This will be interesting....

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Fernando
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Re: This will be interesting....

Post by Fernando »

That will be not Komodo againts "humanity", but crippled, mutilated, tightened, disadvantaged Komodo againts Nakamura.
I wonder how much money is on stake..

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Steve B
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Post by Steve B »

The Article makes no mention of the GM Benjamin Vs Rybka draw odds match I sponsored in 2008
The GM had white in every game with draws counting as a win for white

Sheesh Regards
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Fernando
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Post by Fernando »

Steve B wrote:The Article makes no mention of the GM Benjamin Vs Rybka draw odds match I sponsored in 2008
The GM had white in every game and a draw counted as a win

Sheesh Regards
Steve
So is life, Steven; whatever you did or deserved just 5 seconds ago, now, in these mediatic times, is worth nothing, forgotten, throwed in the same hole where are the feats of Alexander Magnus.

We are damned and doomed regards
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Monsieur Plastique
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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

Just to let everyone know that I will be participating in a Plastique versus Usain Bolt sprinting competition to be held on the uphill start-finish straight of the Circuit of the Americas in Texas on Saturday 19th December 2015. The aim is to see if the average middle-aged bloke on the street can give the star sprinter a run for his money. Conditions are as follows and have been agreed by all participating parties in advance:

1. Bolt will have a 40 kg lead ball strapped to his right leg.

2. Bolt will run in bare feet.

3. The lane Bolt is running in will have athletic spikes poking out of the surface (as opposed to spikes pointing out of a running shoe).

4. I get a 50 metre head start.

5. Bolt will have a Vietnam-era valve powered army radio strapped to a back pack that he will also be wearing. He is required - whilst running the race, to communicate with the US Armed Forces, repeatedly reciting the phonetic alphabet backwards with every second letter missed until he completes the race.

I hope this incredibly relevant and exciting match-up will attract great levels sponsorship and TV coverage. I am in very heavy training at the moment and I am confident of winning - but only just - so long as I stick to my plan and attract at least 1 million US dollars of the sponsorship needed, most of which will be used to purchase performance enhancing drugs and various other clandestine cheating devices (for me).

Thank you.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
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Fernando
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Post by Fernando »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:Just to let everyone know that I will be participating in a Plastique versus Usain Bolt sprinting competition to be held on the uphill start-finish straight of the Circuit of the Americas in Texas on Saturday 19th December 2015. The aim is to see if the average middle-aged bloke on the street can give the star sprinter a run for his money. Conditions are as follows and have been agreed by all participating parties in advance:

1. Bolt will have a 40 kg lead ball strapped to his right leg.

2. Bolt will run in bare feet.

3. The lane Bolt is running in will have athletic spikes poking out of the surface (as opposed to spikes pointing out of a running shoe).

4. I get a 50 metre head start.

5. Bolt will have a Vietnam-era valve powered army radio strapped to a back pack that he will also be wearing. He is required - whilst running the race, to communicate with the US Armed Forces, repeatedly reciting the phonetic alphabet backwards with every second letter missed until he completes the race.

I hope this incredibly relevant and exciting match-up will attract great levels sponsorship and TV coverage. I am in very heavy training at the moment and I am confident of winning - but only just - so long as I stick to my plan and attract at least 1 million US dollars of the sponsorship needed, most of which will be used to purchase performance enhancing drugs and various other clandestine cheating devices (for me).

Thank you.
Great idea, but to continue with chess stuff I assure you I have in mind a lot more exciting match
I am prepared to play Anads or even the current champion provided my adversary will have just the King on the board and I will be provided with half a dozen queens.
The match will be played at 2 hour pèr move.

Just beginning to get an sponsor regards
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Monsieur Plastique
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Post by Monsieur Plastique »

Well on a serious note and dispensing with the hyperbole for the moment, what exactly is the purpose of any human versus computer play in this day and age? It's of nothing more than trivial, passing interest to the lunatic fringe and to gauge what sort of odds are currently necessary (as at late 2015) to enable a super GM to have the faintest hope. Which in turn will be an irrelevant result in a year, two years, five years or ten years down the track where suddenly two pawns aren't enough and we then need to take a whole piece away. The era where any sort of match-ups were interesting and even of any relevance has long passed. Yes, up until the mid 90s for arguments sake it was still interesting, but I simply don't understand the point anymore.

Let's say, for arguments sake that a human can defeat the world's strongest PC engine at a two pawn odds advantage on this day. So what? All we are proving is what we already know and have known for a long time. And if the human wins the match, what do we do then? Give the human knight odds until they can once again win against whatever the strongest software / hardware combination happens to exist next time around? And so on for the next few hundred years by which time the strongest human will probably need Queen odds to even draw?

