Kasparov simul in Manchester

[Mick Norris]

As you may know, Garry Kasparov is in Manchester next month, and we have been offered a simul while he is here

The price is $30,000 net of tax

If you are interested in paying a fortune to play him, or to sponsor the event, let me know ASAP

[David Sedgwick]

As you may know, Garry Kasparov is in Manchester next month, ...

I didn't know. Why is he coming?

[Matthew Turner]

He is a Speaker at the Alan Turing Centenary Conference

[Mick Norris]

As you may know, Garry Kasparov is in Manchester next month, ...

I didn't know. Why is he coming?

He's given up with Russia and decided to have a go at G Man v Lancs instead

[Matthew Turner]

From the Conference info

"It is an amazing fact that the very first chess program in history was written a few years before computers had been invented. It was designed by a visionary man who knew that programmable computers were coming and that, once they were built, they would be able to play chess. The man, of course, was Alan Turing, one of the greatest mathematicians who ever lived. Soon after the war he wrote the instructions that would enable a machine to play chess. Since there was as yet no machine that could execute the instructions he did so himself, acting as a human CPU and requiring more than half an hour per move. A single game is recorded, one in which Turing's "paper machine" lost to a colleague."

Does anybody know of this game? I am not sure that I completely believe this.

[Matthew Turner]

(wiki)Information on Turing's programme here

http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Turochamp

It does seem quite interesting

[Paul Cooksey]

[White "Turing's paper machine"] [Black "Alick Glennie"] [Event "Manchester 1952"] 1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.d4 Bb4 4.Nf3 d6 5.Bd2 Nc6 6.d5 Nd4 7.h4 Bg4 8.a4 Nxf3+ 9.gxf3 Bh5 10.Bb5+ c6 11.dxc6 0-0 12.cxb7 Rb8 13.Ba6 Qa5 14.Qe2 Nd7 15.Rg1 Nc5 16.Rg5 Bg6 17.Bb5 Nxb7 18.0-0-0 Nc5 19.Bc6 Rfc8 20.Bd5 Bxc3 21.Bxc3 Qxa4 22.Kd2 Ne6 23.Rg4 Nd4 24.Qd3 Nb5 25.Bb3 Qa6 26.Bc4 Bh5 27.Rg3 Qa4 28.Bxb5 Qxb5 29.Qxd6 Rd8 0-1.

And they say Turing was a genius...

[Roger de Coverly]

Does anybody know of this game? I am not sure that I completely believe this.

According to wikipedia, this one

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1356927

Golombek expressed the opinion that Turing wasn't a very good player, so a logical search process, even at half an hour a move, might have improved his play.

The conference info seems inconsistent with the date of the game. Computers had been invented by 1952 at the time of the paper engine, and Turing was involved in their development. Computer languages were in the future, so getting the playing instructions into the computer may have been the difficulty. It's possible that the concept of the paper engine had been invented whilst Turing was at Bletchley Park with Alexander, Milner-Barry, Golombek etc.

[David Sedgwick]

And they say Turing was a genius...

That comment seems unjustified to me.

I remember something of the games from the USSR v USA computer match in the late 1960s. Turing's program strikes me as being of similar standard.

Thanks to Matthew for answering my original question.

[Paul Cooksey]

And they say Turing was a genius...

That comment seems unjustified to me.

The use of the smiley was intended to indicate a joke. It's Turing

[David Sedgwick]

And they say Turing was a genius...

That comment seems unjustified to me.

The use of the smiley was intended to indicate a joke. It's Turing

I'm still to thick to understand, but sorry for any offence caused.

[Paul Cooksey]

I'm still to thick to understand, but sorry for any offence caused.

No offence taken. The basis of the joke is that Alan Turing is a towering genius. Criticising the weak play of a computer program he wrote before the existence of computers, which he went on to invent, was intended to be ridiculous.

They say if you have to explain it, it is already too late!

[Mick Norris]

Back to topic, does anyone fancy playing?

Or sponsoring a junior to do so?

[AustinElliott]

On the 'Off-Topic' stuff:

Turing is credited with a key role in inventing the basic idea of the computer - as in, a machine that could be 'programmed' to carry out a series of logical operations. He is also the originator of the "Turing Test', an idea in artificial intelligence and computing where someone, say, playing chess against an unseen 'opponent' would be unable to tell whether the opponent was a person or a programme/machine. The point was that this (the point where you can't tell) is one way you can define a machine as possessing a form of 'Artificial Intelligence'. A famous example of a Turing Test are the scenes in the movie Blade Runner where an 'examiner' tries to find out if the 'person' being tested is a human or a replicant.

Many of Turing's concept ideas on computing predate WW2. During WW2 he (and famously Harry Golombek, CHO'D Alexander and Stuart Milner-Barry) all worked at Bletchley Park where some of Turing's ideas for 'programmable calculating machines' were put into practise, with the programme carried on punched tape. (i.e. not 'remembered' in computer memory).

Turing was a keen but not very good chess player, and Golombek supposedly used to tell people that when they would play he, Golombek, would give Turing Queen odds and still win easily, and/or, at the point where Turing was losing and about to resign, offer to trade positions and then beat Turing with Turing's losing position. However, Turing was (like many a logician since) fascinated by chess as a kind of model of the human thinking process.

After WW2 Turing was still working on the same lines of 'thinking machines', i.e. programmable calculators/computers. Before he moved to Manchester he spent 1947-8 in Cambridge talking to the mathematicians and neuroscientists. This is when the 'chess playing algorithm' was supposed to have been written. The idea was that this was a simple programme to calculate the 'value' of chess positions and thus to decide what move to make, by assessing the position a move or two ahead. It was NOT a programme IN A COMPUTER - it was a series of lines written out on paper. So to calculate the computer's move, Turing would have had to select some moves somehow, predict replies, and then calculate (by hand) the values for the resulting positions. Hence the term 'paper algorithm'. The game on chessgames.com is supposed to have resulted from this process, with Turing as White making the moves generated by his algorithm after hand-calculating the position assessments.

Anyway, the idea of a calculating machine that could be programmed, and the idea of a series of logical operations that made up a 'programme', were certainly around by the end of the war, and had indeed been implemented in their first form at Bletchley. Unfortunately at the end of the war the machines all had to be destroyed and the blueprints burned (official secrets and all that).

The Manchester computer of the late 40s and early 50s was the first stored-programme computer, and was developed by some of the other Bletchley Park folk, as you can read here. Once Turing arrived in Manchester he collaborated with the builders and supplied programmes for the computer - though as far as I know no copy of his chess-playing algorithm / 'programme' exists.

[Michael Jones]

Back to topic, does anyone fancy playing?

Or sponsoring a junior to do so?

Knock a few zeroes off the end and I might - unfortunately I don't happen to have $30,000 in my back pocket! With that amount you could have bought every board of every simul Viktor Korchnoi has played at the LCC, and still have enough change to get the drinks afterwards.