How good is Fritz and other programs?

I read Kasparov tied against Fritz X3D, and he also had notorious losses against Deep Blue.

Did the Fritz program that drew the match against him have the same engine as the kind you'd buy in the store?

How does Fritz stand up against Chessmaster?

I find it disheartening that we've reached a time where silicon can defeat the human legends we admire. 🙁

Originally posted by USArmyParatrooper
I read Kasparov tied against Fritz X3D, and he also had notorious losses against Deep Blue.

Did the Fritz program that drew the match against him have the same engine as the kind you'd buy in the store?

The engine was probably fairly similar to what was available at the time but it would have run on much more powerful hardware than anything generally available.

Current engines would be much stronger than what was around in 2003 though.

Originally posted by Schumi
The engine was probably fairly similar to what was available at the time but it would have run on much more powerful hardware than anything generally available.

Current engines would be much stronger than what was around in 2003 though.

Wow. So basically computers rule supreme now.

Did you ever see the 1976 (I think) match Bobby Fischer vs. Greenblat? Fischer destroyed it.

Kramink (world champion at the time) lost 4-2 to Deep Fritz in 2006. He famously missed that the computer was threatening mate in one in the second game. It seemed to be a fairly competitive match though. Kramnik was better in a few of the games apparently.

Hydra massacred Michael Adams (7th in the world at the time) 5.5-0.5 in 2005. I don't know if there have been any big matches since those two. Rybka on one of the monster machines they use for these matches might be too much for anyone.

The latest Rybka & Fritz 11 play to an Elo rating of 3200, I understand. Given the strongest player in the world has never gone higher than 2830 or thereabouts, and the super-GMs are 2700+, you can see engines enjoy a sizeable advantage.

In matches between humans and engines, it is now 'no contest'. But Topalov (2800) has argued that the very best GMs can hold or beat machines, given limitless time. In other words, the stress and tension involved in normal match conditions (time pressure etc) make it impossible for humans to compete since machines suffer none of this.

But I regard the issue as largely irrelevant. Usain Bolt can't beat a Ferrari over 100m but we think none the worse of him. And the greatest weightlifter in the world can't outlift a fork-lift truck. So why do we worry that computers can beat us at chess? They already beat us at pretty much every other form of calculation

Originally posted by atticus2
The latest Rybka & Fritz 11 play to an Elo rating of 3200, I understand. Given the strongest player in the world has never gone higher than 2830 or thereabouts, and the super-GMs are 2700+, you can see engines enjoy a sizeable advantage.

In matches between humans and engines, it is now 'no contest'. But Topalov (2800) has argued that the very best GMs ca ...[text shortened]... rs can beat us at chess? They already beat us at pretty much every other form of calculation

What I think is bothersome to people about machine chess isn't that machines will be unbeatable under "human" conditions -- that only means they are blindly ignorant of elements of the game that we humans have to -- and do -- overcome. What I think is more depressing to some, is the implication that chess as a formal system can be "solved" by calculations, with only the on-the-board rules at hand. No years of practice, no intellect, just turn the crank.

Race-cars regularly beat me in the quarter-mile (heck, they beat me getting off the couch!) Checkers have actually been solved by the researchers at the University of Alberta. Chess is so big it will probably never be solved and we can easily vary it with something like 960 if we desired (Checkers actually had to proscribe the opening over 100 years ago!) One reason programs have so great an advantage is because they are able to perfectly use stored analysis at the beginning of the game (stored because it is the result of hundreds of years of human activity.) Humans are infinitely more interesting to play than computers - you can tell there is brain planning because of the little slips - the slips are the gateway to the marvelous possibilities that make Chess interesting. Perfect games are boring - even when humans play them!

Originally posted by TerrierJack
Race-cars regularly beat me in the quarter-mile (heck, they beat me getting off the couch!) Checkers have actually been solved by the researchers at the University of Alberta. Chess is so big it will probably never be solved and we can easily vary it with something like 960 if we desired (Checkers actually had to proscribe the opening over 100 years ago! ...[text shortened]... ossibilities that make Chess interesting. Perfect games are boring - even when humans play them!

surprisingly, the engines are still pretty weak in Go...

