Excellent photo from Andreas Schwartmann
Here is a fascinating picture that shows one of the conditions of the Fritz – Kramnik match. Kramnik is allowed to see the actual Fritz screen during the opening phase of each game. This is one of the UNPRECEDENTED conditions!!
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Nothing interesting to see there. It’s a trick from Fritz to distract Kramnik.
Why don’t they allow him to look at the computer all through the game? Then he won’t risk a blunder like in game 2. Well, almost. He may still misread something.
Kramnik was against releasing the video from his rest room (match with Topalov) because his face could show some suggestions to Topalov’s team. Double standards?
what does “opening” here mean? When do they shut it down?
What is the meaning of behaving like this? Why should kramnik have a look at all?
Is there something about match conditions that I can’t recall?
>> People support Topalov’s outright cheating
Anonymous clown, where did you dream that Topalov cheats?
Kramnik still cannot win a game from the computer, which means that looking at the Fritz screen during the first 10 moves is not such a big advantage.
I bet he wanted to take an early lead in order to be safe when he gets tired in the end of the match, so if he could win so easily he would do it so far.
What is the problem if conditions are unprecedented? This is not a match with 100 yrs tradition or battle for the world champion.
So, unprecedented in comparition with who? Kasparov playing Deep Blue? Adams-Hydra? What is the right conditions for playing against computer and why? Is something established yet?
It is simply not the situation for someone to make judgements about fairness of this match. Nobody knows what is fair in this kind of match. For example, why Fritz has the same time to calculate as human does? Who can say if this is fair or not?
I would want to see deeper analysis, showing why and how Kramnik is in advantage of being able to see opening book by means of chess logic. That would be interesting.
The display is turned over to Mathias Feist once Fritz has left the building, err, the book.
So while in the book, Kramnik can see what moves the engine expects HIM to play. If a move is not listed, Kramnik knows that he’ll knock Fritz out of the book when playing it.
I strongly feel this is a fair and good idea. Both players then have access to the “same book”. Fritz has not even begun to play chess while “in book”. So why should Kramnik be forced to play chess against someone who is not playing chess.
This definitely helps to level the playing field. If fritz does not want to show Kramnik anything then they can decide to not use an opening book.
The idea of the match is not to find out if the computer can have such a huge opening book that it can trick the human before the computer even begins to play chess. The real idea of the match is to see if the computer can play as well as a human.
This way both sides begin to play chess at the same move. If the computer is good then it can win from any of the book positions it has in its library.
Kramnik is not trying to get an advantage on the computer. He is simply trying to find a place where the computer will begin to play chess on its own as soon as possible. That is a definite good idea for both sides. Let both sides arrive at a position where both sides have to work out the chess position over the board and lets see who is the better player.
Bobby Fischer had the same complaint. He said the positions were too well analyzed. Fischer wanted chess players to be put into random positions on the board and be forced to work out the position on the board. His proposal was the Fischer Random Chess idea.
The idea here is similar. Kramnik and Fritz want to arrive at a position that is not analyzed to death and both sides are forced to work out the position over the board.
I strongly believe this is a good idea.
I have never been happy with the result of Kasparov playing into a known opening trap against Deep Blue. That game was not a test of the human vs computer. It was a simple fact that the computer had the opening trap in its opening book. The computer had a winning position before it even began to play chess if it ever did. Such silliness does not answer the question about who is stronger the computer or the human. It simply shows that humans can make mistakes and a computer with a perfect opening book has a huge edge without playing one move.
Effectively the computer is playing with free book lookup for a number of moves at the beginning of the game. Why not offer Kramnik the same facility? The conditions of this match are equivalent to those that used to be in force for correspondence chess, where it was understood that both players would be able to consult MCO (showing my age!) or any other specialist references on the opening if they wanted to.
(Of course that was before the advent of affordable PC chess engines, which has made correspondence chess pointless.)
The real question is:
Why Fritz has the right to use these books? Why Fritz doesn’t play chess from move one?
Would that (normal condition to me) give advantage to Kramnik?
If so, who is better then, human or PC?
If fritz was expected to play from move one (that is without any opening database) then fritz will be at a disadvantage, coz kramnik has learned and memorize quite alot of openings.
So to be fair the computer has to use a book as well. In this case since the computer has perfect memory & can have nearly every opening in its database, it was decide that to be fair, the human should be given the opportunity to access this database view the screen showing fritz’s use of the book.
Hope this explains it 🙂
This is a real piece of evidence.
