4 ms·

Garry Kasparov defeats Alan Turing in chess in 15 moves

103 points by lathamcity 14y ago

excuse-me 14y ago
Thus proving Turing is human - unless of course that's what it wants you to think !
dennisgorelik 14y ago
It was also fun to watch how much better Kasparov is than me at that speed (~5 seconds per move).
medusa666 14y ago
Will that man please either return to playing serious chess or (better) go away and stop his attention-whoring!?
- sp332 14y ago
  The dude is a legit national hero. He ran for president in 2008!
  - lathamcity 14y ago
    He didn't get any significant support.
  - btilly 14y ago
    He's seriously deluded. He believes that volumes of historical writings, C-14 dating, etc notwithstanding, that about a thousand years of recorded history never happened. Largely on the basis of the fact that the exponential population growth Europe has had since the British Agricultural revolution, if projected backwards in time, would say that there wouldn't have been as many people in Rome as there were. Even a cursory understanding of, say, the trials our ancestors went through in the 1300s makes it obvious that he's wrong to project back his little exponential curve that far. See http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm for details of Kasparov's beliefs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography for basic historical facts that show some basic flaws in Kasparov's arguments. (About his points on Roman numerals, they are indeed entirely unsuited to calculation. The Romans did all calculations using abacuses, numerals were just their way of writing down the answers for which purpose they are just fine.)
    - planetguy 14y ago
      Yep, he sure has some wacky ideas about history. Still, gotta give him credit for the fact that his wacky ideas are at least unusual -- he seems to have developed his stupid belief system for himself rather than acquiring it wholesale from someone else. Also, he sure is good at chess.
      - btilly 14y ago
        Actually he acquired it wholesale and then elaborated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko) for more on the ideas that he has. And yes, he's amazing at chess. However that is not necessarily an endorsement of his abilities at anything else. Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play. (See Bobby Fischer for a significant example.)
        itmag 14y ago
        Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play. Any theories on why that is? Maybe having super-charged pattern-making ability makes for great chess AND great paranoia.
        Confusion 14y ago
        The brain is a pattern recognition engine well known to report many false positives. Most people are aware of that, be it often unconsciously. Chess masters learn to trust their intuition and pattern recognition, even when contrary signals are present, because, for some reason, that works in chess. It doesn't in the real world, where there are much more than 32 (the number of pieces) facts to keep track off.
    - lathamcity 14y ago
      He's not the only grandmaster with some wacky ideas about history. Here's world #11, Alexander Grischuk, praising Joseph Stalin and discussing how 9/11 was a setup: http://www.whychess.org/node/514 http://www.whychess.org/node/514
basugasubaku 14y ago
They set the machine to play at 2-ply, i.e., it only looks two moves ahead. It's not so surprising even a good algorithm would lose in 15 moves at 2-ply. The article mentions they also played at 5-ply and it lasted 27 and 30 moves against Kasparov, which is probably better than most casual players would do.
- peeters 14y ago
  I do think this was a reasonable choice for the presentation because as I understand it, that's what Turing would have used when working it out with pencil and paper (and as they said, even that would take 15 minute between turns). 5-ply probably would have taken on the order of weeks or months to calculate the next move by hand.
raldi 14y ago
Is there a summary of Turing's algorithm somewhere?
- folktheory 14y ago
  I'm guessing it generates the tree (2 levels deep) and then uses an evaluation function to choose the best branch. Not too far off from a modern algorithm, except that it lacks even basic optimizations like alpha-beta pruning, etc. and an incredibly fine-tuned evaluation function and a huge library of opening and closing moves.
- cduan 14y ago
  Here is one summary I found: http://uscfsales.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/an-“easy”-engine-for-the-fritzrybka-interface/ http://uscfsales.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/an-“easy”-engine-f...
djt 14y ago
humans can look 5-8 moves ahead with practice. GM's can probably look 15 or so moves ahead as well as study tactics of regular positions such as openings.
- starpilot 14y ago
  > Human grandmasters don’t work that way. They do not necessarily “see” the game several moves out. Indeed, they can’t — as Kasparov points out, chess is so complex that “a player looking eight moves ahead [faces] as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy.”... “As for how many moves ahead a grandmaster sees,” as Kasparov concludes, the real answer is: “Just one, the best one.” http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cyborgs_are.php http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cy...
  - philh 14y ago
    There's something I don't understand about this. My impression is that grandmasters don't play quickly (against each other). I'd be surprised if it was uncommon to spend more than five minutes on a move, for example. So what takes so long? I assume their process is roughly "consider all possible moves, decide how good they are". So if they only look one move ahead, that sounds to me like when they evaluate a potential position, it can take more than a few seconds and they do it without reading possible future moves. Which seems unlikely. Am I misinterpreting "one move ahead"?
    - mitsche 14y ago
      I doubt this quote is to be taken literally. I rather think he means that good chess players are very, very good at deciding which moves to think deeper about based on intuition, hence reducing the need to visualize. He's being witty, is all.
    - okamiueru 14y ago
      I think it was more of a poetic way of expressing it. That they consider many moves and their impacts, but it's based on experience, intuition, intelligence and knowledge, pruning out that bad branches quickly on, and identifying and focusing on promising ones.

