Are you interested in chess? Which is your level? Any interesting web page? What do you think of computers playing chess? And machines like Novak?

Chess is always good for you, level not too sure haven't played in a while (depends on the grading system), the earlier computer games were easy to beat as you anticipate there moves at the lower levels, the new ones these days are probabaly smarter.K

This game called Chess dosen't seem to be popluar here, quants usually hate chess, I think physicists don't like being restrcited to 64 squares

My problem with chess is that the rules are the same every game, so memorisation is too important.Chess would be a much better game, if in each game the rules changed enough that learning openings didn't help you.MJ

MJAlthough I see your point Re: the open, you could play it 2 ways the old Indian way where you can't have several queens (when the pawn reaches the other end) and the King has one horse move before the first check (can't rememeber them all) or the international way which is pretty standard now. Centuries ago Chess games lasted days on end, now you have clocks, then it was all strategy now its speed and strategy.K

Watch out for Kasparov - Deep Junior starting this sunday which should be a good benchmark of the latest human-computer strength.If you don't like learning openings try Fischer-random chess where you randomly shuffle the pieces on the back rank before you start. But I like chess as it is with a mix of knowledge, technique and ability.

You can have several queens now? Thats not chess, thats Starcraft rgds,Dimitris

i think several queens is called islam. in terms of RFC, u just shuffle the pieces, so quite dissapointingly u still get one queen

Quote<hr><hr><i>Originally posted by: <b>mj</b></i>My problem with chess is that the rules are the same every game, so memorisation is too important.Chess would be a much better game, if in each game the rules changed enough that learning openings didn't help you."Chess variants" has a bunch of variations.On the free internet chess server "freechess.org" there are a few variations and I am sure MJ's going to like it. One is Suicide where the objective is to get checkmated and the rules of movement on the board are the same but as soon as you are offered a piece on the board you have to take it , you can't play any other move. Typically people try and get themselves "checked" , I think all the contrarian fund managers would win this version of the chess game. There are a couple of other interesting one called Kriegspiel where you don't see your opponents move and a referee adjudicates whether the move was fine.. And finally my personal favorite i forgot the name where any piece you capture you get to decide if you want to keep on the board and work for you or let the piece go , interesting thing being if you capture the opponent queen you get to keep her but incase the opponent does manage to get his queen back , she goes back to work for him ;-( .. (unfaithful queens)

Anyone wants to predict where this Kasparov vs Deep Junior match is headed?

Deep Blue then Deep Junior... Should Kasparov loose, welcome Baby Deep!!

'Deep' just means they have hooked a normal program up to multiple parallel processors for more speed.(Deep) Kasparov will almost certainly win, my guess is 4-2.Should be one in the eye for those who have been proclaiming (for decades now) that computers will 'soon' be able to beat the top human players at will. Programmers always seem to overestimate the ability of their creations to tackle complex non-linear optimisation problems...

Hmmm , Its an interesting area, particularly when the search space is so big & complicated , I bet the typicalhill-climber would certainly fail... Calls for Ant-Colony , Differential evolution sort of thing... RBH?I don't know about deep junior but Springer released a book on deep senior , I mean deep Blueanyone's got a review of this?

It's a pity Deep Blue was dismantled after the second encounter with Kasparov. After all the score was 1 win each. They should have played a decider.

Kasparov lost with white in the 3rd after a terrible blunder. I think he has got this mental block playing the machinewhich he can't bully. Psychological pressure against the opponent was always a big part of his winning strategy.One of the main reasons Kramnik won the world championship is that he is a very cool customer. And evenhe only manged a tie with the machine after being 2 up.We'll see what happens this time.Only human...