

Garry Kasparov defeats Alan Turing in chess in 15 moves - lathamcity
http://chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=8283

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basugasubaku
They set the machine to play at 2-ply, i.e., it only looks two moves ahead.
It's not so surprising even a good algorithm would lose in 15 moves at 2-ply.

The article mentions they also played at 5-ply and it lasted 27 and 30 moves
against Kasparov, which is probably better than most casual players would do.

~~~
peeters
I do think this was a reasonable choice for the presentation because as I
understand it, that's what Turing would have used when working it out with
pencil and paper (and as they said, even that would take 15 minute between
turns). 5-ply probably would have taken on the order of weeks or months to
calculate the next move by hand.

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dennisgorelik
It was also fun to watch how much better Kasparov is than me at that speed (~5
seconds per move).

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raldi
Is there a summary of Turing's algorithm somewhere?

~~~
folktheory
I'm guessing it generates the tree (2 levels deep) and then uses an evaluation
function to choose the best branch.

Not too far off from a modern algorithm, except that it lacks even basic
optimizations like alpha-beta pruning, etc. and an incredibly fine-tuned
evaluation function and a huge library of opening and closing moves.

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djt
humans can look 5-8 moves ahead with practice. GM's can probably look 15 or so
moves ahead as well as study tactics of regular positions such as openings.

~~~
starpilot
> Human grandmasters don’t work that way. They do not necessarily “see” the
> game several moves out. Indeed, they can’t — as Kasparov points out, chess
> is so complex that “a player looking eight moves ahead [faces] as many
> possible games as there are stars in the galaxy.”... “As for how many moves
> ahead a grandmaster sees,” as Kasparov concludes, the real answer is: “Just
> one, the best one.”
> [http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cy...](http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cyborgs_are.php)

~~~
philh
There's something I don't understand about this. My impression is that
grandmasters don't play quickly (against each other). I'd be surprised if it
was uncommon to spend more than five minutes on a move, for example.

So what takes so long? I assume their process is roughly "consider all
possible moves, decide how good they are". So if they only look one move
ahead, that sounds to me like when they evaluate a potential position, it can
take more than a few seconds and they do it without reading possible future
moves. Which seems unlikely.

Am I misinterpreting "one move ahead"?

~~~
lathamcity
I wrote a lesson plan that was used in a chess camp this summer, and one
section covered various thought processes. Here is an excerpt from that
section.

"As time goes on, your thought process will start to be based more and more on
your positional intuition. Instead of explicitly weighing certain details
against each other, you will instinctively be able to feel what direction the
game is headed in. This intuition does not come naturally, but instead is the
result of playing hundreds and thousands of chess games. Over the course of
all those games, you will see positions similar to the one you are playing
right now, and even though you may not explicitly internalize them, your
subconsciousness will recognize the themes from before, and you will have some
vague recollection or understanding of the position based on your prior
experience."

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excuse-me
Thus proving Turing is human - unless of course that's what it wants you to
think !

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medusa666
Will that man please either return to playing serious chess or (better) go
away and stop his attention-whoring!?

~~~
sp332
The dude is a legit national hero. He ran for president in 2008!

~~~
btilly
He's seriously deluded. He believes that volumes of historical writings, C-14
dating, etc notwithstanding, that about a thousand years of recorded history
never happened. Largely on the basis of the fact that the exponential
population growth Europe has had since the British Agricultural revolution, if
projected backwards in time, would say that there wouldn't have been as many
people in Rome as there were.

Even a cursory understanding of, say, the trials our ancestors went through in
the 1300s makes it obvious that he's wrong to project back his little
exponential curve that far.

See <http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm> for details of
Kasparov's beliefs. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution> and
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography> for basic historical facts
that show some basic flaws in Kasparov's arguments. (About his points on Roman
numerals, they are indeed entirely unsuited to calculation. The Romans did all
calculations using abacuses, numerals were just their way of writing down the
answers for which purpose they are just fine.)

~~~
planetguy
Yep, he sure has some wacky ideas about history. Still, gotta give him credit
for the fact that his wacky ideas are at least unusual -- he seems to have
developed his stupid belief system for himself rather than acquiring it
wholesale from someone else.

Also, he sure is good at chess.

~~~
btilly
Actually he acquired it wholesale and then elaborated. See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko)> for more on the ideas
that he has.

And yes, he's amazing at chess. However that is not necessarily an endorsement
of his abilities at anything else. Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant
occupational hazard at top levels of play. (See Bobby Fischer for a
significant example.)

~~~
itmag
_Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels
of play._

Any theories on why that is?

Maybe having super-charged pattern-making ability makes for great chess AND
great paranoia.

~~~
Confusion
The brain is a pattern recognition engine well known to report many false
positives. Most people are aware of that, be it often unconsciously. Chess
masters learn to trust their intuition and pattern recognition, even when
contrary signals are present, because, for some reason, that works in chess.
It doesn't in the real world, where there are much more than 32 (the number of
pieces) facts to keep track off.

