Deep Blue and the revival of Chess
Anyone for Chess?
This year is Alan Turing Year, named after Alan Mathison Turing who was born a hundred years ago, on 23rd June, 1912. Turing was a mathematician, who played an important role in the development of computing, He is famous for a number of things, most notably his role in the code breaking operations at Bletchley Park during World War II, his homosexuality which led to a court case and eventually his suicide, (although his family contested that it was suicide), a learned paper called “On Computable Numbers” which originated the concept of what came to be known as a Turing Machine and the acid test for artificial intelligence known as the Turing Test.
The paper is on an esoteric topic known as the Entsheidungsproblem, and it wasn’t the first to be devoted to it, but the idea of the Turing Machine was novel and important to the future development of computers and the idea of “artificial intelligence”. He envisaged a machine which could accept data presented as symbols on a strip of tape, then apply an algorithm, or set of destructions, in order to take a particular course of action. That sounds pretty much like a computer, and this simple idea proved to be extremely useful tool to computer scientists in their analysis and understanding of what computers could and couldn’t do.
The Turing Test was another extremely simple idea and was introduced in another ground breaking academic paper in 1950. It involved person conducting a “conversation” with another entity which is in a separate room and the only means of communication is limited to text, (for example by using a keyboard and screen). If the person cannot tell if the other entity is a real person or a machine and it is indeed a machine, then it can be said to exhibit artificial intelligence.
Turing’s influence is so great that he has been called the Father of Artificial Intelligence.
Back when I taught computing, the main example that we referred to in trying to get the idea across to pupils was that of ELIZA, a computer program devised by Joseph Weizenbaum in 1966. It looked for keywords in the text is received and was programmed to apply a rule which in order to construct a response, but if there was no suitable keyword, then to provide a generic response or simply repeat something from earlier in the conversation. It proved to be so successful that it was thought to have passed the Turing Test, but there were a number of problems with this.
For a long time, the epitome of artificial intelligence was considered to be the ability to play Chess. As a game, Chess is actually based on a set of quite simple premises: It is carried out on a small area, with a limited number of set pieces which are governed by a limited set of fairly simple rules which can be easily codified, (even if they can sometimes confuse us mere mortals). Despite these simple bases, it quite quickly becomes extremely complex, as the players choice for each move, although limited by the pieces on the board and the available squares to which each can move, but also by the implications of the choice which will cut off other options in subsequent moves – not to mention having to cope with the unpredictable nature of your opponents choice of moves.
A good chess player plans several moves ahead, consider which of the available moves will put them in an advantageous position, spot the potential moves of their opponent in response and plan subsequent moves accordingly. Although some people take to the game naturally, it can take many years to gain the experience necessary to be able to see sufficiently far ahead in a game and plan for different eventualities.
It might be quite a task for us … but to a computer it is fairly elemental. It can quickly compute the possible moves, their opponent’s possible responses, eliminating those which lead to defeat and selecting the ones which are most to lead to eventual victory. The time available to them for making calculations will limit how far ahead they can “look”, but with sufficient memory available to them to store the results of their calculations they “learn” which are the best moves and which are to be avoided in similar situations in future games.
They also have an advantage in that they don’t get tired and have no emotions to affect their game.
On February 10, 1996, the computer Deep Blue manufactured by IBM became the first machine to win a chess game against a reigning world champion, (Garry Kasparov), under regular time controls. It actually lost the match 4-2 as Kasparov won three games and drew the other two. It also lost the rematch staged later in the year but did better, the final score being 3.5-2.5.
Chess was popular across the Soviet Union where it was considered a sport, including here in Kyrgyzstan and when I first came here in the mid 1990s you could occasionally see people sitting in the parks playing a game. After independence in 1991, however, the lack of support for the game meant that it fell out of the spotlight and into the shadow, with the nadir coming in 1997 when the Chess Federation was able to muster just 20 members, and there were no competitions organized in the country at all, not even at a local level. .
Now, however, there has been a resurgence of interest in the game and last year there were several competitions including a large tournament in July for the Governor’s Cup. What is encouraging is the number of youngsters taking up the game … there are about 500 young chess players having achieving various ranks in the national ratings.
The State Agency for Physical Training and Sports has a budget allocating a sum for the promotion and development of the sport, supporting a number of “professional” players with grants and paying for certain administrative expenses for tournaments, but the Federation has to provide the prizes and, as a result, it has established a 60,000 som prize fund. Over the New Year 80 schoolchildren took part in a tournament, although is some others numbers have risen well over 100 and nearer to 200.
As with computers, with each game and tournament in which they participate, they gain experience, learn and improve their play. Apparently, however, the Federation is facing another problem because there is a lack of experienced trainers and judges.
Despite this, Kyrgyz chess players have achieved considerable success on the international stage, last year competing in tournaments in Chelyabinsk, India, Greece, Poland,and Uzbekistan where, (including the World Championships), bring home eight bronze medals.
In particular, in December 2011, Kyrgyzstan sent 16 chess players and a trainer to New Delhi for the Asian School Championships – where five year Old Artur Solomko taking the Bronze medal in his category – amassing 7 points in his nine games; (the same score as the eventual champion, but he lost out on additional indicators).
Also in December the President of the International Chess Federation paid a visit to Kyrgyzstan and had meetings with various people, including Deputies of the Jogorku Kenesh, in which he discussed the possibility of further support for the sport, including the possibility of introducing chess into schools, the creation of “a chess palace” for holding classes and competitions.
He made one other interesting point, saying that chess and alcohol don’t mix.
Bishkek