[H_KARLUK]

On 3rd May 1997 , New York (If I m not wrong)Deep Blue Supercomputer played a fascinating match versus reigning World Chess Champion, Garry Kasparov. It was a very tuff one.
A dramatic victory occurred in 6th game; software won.

The system derived its playing strength mainly out of brute force computing power. It was a massively parallel, RS/6000 SP Thin P2SC-based system with 30-nodes, for a total of 30 120 MHz P2SC microprocessors (one microprocessor per node), enhanced with 480 special purpose VLSI chess chips. Its chess playing program was written in C and ran under the AIX operating system. It was capable of evaluating 200 million positions per second, twice as fast as the 1996 version. In June 1997, Deep Blue was the 259th most powerful supercomputer, capable of calculating 11.38 gigaflops.

Kasparov vs. Deep Blue (The Rematch) was one of the most popular live events ever staged on the Internet.

The web site received more than 74 million hits representing more than 4 million user visits from 106 countries during the 9-day event.

Anyway Soviet superstar later on beated silicon Then "deepblue" name changed to "deepthought". I forgot date.

I wish same nice history happens for Bridge Fans.

Regards.
Hamdi

[Lobowolf]

H_KARLUK, on Nov 11 2008, 12:30 AM, said:

Wow

Tyvm "xcurt". I liked ""It is not enough to be a good player. You must also play well." -- Tarrasch"

In loving memory to a huge brain :
http://en.wikiquote....egbert_Tarrasch

I think some of his ideas works for bridge game also.

Tarrasch was ahead of his time, and one of the better players not to become world champion.


How many atoms are in the universe, anyway?

[awm]

y66, on Nov 11 2008, 10:34 AM, said:

If Nate Silver played bridge, this problem would probably be solved by now.

Nate Silver is a smart guy for sure.

But so are Matt Ginsberg and Chip Martel, both of whom are computer scientists who do play bridge. Neither of them has solved the problem (and Ginsberg put in a whole lot of time).

The point is that chess is in principle solvable if you throw enough computing power at it. All the information is always there, only a finite number of possible game positions exist. Obviously we are nowhere near having the computing power to "solve" chess completely (it may be impossible to have such computing power given the size/lifetime of the universe) but in principle it could be done. So the trick is just to find "shortcuts" to speed up the computation without losing too much accuracy. This is the kind of thing that computer scientists know how to do.

Go is also in principle solvable. It does have a (much) larger set of possible game positions. And not as much time has been put into finding the proper "shortcuts" to speed up the computation without losing accuracy. But a serious, well-funded effort to build a computer program that can beat the best human Go players would probably succeed after a few years.

Games of incomplete information are a totally different matter. This includes most card games (bridge, spades, poker, etc). Not all the information is there to simply compute the right action because we cannot see the opponents cards (yes, we could in principle enumerate all possible sets of hands for the opponents, but this is not the same as seeing the opponents cards). So there is a fundamental problem here -- how do we compute the right play without the necessary information? We can use statistical methods, but these depend on getting our probabilities right. We need to know conditionals like "what is the probability that LHO would've made that lead if he had this hand." Note that it is not enough to know the conditional "what is the probability that I would've made that lead if I had this hand" because I am not LHO. There are also situations where it is necessary to play randomly, or to make a play that simplifies the position for partner, even though on a double dummy basis neither of these actions is relevant.

[cherdano]

awm, on Nov 11 2008, 12:25 PM, said:

Go is also in principle solvable. It does have a (much) larger set of possible game positions. And not as much time has been put into finding the proper "shortcuts" to speed up the computation without losing accuracy. But a serious, well-funded effort to build a computer program that can beat the best human Go players would probably succeed after a few years.

This is absolutely wrong.

[Of course this is just my opinion but I can assure you that everyone else who has ever been involved in computer go would also disagree with your statement. Also, while I am not sure what you mean by serious and well-funded, the market for go programs in Asia is big enough that there are several commercial go programs; I know of at least one with 3-4 full time programmers, which might be more than the top chess programs.]

[awm]

cherdano, on Nov 11 2008, 01:37 PM, said:

awm, on Nov 11 2008, 12:25 PM, said:

Go is also in principle solvable. It does have a (much) larger set of possible game positions. And not as much time has been put into finding the proper "shortcuts" to speed up the computation without losing accuracy. But a serious, well-funded effort to build a computer program that can beat the best human Go players would probably succeed after a few years.

This is absolutely wrong.

[Of course this is just my opinion but I can assure you that everyone else who has ever been involved in computer go would also disagree with your statement. Also, while I am not sure what you mean by serious and well-funded, the market for go programs in Asia is big enough that there are several commercial go programs; I know of at least one with 3-4 full time programmers, which might be more than the top chess programs.]

It was IBM that built the computer which beat Kasparov.

IBM is a huge multinational company which threw very large amounts of money at building a machine to play chess. In fact they designed custom hardware -- basically constructed a super-computer optimized just to play chess.

This is orders of magnitude more resources than any of the commercial Go programs (with 4-5 full time programmers) are applying to the problem.

Why did IBM do this? Mostly for public relations/advertising. They don't expect to recoup their investment by selling chess programs.

And if you think I'm wrong about there being a finite number of positions on a Go board, well, I'd like to hear your reasoning for that one!

[cherdano]

But orders of magnitude of higher effort does not mean orders of magnitude of more progress.

