Hello. You've just met Suffolk's under 17 chess champion. And under 16 last year, and under 15 the year before that. And since the title wasn't competed for this year, I can probably claim the under 18 championship as well. But rather than being happy for winning, I'm saddened by the fact that I've had no competition for the past 2 years. The once proud Suffolk Junior Open is now just a shadow of itself, having shrunk to a twelfth of its former size. What went wrong? I've seen many people blame computers for the demise of chess, citing Kasparov's defeat as the reason for a loss of interest - why would I want to learn something computers can do better than people? I hope this isn't the cause, though, as I fear if so, other games will inevitably follow. Pure mental games will be first, I know a lot of companies have their sights set on Go, and although so far the best computers are not that much better than you or me, and certainly no rivals to the masters, the problem is parallelizeable and merely a question of scale. Apologies for any inadvertent misrepresentations, but AIUI Deep Blue etc. win by combining the rudiments of what humans would call a feel for a position with the ability to brute force forward about eight moves. The brute force will be no help with Go, but we know computers can do the other part. Not as well as humans, yet, but it's merely a matter of time. I remember reading about when Deep Blue sacrificed a bishop for the attack. Once that happened, I think humans were pretty much done for.
The conquest of compuers will not be limited to such pure mind games though. Computers can already do pretty well at Poker, not champion level yet but getting there. I predict we'll see a Settlers of Catan playing computer before long which can hold its own against human opponents - or at least those who aren't prejudiced against it. And then we'll see one which can beat them. And once they have mastered diplomacy, although robotics is still in its infancy, I think we will inevitably see computers moving to compete in the physical arena. And they will eventually win. Will we see all games reduced to cock-fights where it's not the competitors anyone cares about, but the people behind them? I hope not. I enjoy competing as a human, against humans. I hope the troubles chess is facing now are simply due to its bad "marketing", the poor image it has, and perhaps greater use of internet chess rather than physical tournaments. And I hope it will recover. But I fear it won't.
Mikey
Re:congratulations... (Score:2)
Tough call. (Score:1)
Internet chess can be a good thing but how would they ensure that players don't cheat by using chess software? Interesting, by the way, about Deep Blue sacrificing a bishop. I don't, though, think it's the end of humans in chess. DB had a value assigned to the bishop and calculated that it was a profitable move.
Re:Tough call. (Score:2)
Geforce2 (Score:1)
Re:Geforce2 (Score:2)
Re:Geforce2 (Score:1)