the known universe (a pitiful 10 to the 80th) For a slightly more extended discourse on the mathematical possibilities and limitations of computers vis a vis Chess, see here
• It's mostly a matter of speed at this point. White starts with 20 possible moves, and Black has 20 possible moves in reply. So at the end of the first play, there are 400 possible positions. After that the numbers start getting quite big. This article gives the number of positions in a game as 10^120. It's an interesting read about running a PC architecture against Big Blue.
• Holy Opening Gambit Batman! I didn't realize the number was that large. (thanks for the links!) Naturally the quality of programming also plays an important role. Today's top PC programs like Fritz and Junior run at 500,000 and more positions per second. They realistically have a playing strength of over 2600 and are a match for all but the top 100 players in the world. In rapid chess only the top dozen or so can compete, in blitz chess probably only two or three players could survive. So how do humans play the game - surely they don't map out all the possible moves either, so what's the difference? Why doesn't a computer just, y'know, do that? Signed, Willful E. Obtuse
• > Why doesn't a computer just, y'know, do that? The computers are being programmed in smarter ways - storing local trees in memory, pruning losing strategies earlier, defining likely best move and trying to improve from that. There are also some attempts to teach computers to use metastrategies. However, I think a big difference with humans is in visual interaction and body language. I'm not a frequent chess player, but I'd much rather play face to face than across a network or via e-mail. Why? Because I can read more in my opponent's general attitude to the board than I can in his/her placing of a particular piece.
• Hm. Well, I guess that shows how little I know about chess. (And why my cell phone beats me handily on the "Super Easy" setting)
• Why? Because I can read more in my opponent's general attitude to the board than I can in his/her placing of a particular piece. Yep, this gives Chess something of the bluffing element of Poker. There are some players who are adept at various means of psychological manipulation. Such a player such as British GM Simon Webb has achieved a level of success probably beyond his true playing strength using such devices. It's possible that he would only be an IM not a GM if he weren't playing his oppenents over the board.
• opponents-ugh!
• Chess Champion Loses to Computer "In 2002, Mr Kramnik held Deep Fritz to a draw after eight games, but the chess software has since been updated, calculating millions of positions every second."