Media comments on chess

Discuss anything you like about chess related matters in this forum.
MartinCarpenter
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by MartinCarpenter » Tue Mar 08, 2016 11:16 am

If its a contest for the future, then we've lost whatever happens :)

Even if they don't get him this time its just a matter of time.

The experience with chess would suggest they won't do it first time round - its quite easy to understimate just how good the worlds top human players tend to be at their respective games.

LawrenceCooper
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by LawrenceCooper » Tue Mar 08, 2016 9:53 pm

The inevitable "tactical chess game" phrase wheeled out by Rio Ferdinand on BT Sport when discussing the latter stages of the Champions League.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Stewart Reuben » Wed Mar 09, 2016 1:08 am

Chess and Go are purely deductive reasoning.

Pokerbots are banned on the good sites in poker. The administrators rummage around in your computer to try to determine whether you are using one.
I would have thought it a more interesting project to see whether the very best computer would win against the very best human being at poker.
After all, poker is more like life than life itself.
Another alternative is bridge. These two games should be more challenging than purely deductive reasoning games.

Clive Blackburn

Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Clive Blackburn » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:42 am

Stewart Reuben wrote: I would have thought it a more interesting project to see whether the very best computer would win against the very best human being at poker.
After all, poker is more like life than life itself.
That would be very interesting, a very big part of poker is the psychological aspect and trying to read your opponents' reactions to the play.
How would you tell that a computer was bluffing? And how would the computer decide when to bluff, without becoming predictable?

MartinCarpenter
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:49 am

The difficulty there is defining what winning at poker actually means :) Bluffing? It'd do that at a game theoretic optimal frequency/based on the (10's to 100's! of) thousands of hands its opponent had previously played online.....

Bridge is a bit similar. If you programmed two bridge players to play with each other you can do all sorts of (un!)amusing things like using synchronised random number generators to let them pass all sorts of information in their carding/even bidding, which they can understand but no unassisted human could hope to.

GIB was(is) actually quite a decent card player using monte carlo/double dummy solving and that appeared when I was at Uni, nothing really done on it for the past 15 years that I'm aware of. I think there just isn't the prestige or money to motivate it.

Bidding is a very simple problem at heart - constructive bidding using a relay system would be absolutely trivial. Contested auctions are harder as you'd need to program in meanings for all the potential auctions. Or somehow give it 'common sense' for unknown auctions.
(GIB never had this so it was prone to doing some awfully odd things!).

NickFaulks
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by NickFaulks » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:52 am

Clive Blackburn wrote: And how would the computer decide when to bluff, without becoming predictable?
By making it a randomised process, just as humans are supposed to do according to game theory. It's actually a lot easier if you're a computer.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a QR code stamped on a human face — forever.

NickFaulks
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by NickFaulks » Wed Mar 09, 2016 8:54 am

MartinCarpenter wrote: Or somehow give it 'common sense' for unknown auctions.
(GIB never had this so it was prone to doing some awfully odd things!).
That isn't applicable only to computers.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a QR code stamped on a human face — forever.

MartinCarpenter
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Mar 09, 2016 9:03 am

True :) Still top level bridge players do have an awful lot of generic (often implicit although the pro's will have sorted a lot of them out explicitly) agreements to cover a lot of these things.

iirc GIB also had the specific problem that it used its own bidding model to predict what the opposition might do. So it was prone to doing stuff like making a entirely stupid preempt in the belief it would be passed out rather than doubled! The current version attached to bridge base online doesn't seem to do that but maybe they toned down the double dummy solver element for that.

MartinCarpenter
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by MartinCarpenter » Wed Mar 09, 2016 12:30 pm

Might as well clarify how GIB works, as it is interesting:
What GIB (Goren in a box) did was to make each decision was do a monte carlo simulation of the possible deals, then solve them in double dummy fashion. That's as if everyone could see all the cards.

Worked quite well, but did introduce some downright odd elements into its play. In particular it is very bad at making people misguess when its defending (it assumes you'll guess right all the time!).