103 points by lathamcity 14y ago

excuse-me 14y ago

Thus proving Turing is human - unless of course that's what it wants you to think !

dennisgorelik 14y ago

It was also fun to watch how much better Kasparov is than me at that speed (~5 seconds per move).

medusa666 14y ago

Will that man please either return to playing serious chess or (better) go away and stop his attention-whoring!?

sp332 14y ago
The dude is a legit national hero. He ran for president in 2008!
- lathamcity 14y ago
  He didn't get any significant support.
- btilly 14y ago
  He's seriously deluded. He believes that volumes of historical writings, C-14 dating, etc notwithstanding, that about a thousand years of recorded history never happened. Largely on the basis of the fact that the exponential population growth Europe has had since the British Agricultural revolution, if projected backwards in time, would say that there wouldn't have been as many people in Rome as there were. Even a cursory understanding of, say, the trials our ancestors went through in the 1300s makes it obvious that he's wrong to project back his little exponential curve that far. See http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm http://www.revisedhistory.org/view-garry-kasparov.htm for details of Kasparov's beliefs. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_demography for basic historical facts that show some basic flaws in Kasparov's arguments. (About his points on Roman numerals, they are indeed entirely unsuited to calculation. The Romans did all calculations using abacuses, numerals were just their way of writing down the answers for which purpose they are just fine.)
  - planetguy 14y ago
    Yep, he sure has some wacky ideas about history. Still, gotta give him credit for the fact that his wacky ideas are at least unusual -- he seems to have developed his stupid belief system for himself rather than acquiring it wholesale from someone else. Also, he sure is good at chess.
    - btilly 14y ago
      Actually he acquired it wholesale and then elaborated. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Chronology_(Fomenko) for more on the ideas that he has. And yes, he's amazing at chess. However that is not necessarily an endorsement of his abilities at anything else. Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play. (See Bobby Fischer for a significant example.)
      - itmag 14y ago
        Paranoid delusions seem to be a significant occupational hazard at top levels of play. Any theories on why that is? Maybe having super-charged pattern-making ability makes for great chess AND great paranoia.
        Confusion 14y ago
        The brain is a pattern recognition engine well known to report many false positives. Most people are aware of that, be it often unconsciously. Chess masters learn to trust their intuition and pattern recognition, even when contrary signals are present, because, for some reason, that works in chess. It doesn't in the real world, where there are much more than 32 (the number of pieces) facts to keep track off.
  - lathamcity 14y ago
    He's not the only grandmaster with some wacky ideas about history. Here's world #11, Alexander Grischuk, praising Joseph Stalin and discussing how 9/11 was a setup: http://www.whychess.org/node/514 http://www.whychess.org/node/514

basugasubaku 14y ago

They set the machine to play at 2-ply, i.e., it only looks two moves ahead. It's not so surprising even a good algorithm would lose in 15 moves at 2-ply. The article mentions they also played at 5-ply and it lasted 27 and 30 moves against Kasparov, which is probably better than most casual players would do.

peeters 14y ago
I do think this was a reasonable choice for the presentation because as I understand it, that's what Turing would have used when working it out with pencil and paper (and as they said, even that would take 15 minute between turns). 5-ply probably would have taken on the order of weeks or months to calculate the next move by hand.

raldi 14y ago

Is there a summary of Turing's algorithm somewhere?

folktheory 14y ago
I'm guessing it generates the tree (2 levels deep) and then uses an evaluation function to choose the best branch. Not too far off from a modern algorithm, except that it lacks even basic optimizations like alpha-beta pruning, etc. and an incredibly fine-tuned evaluation function and a huge library of opening and closing moves.
cduan 14y ago
Here is one summary I found: http://uscfsales.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/an-“easy”-engine-for-the-fritzrybka-interface/ http://uscfsales.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/an-“easy”-engine-f...

djt 14y ago

humans can look 5-8 moves ahead with practice. GM's can probably look 15 or so moves ahead as well as study tactics of regular positions such as openings.

starpilot 14y ago
> Human grandmasters don’t work that way. They do not necessarily “see” the game several moves out. Indeed, they can’t — as Kasparov points out, chess is so complex that “a player looking eight moves ahead [faces] as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy.”... “As for how many moves ahead a grandmaster sees,” as Kasparov concludes, the real answer is: “Just one, the best one.” http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cyborgs_are.php http://www.collisiondetection.net/mt/archives/2010/02/why_cy...
- philh 14y ago
  There's something I don't understand about this. My impression is that grandmasters don't play quickly (against each other). I'd be surprised if it was uncommon to spend more than five minutes on a move, for example. So what takes so long? I assume their process is roughly "consider all possible moves, decide how good they are". So if they only look one move ahead, that sounds to me like when they evaluate a potential position, it can take more than a few seconds and they do it without reading possible future moves. Which seems unlikely. Am I misinterpreting "one move ahead"?
  - mitsche 14y ago
    I doubt this quote is to be taken literally. I rather think he means that good chess players are very, very good at deciding which moves to think deeper about based on intuition, hence reducing the need to visualize. He's being witty, is all.
  - okamiueru 14y ago
    I think it was more of a poetic way of expressing it. That they consider many moves and their impacts, but it's based on experience, intuition, intelligence and knowledge, pruning out that bad branches quickly on, and identifying and focusing on promising ones.