Go back
Chrilly's Law? Do you believe?

Chrilly's Law? Do you believe?

Only Chess

1 edit
Vote Up
Vote Down

I just received Chess Life September 2005 and found an interesting article, which I haven't finished yet, concerning GM Michael Adams vs Hydra (by Macauley Peterson) on page 21.

GM Adams has lost his first game, but states "Now I know what I'm up against" in the post press conference.

In the first bit the lead programmer for Hydra, Chrilly Donninger, is quoted as saying, "In a position where a human has to make 10 perfect moves in a row, we win." "It's impossible [for a human]" He calls this "Chrilly's Law".

Do you buy that? I can see the stress of the position being a problem for a human, but would it be to the point of his failing to be able to make 10 perfect moves when the position demanded it?😕

Vote Up
Vote Down

Just ignore this. The tree is gigantinormous, and it's chess itself which always has the last laugh.

Vote Up
Vote Down

I find it unlikely that a game has been played where there is only one non-losing posibility on 10 consequetive moves where those moves are hard to find. There's plenty of endgame situations where each side has only one move and they are normally obvious. You'd need a situation where the other possibilities were sufficiently convincing to an enormous depth that the machine would find the problem with them that the human wouldn't see for 10 moves. This is not likely to occur in a game. Basically the edge a machine has is that it doesn't eliminate stupid looking moves as quickly as we would, and it only takes 1 move to miss something vital.

Vote Up
Vote Down

Originally posted by DeepThought
I find it unlikely that a game has been played where there is only one non-losing posibility on 10 consequetive moves where those moves are [b]hard to find. There's plenty of endgame situations where each side has only one move and they are normally obvious. You'd need a situation where the other possibilities were sufficiently convincing to an e ...[text shortened]... e stupid looking moves as quickly as we would, and it only takes 1 move to miss something vital.[/b]
I thought, and still think this is the case. Your point with endgames is a good one. The middle game is the only area I could think of where something like this may be true, but the position would have to be a literal labyrinth of possibilities and complications for this to be true. Like you, I'd like to see an example position.

Here's a position from game 1 (Petroff Defense) after Hydra's 14. Rb1 invention, per the article, with the idea of 15. b5, Donninger: "After Rb1 we were pretty confident we were winning":


In the end the best GM Adams did was a draw in game 2 in the 6 games against Hydra.