IM K W Regan in a piece on the WC match, entitled, Chess Knightmare and Turing’s Dream(rjlipton.wordpress.com/2012/ … ngs-dream/) writes, “…this was history’s human chess pinnacle.”
“Today I ask why computers playing among themselves have produced livelier games than recent matches of humans equipped with computer preparation.”
He posits the question, “Does the higher draw tendency of recent top-level matches owe inevitably to their coming within a few hundred intrinsic rating points of perfection?” He answers the question with, “The fairest ones to ask are the computers, for they have now played far more games at this level than have we humans. And perhaps surprisingly, their answer seems to be No.”
He adds, “The reason may literally be that the computers have greater contempt for each other.”
Very interesting reading…
Armchair Warrior
Garbage in garbage out. Computers have no inventiveness. The pinnacle of chess as a concept is an illusion.
this past WC was closer to the nadir of chess than a pinnacle
Computers may have no “inventiveness”, whatever that means, but they can sure play some awesome chess.
youtube.com/watch?v=xWdMqvGMxF4
So much for chess being “played out” by mere humans.
The computers don’t prepare openings for each other (I assume) but human opponents spend months doing it with their teams and computers. I think that the opening preparation process leads to conservatism. Unbalanced positions are resolved in advance, and those unfavorable are avoided. Knowing this, the opponent avoids those that are allowed.
Furthermore, a successful match player gets in the habit of drawing if things look dangerous (even if there are winning chances too) and living to fight another day, where they expect to succeed. These are the toughest match players and they almost always succeed, so they learn to count on their skill over rolling the dice. Computers don’t develop this habit of match strategy.
Generally, as I’ve noted before, computers actually have lead to a more dynamic style. We had quite a few unbalanced positions in this match, but most were played with great precision by the human opponents. There were many edges they could have fallen off, but they didn’t fall off of them where many players almost as good would have. Postgame computer analysis shows this.