On Mar 7, 6:15 am, David Richerby
wrote:

I wonder what it would be like if Petrosian in his prime were alive
today to play these machines. It would have been very interesting.

Hard to say. I like Petrosian a lot but his style can be caricatured
as `Wait 'til the other guy makes a mistake, then kill him. If he
doesn't make a mistake, agree a draw.' I'm not sure computers make
enough mistakes for this strategy to be effective.


I don't even know how they handle the problem
of setting a contempt factor for this match.

Every game has Rybka -- listed as being rated
3100 on one site -- starting off down a different
pawn, as Black. Its opponent is a competent
GM, but he is listed as 25xx. What do you do:
Set no contempt factor, thinking the pawn and
move offsets the difference in strength? Or go
hog wild and set the program to believe it is
invincible? Or perhaps set a small negative
hero-worship factor so the program will not be
forced to self-destruct, then kick back and
watch the human self-destruct?

Tigran Petrosian's style was shown to have
serious flaws in his matches with GM Fischer;
but that was /after/ his peak. Writers would
often describe TP's style as anticipating every
conceivable attack, and thwarting it before it
could even begin. But the truth is, he agreed
to many, many draws, so how do they know
this?

To my thinking, the best way to handle a
computer is to play so well that it cannot
handle *you*. Take the Deep Thought match
with Gary Kasparov, for instance. Afterward,
people were writing things like "the computer
was unrecognizable in this game" -- just like
they do when a great human player gets
clobbered!

But I do believe there are plenty of stronger
GMs around who could give Rybka a tougher
match with these odds. Joel Benjamin, for
instance, got the upperhand (to say the least)
in the openings, game after game, but he
crumbled in the middlegame. I have yet to
see GM Dzindzi make much of his odds in
the opening, and half the time his extra pawn
gets doubled or becomes useless, due to his
own clumsy play or to wild King assaults in
which the pawn-count is rendered moot.

I will say that he has demonstrated a
mastery of K & p endings, and has also
shown himself to be competent in R & p
endings-- unlike Rybka! :D


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