Accoona's Ultimate
“Man vs. Machine” Chess Match
June 21, 2005, 5pm at the ABC Times Square Studios
Feel like visiting the ABC Studios on New York's Times Square? Watch the reigning
FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov take on the "AI Accoona ToolBar"
in a public match? And listen to onsite move-by-move commentary by chess experts?
Accoona, the host and organiser, has given us 225 tickets to distribute among
ChessBase news readers who live in the area – or who are willing to make
the trip to New York to attend. If you are interested contact us using the
form given below.
New York's world famous Times Square, where the event will be staged
New York City Sports Commissioner Ken Podziba said: “On behalf of the
City of New York I am proud to welcome the 2005 Accoona Man versus Machine
Chess Championship to New York City. Chess fans throughout the World will be
watching closely as the World Chess Champion battles one of the world’s
premier chess programs – truly a spectacle where the human mind meets
technological achievement.”
The ABC studios, were earlier chess events were held
Press information
The computer opponent
The Accoona Ultimate “Man vs. Machine” Chess Match, which takes
place on June 21, 2005, 5 pm, at the ABC Times Square Studios, pits the reigning
FIDE world champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov against the Accoona Artificial Intelligence
Search ToolBar.
The Accoona ToolBar is the first of its kind to offer a free, completely interactive
chess experience. Chess enthusiasts are able to compete with others from around
the World, and against the Accoona AI Chess Program included in the toolbar’s
technology. Accoona’s ToolBar also offers free daily chess tips and strategy
sessions to toolbar users, where chess enthusiasts are able to improve their
skills over time.
The chess program that is integrated in the Accoona ToolBar is a small, 100
KB Java applet that loads in your browser and is ready to play within seconds
– a no-hassle chess experience. It has different levels of skill for
beginners, medium and strong players.
The Accoona ToolBar chess program is very special in one way: it learns from
experience. Every game it plays against users on the net is sent to a central
server, where it is analysed by AI engines, which locate weaknesses and suggest
possible improvements. These are automatically integrated into the Accoona
ToolBar chess program, which becomes progressively stronger as it plays tens
and then hundreds of thousands of games.
The AI engines in this experimental project are being developed jointly by
Accoona and the leading German chess software company ChessBase. The
basis is the world-famous Fritz program which is used by chess
professionals to analyse their games and improve their skills.
The latest version of Fritz, which is under development, is based on strategic
and tactical understanding rather than just on a brute force search. It contains
vast amounts of chess knowledge, gained by human chess experts over the centuries,
and it uses this to try and find meaningful plans in the course of the game.
Since the program no longer relies on speed to maintain the highest level
of play, it will operate on a simple notebook computer in its game against
the human world champion.
Statistics
- Hardware: a standard, off-the-shelf notebook with a 2 GHz Centrino processor
and 1 GB of memory.
- Size of the program: 10 MByte, including graphical user interface.
- Speed of search on a Centrino notebook: 1.5 million positions per second
in the middlegame, up to two million in the endgame.
- Search depth: 15 moves full width, with dangerous lines searched up to
40 moves deep. In the endgame this may increase to 19 moves full width.
- Fritz can announce mate in up to 70 moves.
- Openings book: over 250 MByte, with information 2.8 million positions
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