Man vs. laptop, always a draw
No winners, losers playing chess against a computer
By Mark McGuire
Thursday, January 31, 2013 


WRIGHT — Richard Moody Jr. believes in the concept of the idea. He has lots of them, sometimes one or two big ones a day, coming at him from all directions. They often hit when he is cooking dinner for his 89-year-old dad, a World War II era vet, whom he cares for in the same 1830s home the son grew up in.

The ideas — whether it be about the origins of chlorophyll or refining the tax code, the mind or plate tectonics, or chess, especially chess — arrive in an embryonic stage. He did once write a novella imagining if Jesus Christ survived the Crucifixion and lived another 30 years. Moody says that his creativity is the good side of being bi-polar, adding he hasn’t had a bad episode in a decade or so.

Others might take years forming and shaping and testing their theories. Moody doesn’t take the time, have the time. He believes the idea itself is more important than being right. “I just like bouncing ideas off of people,” he said. “And I don’t mind being wrong.” He is earnest, persistent but willing to concede valid counter points.

Never married (“Came close. Dodged a bullet”), Moody is sitting in the dining room of his farm house located on a rural Schoharie County expanse outside of Berne. He’s in front of a new laptop computer opened to a Houdini 3 chess program, At the other end of the table rests an actual chess board. He believes he has found a way to play the top-flight computer chess programs to a draw when he gives it a five-second limit to make a move. The consensus is modern programs on current computers are unbeatable.

Moody says the trick, in large part, rests with not being a top-flight chess player. (According to his ranking in human chess, he is a slightly above-average player, although he finished tied for first in his class in New York state in 2012.)

“They are assuming everything,” he said of these programs, “where I see nothing.”

“It’s programmed along certain paths,” Moody explained. “I walk different paths.” The two knights’ defense (moving the knights out early), Moody said, is an example of an opening the computer plays poorly.

He is infatuated with openings, frequently studying the onset of games. He has written several books and dozens of posts on the subject. Some of his ideas are radical; many are refuted. Chesspub.com banned him for repeatedly bringing up and pushing new concepts, he said.

“They didn’t like my ideas. Whatever happened to the First Amendment?”

The website is based overseas. 

“I haven’t thought of that.” He concedes the point.

Moody is 61, a geologist by training, but currently not employed except for his writings. Philosophically, he subscribes to the ethos of Thomas Edison, who failed repeatedly in his attempts to perfect the light bulb before his breakthrough. “I didn’t fail 3,000 times,” Edison famously said. “I found 3,000 ways how not to create a light bulb.”

Not everyone follows that creed, Moody lamented: “You can come up with 10 good ideas in a row, but if you come up with one bad idea you are dismissed as a crackpot.”

Take his plate tectonics theory — which postulated things happened quickly and violently to create the land features of the Earth, as opposed to a slow and gradual process. That found its way to the cover of the non-peer-reviewed Inside Energy magazine a few years back.

“A lot of it is wrong,” he says matter-of-factly. “Some of the facts I was relying on were incorrect.” He missed on incorporating the role and ages of animal plant life. But part of it, dealing with oceans, was right, he adds.

Christopher Chabris is a Union College psychology professor, a national master in chess. A former editor of Chess Horizons and the American Chess Journal, he has written extensively on the game. Speaking generally, he is skeptical of Moody’s chess claim. “I don’t think the top programs of today running on the hardware of today can be beaten or even played to a draw by following a formula,” Chabris said. “They are just too good catching mistakes.”

That’s the reason to espouse new ideas, Moody said. “The problem today is computers are so strong, it renders prevailing ideas (about openings) meaningless.”

Lev Alburt, a three-time U.S. champion from New York City, has tutored Moody for more than two decades. Moody’s theories on what’s called the King’s Gambit opening intrigued Alburt so much he relayed it to former world champion Gary Kasparov, whom Alburt said deemed it “Playable … not something we can refute.”

Alburt said Moody’s latest theory on openings for computer chess has to be tested before an expert. “I honestly doubt Dick would be able to draw a normal game against a computer,” Alburt said. 

“Sometimes he’s correct, based on my experience,” Alburt said. “Maybe he’s found something.”

In Moody’s world of ideas, maybe is good enough. If one idea doesn’t pan out, there is always another.

Source: http://www.timesunion.com

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