Kramnik actually is
playing with the help of
a real computer!!!!!!
renium
I do not know what is sillier: to assume that emotions on the monitor are meant, or to assert that “the idea that seeing your opponent at the board is the same as seeing them in private” is expressed, or to discover here support for Topalov.
This is a head scratcher, all right. Don’t most people who play computers not only see the screen, but input their moves themselves? People are just looking for things to get upset about.
Anonymous said:
> Fritz has not even begun to play chess while “in book”.
I’m sorry but for any sane definition of “playing” a game, Fritz is playing chess from the beginning, as much as Kramnik… Kramnik is also playing from memory in the opening. What’s the difference here?
“The real question is:
Why Fritz has the right to use these books? Why Fritz doesn’t play chess from move one?”
Because it wouldn’t stand a chance of it did. But you might as well ask why humans are allowed to call on their their own memories of books they’ve read in the past. It’s exactly the same thing, the computer just has better recall. Computers don’t use a physical book, they uses their own memory, exactly the same as a human.
See http://www.doggers-schaak.nl/?p=620&lp_lang_view=en for an interesting article about opening libraries, computers and the battle of Man vs. Machine.
I think more of an issue is about endgame tablebases and whether a chess engine should be able to access them in these type of games.
In the match conditions, when exactly does Kramnik get access to the tablebase conditions, is it when the 5 man position appears on the board, or when fritz starts using the tbs to calculate a position?
>>Bobby Fischer had the same complaint. He said the positions were too well analyzed.
>>
Fischer himself was probably the best prepared player of his day. To complain about it once he let himself fall behind the times is incredibly disingenuous.
One anon said:
I strongly feel this is a fair and good idea. Both players then have access to the “same book”. Fritz has not even begun to play chess while “in book”. So why should Kramnik be forced to play chess against someone who is not playing chess……………It simply shows that humans can make mistakes and a computer with a perfect opening book has a huge edge without playing one move.
I respectfully disagree. Human chess players also learn opening moves without necessarily analyzing all the whys. They simply accept observations by others that a certain opening line if played, leads to advantage (or disadvantage). The computer does it no differently, only it has a more stable memory.
Gabor
Responding to this comment is too good pass up:
“Kramnik was against releasing the video from his rest room (match with Topalov) because his face could show some suggestions to Topalov’s team.”
Yes, I can see it now:
Kramnik in restroom thinking to himself:
“Squeeze…inhale…exhale…squeeze…ow! that’s a huge one!…squeeze…breath…squeeze…breath…almost out…ow!…ow!…ow!…that was a huge one!…gasp…gasp…gasp…
[cut to Topalov adviser, Danailov] “Yes we really got old Kramnik on the ropes now, see him grimacing in pain!”
The match conditions are fake!
And humans can’t win still….
(mate in 1, nkg)
Still, we have to take into consideration analysis into opening moves that have never been used in practical play. What Fritz has is probably a huge database of games whereas Kramnik would have made tonnes of home preparations in a few select, strong opening he expects Fritz to play (which Fritz has no access to!!).
For example, Kasparov still has a lot of secrets (analyses and variations) in the Najdorf from his matches with Karpov that would never see the light of day (some made in in his DVD Play The Najdorf but…).
Fritz only plays book moves that are sound according to current theory. And we all know that in time a lot of finesse will be found. I’m not sure how much help the “opening expert” could do in this match but all I can say is Kramnik definitely has prepared a lot of original lines in his opening repertoire.
Kramnik’s style is much to my distaste but he definitely doesn’t fight 100% according to the book!
I think that it is ludicrous.
For a start, when does “the opening phase” start and end???
Wouldn’t a better way of giving Kramnik a level playing field against Fritz 10’s opening book have been for Kramnik to be given a printout of its opening repertoire before teh start of all games??
“The real question is:
Why Fritz has the right to use these books? Why Fritz doesn’t play chess from move one?”
“artificial opening libraries with ‘human’ openings”
Izhar Junian said…
Fritz only plays book moves that are sound according to current theory.
“1. Computers dont confuse lines, miss a move or anything like this. Their recollection of the moves is perfect. It is as if you or I were to sit down and play the game with our MCO’s open.
2. Computers have 2 million game database, with instant recollection of positions.”
My oppinion to all this is that Fritz should have not acces to the Grandmasters games for its opening book. He should play the opening by itself, good or bad. And this is not so bad, after all. Fritz may come up with some opening novelties, like 10.Re3 in the last game against Kramnik.
(BTW, does anybody knows on what hardware Fritz was running on? – Ghz, processor, RAM hash etc.)