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Talking with a co-worker the other day, I unthinkingly articulated a question that made us both stop and think a bit: "Could a human beat a computer at chess?"

Talking with a co-worker the other day, I unthinkingly articulated a question that made us both stop and think a bit: "Could a human beat a computer at chess?" Like, now. 20 years after Kasparov. Could someone do it? The question feels daring somehow.

yifanl 7y ago
In fair conditions and against a top-performing chess bot, simply no seems like the correct answer. If you're asking how a human can contrive a scenario to beat Stockfish/Leela, that seems like just a conversation that devolves into what is and isn't too contrived.
stevekemp 7y ago
That reminds me of a story .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power
mensetmanusman 7y ago
Sounds like the plot of a good movie!
Thorrez 7y ago
If the computer has a bad algorithm, or if the computer has a low powered CPU, then yes.
DiogenesKynikos 7y ago
No. I doubt any human could even beat Stockfish running on a decent smartphone. Big showcase computer-human matches ended in the mid-2000s. That's about the point when people realized it was hopeless to try to beat computers. The best you could do back then was draw, by playing extremely defensive "anti-computer" chess (positions where the pawns clog up the board, making short-term tactics useless, and making long-term strategy more important). But with modern engines (particularly AlphaZero, which understands positional chess much better than previous engines), even anti-computer chess doesn't work. Now, the top players actually rave about the games played by AlphaZero. Magnus Carlsen has said he wants to play like AlphaZero. For a more quantitative comparison, these are the Elo scores of the top chess engines: https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/ https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/ A difference of 400 Elo points means that the better player should score 0.9 (where 1=win, 0.5=draw, 0=loss). The top computers are about 3600 Elo nowadays, compared to 2870 for the best human (Magnus). It's difficult to directly compare human and computer Elos, but this comparison is based on computer-human games played in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Still, computers are many hundreds of Elo points above the very best human players.
xamuel 7y ago
It's an open problem whether or not one of the sides in chess has a "winning strategy". That's a technical game-theoretical term. If white has a "winning strategy", that means there's a way for white to play such that black will inevitably lose. Likewise, if black has a "winning strategy", that means there's a way for black to play such that white will inevitably lose. Exercise to the reader: prove that at most one color can have a winning strategy. Since the problem is open, it could be that one side has a winning strategy. It's even theoretically possible there's a winning strategy simple enough for a human to follow. In which case, yes, a human could beat computers with 100% dominance--as long as the human is allowed to choose which color to play.
carapace 7y ago
> Kasparov versus the World was a game of chess played in 1999 over the Internet.[1] Conducting the white pieces, Garry Kasparov faced the rest of the world in consultation, with the World Team moves to be decided by plurality vote. Over 50,000 people from more than 75 countries participated in the game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World
FartyMcFarter 7y ago
> "Could a human beat a computer at chess?" If you start from a winning position, even something as stupid as a random-mover will eventually play a perfect sequence of moves and win, given enough attempts. However humans are not very good at being random, so this may not apply :)

yifanl 7y ago

In fair conditions and against a top-performing chess bot, simply no seems like the correct answer. If you're asking how a human can contrive a scenario to beat Stockfish/Leela, that seems like just a conversation that devolves into what is and isn't too contrived.

stevekemp 7y ago

That reminds me of a story .. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Feeling_of_Power

mensetmanusman 7y ago

Sounds like the plot of a good movie!

Thorrez 7y ago

If the computer has a bad algorithm, or if the computer has a low powered CPU, then yes.

DiogenesKynikos 7y ago

No. I doubt any human could even beat Stockfish running on a decent smartphone. Big showcase computer-human matches ended in the mid-2000s. That's about the point when people realized it was hopeless to try to beat computers. The best you could do back then was draw, by playing extremely defensive "anti-computer" chess (positions where the pawns clog up the board, making short-term tactics useless, and making long-term strategy more important). But with modern engines (particularly AlphaZero, which understands positional chess much better than previous engines), even anti-computer chess doesn't work. Now, the top players actually rave about the games played by AlphaZero. Magnus Carlsen has said he wants to play like AlphaZero. For a more quantitative comparison, these are the Elo scores of the top chess engines: https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/ https://www.computerchess.org.uk/ccrl/404/ A difference of 400 Elo points means that the better player should score 0.9 (where 1=win, 0.5=draw, 0=loss). The top computers are about 3600 Elo nowadays, compared to 2870 for the best human (Magnus). It's difficult to directly compare human and computer Elos, but this comparison is based on computer-human games played in the late 1990s to early 2000s. Still, computers are many hundreds of Elo points above the very best human players.

xamuel 7y ago

It's an open problem whether or not one of the sides in chess has a "winning strategy". That's a technical game-theoretical term. If white has a "winning strategy", that means there's a way for white to play such that black will inevitably lose. Likewise, if black has a "winning strategy", that means there's a way for black to play such that white will inevitably lose. Exercise to the reader: prove that at most one color can have a winning strategy. Since the problem is open, it could be that one side has a winning strategy. It's even theoretically possible there's a winning strategy simple enough for a human to follow. In which case, yes, a human could beat computers with 100% dominance--as long as the human is allowed to choose which color to play.

carapace 7y ago

> Kasparov versus the World was a game of chess played in 1999 over the Internet.[1] Conducting the white pieces, Garry Kasparov faced the rest of the world in consultation, with the World Team moves to be decided by plurality vote. Over 50,000 people from more than 75 countries participated in the game. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kasparov_versus_the_World

FartyMcFarter 7y ago

> "Could a human beat a computer at chess?" If you start from a winning position, even something as stupid as a random-mover will eventually play a perfect sequence of moves and win, given enough attempts. However humans are not very good at being random, so this may not apply :)