Almost
Human Chess Machines
By GM Lubomir Kavalek
Precision, mistake-free play and machine-like calculations were the highest
accolades for the top chess players. Remember what the former world champion,
Tigran Petrosian, said after he was eliminated by Bobby Fischer from the world
championship cycle in 1971? "As soon as Fischer gains even a slightest
advantage, he begins playing like a machine. You cannot even hope for some mistake."
Nowadays, it seems to be the other way around. "They played like human
beings," is the best compliment we can pay to chess computers. When they
do play like us, we get emotional: we feel for them, love them and embrace them.
Chess computers were not only praised for making human-like moves, but they
were also accused of playing them. The former world champion Garry Kasparov
still holds a grudge against IBM's Deep Blue computer after he was defeated
by the machine in 1997. "It made human moves," he said, implying that
the computer was unfairly helped by the IBM team during the play. Despite seeing
the game logs and reading the denials of the team members, Kasparov remains
unconvinced.
The top commercial chess computer program is Rybka, a "small fish"
in Czech. Rybka 4, the newest version of its Czech-American programmer, IM Vasik
Rajlich, was recently released by ChessBase.
At the end of May, the program also triumphed at the 10th International Computer
Chess tournament in the Dutch city of Leiden. It won eight games and lost to
Deep Sjeng, which finished a full point behind the winner. But it was not this
defeat that caught my attention.
In a recent computer tournament, ran by Martin Thoresen in Norway, Rybka 4
lost to a program with another fish name, the Stockfish. The name suggests a
dead fish, but in this game it came wonderfully alive. It was a typical Grunfeld
Indian game, a classic confrontation between a strong pawn center and active
piece play with a romantic aura that would have pleased players from 19th century.
It is a chaotic masterpiece in which one king goes for a walk, the other is
hunted and the sacrifices range from pawns to queens.
I saw the moves on Mig Greengaard's inspirational Daily
Dirt site where one finds great, passionate debates on many chess topics.
Here it is with my comments:
Note that in the replay windows below you can click on the notation to
follow the game.
Original
column here – Copyright
Huffington Post
Solutions to the Zugzwang problems
In last week's
column Lubos Kavalek showed us three problems illustrating the "Art
of Zugzwang". Here are the solutions:
Original
column here – Copyright
Huffington Post
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