Ramble 9

I realise now that I am living in the 21^st Century.

Intellectually, I always knew that I did, but emotionally I was still a child of the 20^th, if not the 19^th, Century. The constant barrage of new technological marvels (Apple have just launched the iPad) has done its work: I finally get the times in which I live.

Two things have done it for this old fashioned science fiction fan.

The first is getting my hands on a copy of the New York 1924 Chess Tournament book, the 21^st Century edition, with Alekhine’s annotations properly positioned and redrafted in algebraic. Wonderfully instructive, with insights by Alekhine and the great players, which foreshadow what was to come with the chess openings. Old fashioned in some of the views expressed by Alekhine, demeaning some openings which are played today (e.g. the Modern); if this book was written today we would have had numerous data-dumps substituting for explanations of ideas; sadly, Alekhine himself would have probably morphed into a Fritz-Human cyborg, such being the temptation to use modern technology.

The other is reading a current article by someone inspired by Alekhine - the great Kasparov. His article is basically a review of a new book: ‘Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind’ by Diego Rasskin-Gutman. The topic of human intelligence, computers, and chess, is a favourite topic of Kasparov, so he cannot resist giving us his opinion about this subject.

Kasparov’s opinion matters a very great deal, perhaps more than anyone else’s opinion. He has competitively faced, beaten or lost to, the silicone giant across the board, in numerous encounters while in the full glare of millions of chess fans around the world. He is also one of the great innovators in using computers to help in the preparation of his chess play. His relationship to the software has a level of intimacy not found, for instance, in the preparation of his great rival Karpov. You can find Kasparov’s article, if the link is still live, at: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/23592. I urge you to read it.

The way in which computers have changed the world of chess, especially correspondence chess, is astonishing. No longer is it important (perhaps it is even irrelevant) to take into account strategic ideas ‘discovered’ by the great theorists of the past (Steinitz, Tarrasch, Lasker, Nimzovich), which they believed should be used to guide the conduct of a game. Average players may still use these fundamental ideas (I try to) but the leading wedge of players has long since abandoned these ideas as so much archaeological rubbish.

In the world of chess software, it no longer matters how a position looks; traditional evaluations do not matter. Open file: fancy placing a rook in it? Isolated pawn: fancy a Knight in front of it? Bah, humbug! You poor benighted sod. Exhaustive analysis by a computer operating at near the speed of light, ignores the positional principles; it places its Bishop behind pawns of the same colour as itself, lets its King be harried across the board, and then beats you with a combination you never saw coming, leaving you a humiliated blob of quivering jelly. Tactical insight trumps classical strategy, displaces it, flings it into the dustbin of chess history. Welcome to chess in the 21^st Century.

If I still had one of the old stand alone computer console-models of the 1970’s and 80’s (remember the old Scysis?) I would greet it as one would an old friend met at the café, and sit down for a game. Rated about 1850, I used to get a good game against it and even on the top level, win often enough to stay interested. But these new programs are too unforgiving.

I do detect perhaps a latent regret in Kasparov’s review about the direction in which modern chess is going (his comments about contemporary chess prodigies are very revealing). But the genie is out of the bottle and has left the building, and even Mr. Kasparov, far behind.

Ramble 10

Having fully entered the 21^st Century (see previous Ramble) nine years late, what am I and other average players to do with the technological marvels brought to us? I mean from a chess perspective, sitting down to analyse a correspondence game position or just wanting to play a game.

I do not believe that as an average player, I can use computers chess software to significantly enhance the quality of my play, as can the leading players. The computers are too strong and my understanding of positions too weak, which is why I am average in the first place and groping for understanding. Playing against a chess computer or software is simply a humiliating experience once you get over the ‘wow factor’. You would need the tough hide of a rhinoceros (and perhaps its level of intelligence) to blithely go on playing against a program which regularly duffs-up grandmasters. To stretch a metaphor, you are still in kindergarten, while leading grandmasters and the chess software they use, are doing post-graduate work.

The various bells and whistles the chess software comes with are useful e.g. ‘Gosh, this variation of the King’s Indian Petrosian loses 97% of the time – I better stop playing it!’ These attributes of the software may suit a certain kind of mind: a Botvinnik kind compared to, let us say, a Tal mind. Some of us (e.g. my good self) are mentally chaotic, leaping to and fro in the world of ideas, and only occasionally lapsing into any sort of order. To spend so much time organising our chess database and still just be operating at the margins of the game, is too much to bear. Better to play a game as best we can or study a game of one of the greats, suitably annotated (great annotators like Alekhine, Chernev, Reinfeld, Kmoch, Botvinnik, Keres, Tal, Fischer, Gligoric, etc…) so we can understand it, although never emulate their standard of play.

There is one thing we can learn to do. Use these programs for inspiration. By that I mean, taking the operational idea of these number-crunching furies seriously. Lament our lost innocence by all means (‘it is sound play to accumulate small advantages’) but these monster-machines can do what we cannot: think outside the box. In fact, they do not even have ‘a box’. We humanoids work on the basis of past experience; we build a framework of ideas within which we then interpret future experiences, eventually becoming hide-bound in our thinking. To a computer, each game, each position, is simply new fodder for number-crunching. They care not a whit about harmonious development, chess orthodoxy, the look of a position. There are no ugly or beautiful moves – only effective ones. So they look at everything and see where it leads. Hence the strange positions chess computers play and win from, time and again. Hence the strange positions some contemporary leading players produce thanks to preparation using a computer.

Yes, I know. We cannot number-crunch moves like a machine; that’s why we have strategic principles and intuition. But we can be inspired by the machine to look at the more unusual moves, check their potential the old fashioned way. I say ‘inspired’ only to do our own thinking. Using a computer to analyse a game in progress, is wrong, even in self-defence. Looking at the really weird or odd moves is particularly useful in CC where more time is available to produce credible analysis before playing a move. Why be conventional in CC? Think outside the box; check out all those ugly, inharmonious, moves. They may lead to a win for you in brilliant style. Machines do that all the time these days and they belt the proverbials out of 99.999% of chess players. Use your analytical skills on the unusual as well as the conventional moves leading to normal-looking positions.

At my level, that’s about the best I can do with these modern technological marvels.

Come to think of it, thinking outside the box is not such a new idea. Nimzovich played the odd ugly (according to Tarrasch) but effective move. Purdy taught all of us to first check all the tactical options before considering strategic planning, however odd or ridiculous they seemed; check all captures, checks and so on; no point playing a deep strategy and being mated next move or three.

I suppose inspired by how machines play, we can now look even further into the world of the strange, pull aside the undergrowth and see what’s there to use. In a recent game played on the ICCF web server I played a Grob as white and won. Very odd that. Imagine if out of all the openings which are possible, chess computers can prove 1.g4 leads always to a win for white with best play. Seriously though, I am now looking at all strange possibilities as a matter of course, just in case they lead to a tactical situation which is advantageous later on.

So here I am, in the 21^st Century, going back to the future that was hinted at by the great teachers like Purdy, looking at any CC game brick by brick rather than from the lofty height of a strategic plan and conventional thinking, where only certain kinds of move ‘look sensible’.

But gee, I still wish I could play better.