Dungeon Master Forum

Since I have already flooded the forums with my posts this morning, I might as well write one more on a subject apart from DM - does anybody here play chess and is going to watch the Kasparov-X3DFritz competition? I'd like to know who you think is going to win this contest...

http://www.x3dchess.com/

Regards, PitD

I used to play chess tournaments, but it's years since I actively played. I stopped to do so when I reached the point where I would have been required to invest a significant amount of time to improve my skill, and instead chose to stay at amatuer level. Though it has been a very good mental exercise, I never played with the necessary seriousness of an ambitious chess player.

Thanks for your vote, Lunever. Seems like the chess players are a little rare here Well, I am very curious anyway how the outcome will be. Am playing since more than 20 years now, only on an amateur basis, never been to any club or suchlike. But Internet events fascinate me, and I'm looking forward to hard fights between those two giants. Hoping -though not beliving- that the human wins...

Regards, PitD

More in a man vs machine way i would vote...i would guess a draw...let us lazy non-chess players the result when it happens. won't you? : )

Of course. Since I'm not able to sculpt or paint properly (or have not tried long and hard enough) I have to stick to playing chess ;o)

Regards, PitD

Lol, and since i can't do all of the above i stick to posting : )
603 now or something...

A SAD LETTER



Hmm.... Kasparov is getting old... Chess programs have an exponential growth. Even if the human don't lose this time, we all know it is ONLY a matter of time...
Oh well I hope K will win, so I can live a few months more with other beliefs. But soon or later, the world will become more hostile to mankind...
In this encounter we will face the summary of the new era to come: the era of MACHINES! Kasparov was the last of his kind to be able to face machine, but in a certain way he will be the first human to be completely vanquish by a machine, as chess were his whole life: the meaning of his life.
Yes he will be the first of a long serie. We all will surrender the meaning of our lives to the machines. One by one, little by little, then faster, and then it will be done. It will be done and we won't be able to go back to other times, to the more smiling times.
It was an error to try to go beyond DM. Computer race should have stopped in '87

We'd probably all be sitting playing adventures via mail then ;o)
Let's see if the big K can still surprise, although I'm afraid he won't be - Fritz is too strong an opponent already in my opinion with ~ 4 million move calculations per second...

Regards, PitD

After 2 of 4 games the silicon beast leads by 1,5:0,5. Kasparov had attacking chances in game 1 but failed to find a way to convert them. In the second game (playing with black pieces) he could survice a surprise opening and even gain a slight advantage before making one blunder in the middle game which his opponent exploited mercilessly. Chances for an overall win or even a draw are now pretty small.

http://www.x3dchess.com/

Regards, PitD

I played a little chess when I was younger but never had the discipline to pursue it to any great degree. However, I was interested in this latest CPU vs Human challenge and had a look at the website and read some of the analysis -- it certainly looks like Fritz is a very difficult opponent.

Why did K accepted wearing these 3d goggles? It adds nothing to the encounter except a handicap for the human. Or is it an all-ready excuse in case of defeat...

By the way, did you know that I had a friend who beat K once? It was in a chess tournament at Manille in the Philippines spanning through a whole week. She was a great chess player, and spoke a perfect russian. By the end of the day the players would try to have some fun. K and she were taught together the rules of the chinese chess. Then they play. She won

(I never said it was at chess)

K, but chinese chess is quite a bit different from "normal" chess.

BTW: How did K perform against the machine in the end?

The current standing is 1,5:1,5...

Game 3 was a tactical masterpiece from Kasparov: He built up a very closed position (meaning that few legal moves are possible and everything depends on positioning your pieces - one of the few situations where you can still succeed against these monster programs because it does not depend on how many moves you can evaluate per second, but rather on how to build up hidden threats before attacking) and succeeded in completely convincing Fritz that there was no danger at all while all the Grandmaster (another rank, Beo ? ) commentators already said that the position was hopeless. So until the very last moves played Fritz thought the position was equal. Mig Greengard, a former associate of Kasparov and commentator said that in the end, "Fritz finally sees the light at the end of the tunnel and realizes it is a speed train going to crush him". So, this game was not only a victory, but a demonstration.

One match to go, starting 1 p.m. New York time today. Thumbs crossed for humanity ;o)

Regards, PitD

I read the analyze of the 3rd match: it is beautiful. I am very happy that K could equalize the score.

Thumbs crossed for humanity!

The last game was a draw in 26 moves - final score: 2:2.

Fritz (white pieces) chose a sharp openeing with many traps, but Kasparov navigated quite well through the possible dangers. At one point he could have chosen to play a very sharp continuation with which he won against the world's #2 player, Vladimir Kramnik, in December 2001, but this line would have been very risky against Fritz for it is not yet properly explored and a very sharp continuation in which the machine would have felt more at home than the human.

So potential risks were avoided by exchanging pieces and the final position was so obviously drawn already a few moves before that there was no point in playing on. So, the battle humanity vs. machines ends in a draw again, same as the last battles Kramnik vs. Fritz (October 2002) and Kasparov vs. Deep Junior (January 2003).

Regards, PitD

Phew! I can relax now and uncross my thumbs!

Hope you got no cramps. Even I had to uncross them several times yesterday during my evening shift helping out as a waiter or it would have looked extremely stupid.

Regards, PitD

I play chess. Not seriously, or anything though . I'm trying to find my copy of battle chess right now, a post reminded me of it...