Is master level achievable without a coach?
30 Nov '06 14:50Thanks for the posts everyone.
omg1337, very impressive improvement.
I was really hoping for an OTB master to chime in with an opinion. Of course, no one can say that it can't be done, just how difficult it would be. Naturally, becoming a master is never easy no matter who is your coach.
Even though it off the topic, I wanted to comment on the computer chess by Mr./Ms. Orange Peal.
"Strategy would be a computers weakness"
Being a positional player myself, and finding stategy books far more entertaining than tactical books, I am deffinately a strong believer in stategy. But the fact is that EVERYTHING IN CHESS IS TACTICS. There is nothing that isn't tactics. A strategic move is simply a move that will theoretically provide a tactical threat or combination in the future. Connecting your rooks, exchanging a "Bad Bishop" for your opponent's "Good Bishop", grabing the center, all these are stategic goals but are good because they increase the potential for tactical play.
For human players, there is a "curtain", if you will, that sits a few moves out that we can't see past. Naturally that curtain is several more moves out for a GM than for the rest of us. If we don't see any tactical play in the moves before the curtain, then we make a strategic move that we hope will give us tactical play somewhere on the other side of that curtain. That is a strategic move, because we can't calculate it but holds promise for future tactical play.
For a modern computer, however, that curtain is MUCH farther out. It is correct that computers don't see stategic moves the same way that we do. But computers can see so much further ahead that they can they still will make the good stategic moves because they see them as part of a 30 move tactical play. Deep Fritz is now calculating at over 9 million positions a second. It also is using endgame tablebases which literally eliminated it ability to lose a drawn endgame or draw a won endgame. Currently, that is not enough for a computer to calculate every conceivable move from the opening through the remainder of the game, leaving Kramnick the chance to play strategic moves that will give him an advantange further out than he or the computer can calculate. But what happens when that 9 million becomes 25 million? 250 million? 1 billion? With the speed at which computers are improving, this is only a few years away. At some point the computer will be able to calculate every conceivable position, eliminating its curtain and a human's ability to gain any strategic advantage.
Honestly, that scares me a little. Once that happens, will people lose interest because the game has lost some of its magic? If a computer can calculate from the initial setup to the end every possible move, will it determine that there is only one strongest line? Hmmm. . . scarry.
omg1337, very impressive improvement.
I was really hoping for an OTB master to chime in with an opinion. Of course, no one can say that it can't be done, just how difficult it would be. Naturally, becoming a master is never easy no matter who is your coach.
Even though it off the topic, I wanted to comment on the computer chess by Mr./Ms. Orange Peal.
"Strategy would be a computers weakness"
Being a positional player myself, and finding stategy books far more entertaining than tactical books, I am deffinately a strong believer in stategy. But the fact is that EVERYTHING IN CHESS IS TACTICS. There is nothing that isn't tactics. A strategic move is simply a move that will theoretically provide a tactical threat or combination in the future. Connecting your rooks, exchanging a "Bad Bishop" for your opponent's "Good Bishop", grabing the center, all these are stategic goals but are good because they increase the potential for tactical play.
For human players, there is a "curtain", if you will, that sits a few moves out that we can't see past. Naturally that curtain is several more moves out for a GM than for the rest of us. If we don't see any tactical play in the moves before the curtain, then we make a strategic move that we hope will give us tactical play somewhere on the other side of that curtain. That is a strategic move, because we can't calculate it but holds promise for future tactical play.
For a modern computer, however, that curtain is MUCH farther out. It is correct that computers don't see stategic moves the same way that we do. But computers can see so much further ahead that they can they still will make the good stategic moves because they see them as part of a 30 move tactical play. Deep Fritz is now calculating at over 9 million positions a second. It also is using endgame tablebases which literally eliminated it ability to lose a drawn endgame or draw a won endgame. Currently, that is not enough for a computer to calculate every conceivable move from the opening through the remainder of the game, leaving Kramnick the chance to play strategic moves that will give him an advantange further out than he or the computer can calculate. But what happens when that 9 million becomes 25 million? 250 million? 1 billion? With the speed at which computers are improving, this is only a few years away. At some point the computer will be able to calculate every conceivable position, eliminating its curtain and a human's ability to gain any strategic advantage.
Honestly, that scares me a little. Once that happens, will people lose interest because the game has lost some of its magic? If a computer can calculate from the initial setup to the end every possible move, will it determine that there is only one strongest line? Hmmm. . . scarry.
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