I reckon I could draw with Komodo with my very best play at Queen odds. So what? So could most 1900 plus ELO players having an really average day. A FIDE Master might beat the thing at rook odds. A bog-standard IM might beat it at knight odds. That is as of today, knowing that as each and every year goes by, processing power improves and engines get better and take advantage of those improvements.

Does any human alive today even understand what an engine is even "thinking" in real time these days? At the sorts of depths involved, the best humans in the world would need up to several months to fully appreciate what an engine can do in a 40 in 2 game. So what point is this as a spectator sport where it is guaranteed that 99.9% of the spectators haven't a genuine clue what is really going on?

My personal take on the whole thing is that engines and PCs have ruined chess. The engines have refined opening theory to such an extent that if you don't go into an international human tournament these days with your own biological opening book of half a million moves and 40 ply deep, you are done before your opponent is out of book. And engines are so ridiculously strong in the middle game that all we humans can do is sit there and somehow hope that by sheer random luck we might end up in some sort of position where strategy and positional considerations take a front seat to tactics. At which point the engine simply sacrifices a minor piece and blows open the position, mopping up simply because it has the sheer horsepower - a 600 point ELO advantage - to press the win home when down material.

And even when those nut-cases come up on forums every now and then - we all know them: the ones who publish a game where the crush a strong engine. So we then offer these people generous sums of money to compete against an engine in a formal match and suddenly they disappear into the ether again. We all know why.

I'm honestly not trying to be a party-pooper but I simply don't understand the real attraction to it all these days. I suppose if people want to spend hours watching something in which they haven't the slightest clue as to what is actually going on and where one opponent is hobbled to make it an ostensibly fair fight, then good for them (I suppose).
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
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Fernando
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Post by Fernando »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:Well on a serious note and dispensing with the hyperbole for the moment, what exactly is the purpose of any human versus computer play in this day and age? It's of nothing more than trivial, passing interest to the lunatic fringe and to gauge what sort of odds are currently necessary (as at late 2015) to enable a super GM to have the faintest hope. Which in turn will be an irrelevant result in a year, two years, five years or ten years down the track where suddenly two pawns aren't enough and we then need to take a whole piece away. The era where any sort of match-ups were interesting and even of any relevance has long passed. Yes, up until the mid 90s for arguments sake it was still interesting, but I simply don't understand the point anymore.

Let's say, for arguments sake that a human can defeat the world's strongest PC engine at a two pawn odds advantage on this day. So what? All we are proving is what we already know and have known for a long time. And if the human wins the match, what do we do then? Give the human knight odds until they can once again win against whatever the strongest software / hardware combination happens to exist next time around? And so on for the next few hundred years by which time the strongest human will probably need Queen odds to even draw?

I reckon I could draw with Komodo with my very best play at Queen odds. So what? So could most 1900 plus ELO players having an really average day. A FIDE Master might beat the thing at rook odds. A bog-standard IM might beat it at knight odds. That is as of today, knowing that as each and every year goes by, processing power improves and engines get better and take advantage of those improvements.

Does any human alive today even understand what an engine is even "thinking" in real time these days? At the sorts of depths involved, the best humans in the world would need up to several months to fully appreciate what an engine can do in a 40 in 2 game. So what point is this as a spectator sport where it is guaranteed that 99.9% of the spectators haven't a genuine clue what is really going on?

My personal take on the whole thing is that engines and PCs have ruined chess. The engines have refined opening theory to such an extent that if you don't go into an international human tournament these days with your own biological opening book of half a million moves and 40 ply deep, you are done before your opponent is out of book. And engines are so ridiculously strong in the middle game that all we humans can do is sit there and somehow hope that by sheer random luck we might end up in some sort of position where strategy and positional considerations take a front seat to tactics. At which point the engine simply sacrifices a minor piece and blows open the position, mopping up simply because it has the sheer horsepower - a 600 point ELO advantage - to press the win home when down material.

And even when those nut-cases come up on forums every now and then - we all know them: the ones who publish a game where the crush a strong engine. So we then offer these people generous sums of money to compete against an engine in a formal match and suddenly they disappear into the ether again. We all know why.

I'm honestly not trying to be a party-pooper but I simply don't understand the real attraction to it all these days. I suppose if people want to spend hours watching something in which they haven't the slightest clue as to what is actually going on and where one opponent is hobbled to make it an ostensibly fair fight, then good for them (I suppose).
Well, Monsieur Plastique, the reason that gives some substance to this match is the very same that gives substance to almost everything humans does: to provide entertaiment to fight boredom.

Without this 99% of human history would not exist. Boredom is a monster that lurks above the shpulders of everyone and from there comes the inmense tumult of human ligfe, wars, adventures, romance, climbing mountains, writing poems, Hiarcs is great the next lady, etc..
So, why not this Nakamura playing woith favorabvle odds?
Some will look at it, me for certain..

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