For current go programs, a magnitude of additional processing power only leads to small incremental increases in playing strength. The main advantage of deep blue compared to chess programs at that time was its big processing power; its logic wasn't that superior. I don't know how many programmers Deep Blue had, but I can hardly imagine more than a dozen of them being useful.

So there is good evidence that the approach of IBM and deep blue won't work for go.

[I sort of know what I am talking about since I am 4d in go, and have been part of the GNU go team for a couple of years.]

[H_KARLUK]

Right now I am a little confused.

I am happy. Why ? Because matured gentlemen quoted their polite and intellectual thoughts. *

I am unhappy. Why ? My each esteemed forum mates here seems to forgot "Solid geometry" (outer space geometry) which is definitely harder than chess, bridge and anything in this planet.

How on the earth "Eagle" landed Moon? Anyone remembers date ? Were we living comfortably in our private lives like today?

It was the real victory of united human brains. Used electronics and software tools successfully.

Let me amend : The Outer space rules are not alike the geography we live! To gain any small success here is what you need :

YOU HAVE TO HIT THE RIGHT KEYS WITH ULTRA EXCELLENT "TIMING" !

In past for only " - " command placed wrong line in the subprogram a nation lost billion dollars and some honorable lives.

That success developed. Never stopped. Nowadays scientists examine other planets in the space.

That day i took th point : "If WE love enough nothing is impossible !"

Regards
Hamdi

--------
*(except by a very poor negative one who obviously feel "it"self happy and proud of to be "imaginary abrasive" about the issues never had an idea; my piece of advice is to visit nearest therapist a.s.a.p. and get a life with some quick solutions for ASPD)
** My sincere apologies for other members abt "negative impression"

[3for3]

The number of possible chess positions is increased by some huge amount of totally meaningless, impractical positions. After all, it is possible to have 6 queens on one side. If you eliminate all of the promotions, after which 99.99999 of all games are over, the number of real positions comes way down.

danny

[Lobowolf]

3for3, on Nov 11 2008, 06:30 PM, said:

The number of possible chess positions is increased by some huge amount of totally meaningless, impractical positions. After all, it is possible to have 6 queens on one side. If you eliminate all of the promotions, after which 99.99999 of all games are over, the number of real positions comes way down.

danny

One of the reasons bridge is a better game.

[jdonn]

Lobowolf, on Nov 11 2008, 06:53 PM, said:

3for3, on Nov 11 2008, 06:30 PM, said:

The number of possible chess positions is increased by some huge amount of totally meaningless, impractical positions.  After all, it is possible to have 6 queens on one side.  If you eliminate all of the promotions, after which 99.99999 of all games are over, the number of real positions comes way down.

danny

One of the reasons bridge is a better game.

You don't think bridge has any number of completely meaningless essentially impossible positions?

[Lobowolf]

jdonn, on Nov 11 2008, 07:10 PM, said:

Lobowolf, on Nov 11 2008, 06:53 PM, said:

3for3, on Nov 11 2008, 06:30 PM, said:

The number of possible chess positions is increased by some huge amount of totally meaningless, impractical positions.  After all, it is possible to have 6 queens on one side.  If you eliminate all of the promotions, after which 99.99999 of all games are over, the number of real positions comes way down.

danny

One of the reasons bridge is a better game.

You don't think bridge has any number of completely meaningless essentially impossible positions?

No, I think that a vastly higher percentage of bridge situations are relevant.

To further (?) clarify, the "diversity" of chess is often extolled, and is usually expressed as a function of the number of possible positions, which is truly astronomical. However, an overwhelming percentage of those positions aren't remotely interesting. For instance, there are more than 100,000 position with king and rook vs. king. But so what? Either the rook is subject to capture or the weaker side is stalemated, in which case the game is a draw; or neither of these situations in the case, in which case it's a pedestrian win to anyone beyond a rank beginner. Change the rook to a knight, and you have more than 100,000 new positions, all of which are meaningless; it's a draw.

The "diversity" of bridge is usually expressed as a function of the number of possible deals; the vast majority of those deals ARE "interesting," either in the bidding, the play, or both.

[Lobowolf]

I don't think it's the main reason bridge is better; I think that has to do with the mathematical element, the psychological element, the inference-drawing, and the partnership element that bridge have, in addition to having in some situations the sequential algorithmic challenge that chess has.

But whatever the reason, I know a number of people who are good at both chess and bridge, and there's no contest as to which game they prefer.

[H_KARLUK]

Well,

I think it's a matter of "language". In other words "communication."

Long years ago when i was a student in University they taught us some "programming languages". Today, that root created better "software products". Because it's developed with new age technologies.

One more thing, I remember -as far as i followed th media in my society- , HUMANBEINGS sent messages to communicate with unknown civilisations. There MATH SYMBOLS widely used. We are able to listen and ANALYSE the UNIVERSE.

I do not think we are unable to solve even very hard bridge problems with the aid of Computers and Positive Science.

Aren't we created to fix "the hard" ? Don't we like it ?

That's why "cave age" ended. Today's simple things invented in those days : Fire, wheel etc etc.

No worries, we'll absolutely play with highly strong puters. Wow, pick a partner. I hope I'll live long to see that bright days.

For now our problem is "best use" of programming language in "bridge field". Sadly seems "chess fans" solved their trouble. Nice biz folks, congrats.

Thanks

Ps. I strongly wish that I misunderstood yr "Change the rook to a knight, and you have more than 100,000 new positions, all of which are meaningless; it's a draw." words dear Lobowolf.

To me 1-1 is better than 0-1 beaten. The one I got a half like my opposition, shortly we are even. But the other one is srry nothing.