What I presume a fully modernised approach to it would do to proper opponent modelling. There wasn't either the data or the computational firepower to do that with GIB, but nowadays there's both in abundance. Bridge base online has every major event in its vugraph data, and this neural net stuff is great at this sort of thing.

You could even micro optimise it to play better vs specific opponents :) (Either classes of them, or individuals!).

In principle, I think computers should be tremendously good at bridge. So much of the game is about retaining concentration for deal after deal after deal, and they're obviously entirely superhuman at that!

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Stewart Reuben » Wed Mar 09, 2016 3:38 pm

Clive >And how would the computer decide when to bluff, without becoming predictable?<

In the late 1970s, I simply had the computer bluff the appropriate percentge of times, using game theory. Of course, playing against humans it would be able to imrpove on this, as can humans. e.g.
I was playing and bluffed. I was called and lost. Another player at the table whispered, rather inefficiently, to his girlfriend, 'You see, you can never know what he has.' What he hadn't realised was that I NEVER tried to bluff him.

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Stewart Reuben » Wed Mar 09, 2016 4:00 pm

No doubt you are aware that the Independent is becoming electronic only. They are discontinuing both the bridge and chess columns. That means Jon Speelman's one finishes.
'The i' is a printed newspaper offshoot. Editor Oliver Duff [email protected]. They might be persuaded to have a chess column, or at least a daily puzzle.
Please write in and request this service. Please use your own words. It is more effective if it seems the people are writing independently.
I nay have written down Oliver Duff's email address incorrectly. [email protected] is possible.

We have had some success in such pressure groups in the past.

Kevin Thurlow
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Kevin Thurlow » Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:00 am

Interview with David Bailey in today's Telegraph (I must add I only get this as it's free - although the Saturday edition weighs about the same as a litre of sunflower oil.)

" 'Oh I didn't bring up the children. My wife did. I paid for them. I was in America a lot of the time, shooting commercials, so I wasn't around that much. But I taught them all to play chess, so they're all all right. If you can play chess you get through life easy.' He pauses. 'I beat Madame Duchamp at chess once - Marcel Duchamp's wife. She was a chess master. She was playing with John Cage and said, "Do you want a game?" And I beat her! It was a complete accident. She said, "Oh let's play again." I said, "I never play twice in succession..." He roars with laughter."

If you think there are inaccuracies in the above, don't blame me...

John McKenna

Re: Media comments on chess

Post by John McKenna » Sat Mar 12, 2016 11:02 pm

On last Thursday - Incarnations: India in 50 Lives (BBC Radio 4)

Jinnah: The Chess Player -

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072n5xh

On just now - The Moral Maze (BBC Radio 4)

Is Science Morally Neutral?

Alphago's achievement was mentioned in terms of having - "solved the Go problem".
Over half the world's AI experts are employed by a single Californian company.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b072mz5r

Stewart Reuben
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Stewart Reuben » Sun Mar 13, 2016 2:27 pm

In today's Sunday Times News Review virtually all of Page 4 is devoted the recent Go match.
The company Deep-Mind is mentioned. It states: The genius behind it is Demis Hassabis, a state educated north Londoner who made headlines in 2014 when DeepMind was bought by Google for an estimated £400m.
Well, it certainly got me on onto the BBC News.
But Demis was home-educated for all but one year when he attended University College School in the Sixth form. After his A Levels he took a gap year before going to Cambridge. In that year he became a millionaire.

Matt Fletcher
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Re: Media comments on chess

Post by Matt Fletcher » Sun Mar 13, 2016 2:44 pm

Stewart Reuben wrote:In today's Sunday Times News Review virtually all of Page 4 is devoted the recent Go match.
The company Deep-Mind is mentioned. It states: The genius behind it is Demis Hassabis, a state educated north Londoner who made headlines in 2014 when DeepMind was bought by Google for an estimated £400m.
Well, it certainly got me on onto the BBC News.
But Demis was home-educated for all but one year when he attended University College School in the Sixth form. After his A Levels he took a gap year before going to Cambridge. In that year he became a millionaire.
David Silver is also very involved in the project - I assume (but am not sure) that this is the same David Silver who was a strong junior player in the mid-90s?