Originally posted by Schumi
The engine was probably fairly similar to what was available at the time but it would have run on much more powerful hardware than anything generally available.

Current engines would be much stronger than what was around in 2003 though.

It was run on a quad-4 Pentium, but I doubt that made it all that much stronger than on a regular machine. There's a point of diminishing returns on pure computing power, a fast CPU today with 4 gig of ram would probably be just as good, or close to it. If you ran Fritz on a regular machine against Fritz on a Quad-4 you'd probably just see a lot of draws and very, very long games before the quad won occasionally.

Originally posted by atticus2
The latest Rybka & Fritz 11 play to an Elo rating of 3200, I understand.

different rating pool, different numbers. no machine that I know of has an established rating in any human player pool. the 3200 is little more than a marketing ploy.

still, they're obviously very strong. mostly because they don't suffer from fatigue, and are practically immune to tactics (not totally though, as their pruning systems miss relevant moves occasionally). but they're still crap at a number of things, at which humans still can outplay them, and possibly hold that advantage until the game ends.

Originally posted by wormwood
different rating pool, different numbers. no machine that I know of has an established rating in any human player pool. the 3200 is little more than a marketing ploy.

still, they're obviously very strong. mostly because they don't suffer from fatigue, and are practically immune to tactics (not totally though, as their pruning systems miss relevant moves h humans still can outplay them, and possibly hold that advantage until the game ends.

Uhhhmmm, I don't think they could be called "crap" at anything. GM's have a hard time beating them on standard PC's nowadays. They'll still have a positive score if they bring their best game to the table, but they'll lose and draw a lot of games along the way.

For those not familiar with the SSDF computer rating organization, here's how they rated the best of the bunch against each other last time they checked. Note the puny amount of RAM the CP's had compared to the 2 gig+ standard of today:

http://www.chessusa.com/SSDF.html

I can beat a Ferrari at 100m, as long as it's 100m Freestyle.

A chess engine can beat us,humans,at a game of chess.We can beat it at a million things.
Final score: Humans 1,000,000 - Chess engine 1

Originally posted by Sam The Sham
Uhhhmmm, I don't think they could be called "crap" at anything. GM's have a hard time beating them on standard PC's nowadays. They'll still have a positive score if they bring their best game to the table, but they'll lose and draw a lot of games along the way.

openings for one. engines are still quite clueless without the human-made opening books. they're not that good at endgame (or any other) strategy either, unless they're allowed to rely on pre-computed tablebases. they can't crack that stuff in realtime.

in fact the only thing they do well, is calculation. human players still tend to try beating engines at that, which is completely undoable.

I don't think there has been strong human players understanding search algorithms who have played against engines yet. they're still relying on 'coffee house computing' misconceptions, dated weaknesses that maybe were true 20-30 years ago etc, kasparov being a prime example. -we haven't seen the best human vs engine play yet. if someone like kramnik understood deeply how search algorithms worked, and were willing to adjust himself accordingly (that would take years), we'd still see the top GMs blowing the engines right out of the water.

but there's no real reason for them to do that, no money and more importantly no point, so it's not likely to happen. so we're doomed to hear GMs talking about engine evaluation as if they were humans, "what's rybka thinking with that move?" "rybka thinks this" rybka thinks that", which is completely misleading. engine evaluation is still just a subjective opinion, which can be wrong just like human evaluation. it just makes different kind of errors, because it doesn't think. it's a glorified pocket calculator, incapable of understanding the data it's fed with.

at least until the chess engine paradigma shifts from the brute force approach. but with the exception of a few tries at neural nets it doesn't seem to be happening yet. which ironically enough, is due to the lack of people understanding both computing and chess deeply. the math exists, even some hardware exists, but everybody's still trying to make the same old serial processing pocket calculators, only a little faster than the previous guy. there's been zero innovation in chess engines for decades, they're still doing the same thing as in the 80s, with minor performance tweaks. a student can code up a program which beats the other guys, because it's still the same exact crap it's been for decades. case in point: zappa engine.

Originally posted by Winston Smith
A chess engine can beat us,humans,at a game of chess.We can beat it at a million things.
Final score: Humans 1,000,000 - Chess engine 1

Report to room one-oh-one doubleplus fast.