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A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
I don't know what kind of crappy chess engine was used to provide that 100 moves 'solution' (a helpmate, by the way), but engines like Houdini and Komodo correctly assess that it's a draw. Even an old version like Fritz 6 will play the correct moves (even though it seems to have trouble with the 50 moves rules).
So my question is, what engine played the losing 98...Bh6???
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Also, a much more interesting game, in my opinion, is the one where Nakamura destroys Rybka by fooling it into avoiding the 50 moves rule because Rybka is two exchanges up.
That one was a real embarassement for the engines and they corrected that kind of problem since.
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Also, Wayne, don't spend too much time of whatever this guy proposes. I've actually been to Oxford a couple of times. Some great research is done over there, but some profoundly dumb stuff, too.
There's nothing about cracking the secrets of human ingenuity there. Just a simple, drawn position, which all modern engines will play correctly for both sides. Penrose saying that this position fools even supercomputers is more like Penrose trying to fool gullible people. Many false statement in that article on the Telegraph.
Last edited by Mathieu Cloutier; Wednesday, 15th March, 2017, 11:51 PM.
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Yes, that's the one. The trick happens around move 180, when Rybka is fooled into giving back a couple of pawns in order to avoid the 50 moves rule while up two exchanges. However, the resulting pawn march from black is both unstoppable and outside the search horizon of the engine.
It has to be noted that more recent engines don't fall for that trick. But even then, that was a pretty nice trick. After that, Nakamura treated himself to quite a few dozen moves of absurd chess torture. Can't blame him, though. It was some payback for all these games he lost against the same engine.
And finally, I must say I agree with you that analyzing that position is more interesting than doing income tax.
Last edited by Mathieu Cloutier; Wednesday, 15th March, 2017, 11:53 PM.
.... There's nothing about cracking the secrets of human ingenuity there. Just a simple, drawn position, which all modern engines will play correctly for both sides. Penrose saying that this position fools even supercomputers is more like Penrose trying to fool gullible people. Many false statement in that article on the Telegraph.
Before I respond to Mathieu, I have a question about this problem that no one has brought up yet:
Why does it require 3 dark-square Bishops for Black? Why don't 2 Black dark-square Bishops suffice to demonstrate the problem? Perhaps Wayne Komer, in your analysis, you have found something that indicates Black does require all 3 dark-square Bishops?
Now to Mathieu:
You are misunderstanding the point. You say "all computer engines will play correctly for both sides." That isn't the issue here. The issue is whether ANY computer engine will ASSESS correctly this position. And what Penrose says about that is that for any engine to ASSESS the position correctly, would require more computer resources than exist on planet Earth.
Penrose isn't "trying to fool gullible people". What a ridiculous assertion.
Human beings, even far below GM strength, even below Master strength, can asses this position correctly in a very short time. The reason they can do this is because their brains act in a neural net fashion (and by the way, in everything I've seen on this problem including the Telegraph article, no one has yet mentioned the term "neural net" -- very surprising). This means that humans of reasonable chess strength have fully understood the rules of chess, including the 50 move rule. When a human chess player sees this position and understands that only the Black Bishops can move, and cannot cover any light squares, and the White King can simply meander among the light squares, they reach the conclusion: that means 50 move rule.
But chess engines are not programmed to reach any such conclusion. All chess engines are brute force / minimax search engines (although perhaps there are some unknown neural net engines out there that are "in training"). Chess engines are programmed to find best move. Their assessment of a position is a result of doing a minimax search of the move tree, unless the engine is told to use endgame tablebases.
For any chess engine to determine that 50 move rule comes into play: since it is told nothing about past moves, it means 50 moves per player have to transpire with no captures / pawn advances for the engine to asses 50 move rule applies. 50 moves per player means 100 plies, and a 100 ply search where just the 3 dark-square Bishops can move for Black would most likely require, if using pure minimax algorithm, as Pensrose said, more computational resources than exist on Earth.
But wait... somewhere in this thread, Egidijus Zeromskis made this point:
"Thus we left with White king and three Black bishops to dance around for a 50 moves rule. That's in a principle 4 piece tablebase. Should be solve-able for a decent computer in a blink (with proper programming)"
Very good point, Egidijus. But there's a remaining problem: normally a chess engine only uses tablebases in the endgame phase! This position does NOT represent an endgame phase... although it could, if you had a heuristic for that which I mentioned in a previous post. But somehow, you the author of the chess engine code have to tell the engine when to use tablebases. And guess what: the possible times when that can occur is totally unpredictable. The number of heuristics you'd have to code into that engine to tell it when to switch from a minimax search to using tablebases is beyond comprehension.
The only type of chess engine that can possibly emulate the workings of the human brain is a neural net chess engine. I'm surprised that Penrose (at least in the Telegraph article) doesn't mention that. And such a neural net engine would't just automatically know what to do. It has to be trained, just as the human brain has to be trained since childhood to play chess.
So despite what Mathieu says, there is a difference here. This problem does demonstrate human ingenuity versus the rigid inflexible workings of all typical computer chess engines. And let's not forget: the same human who recognizes in 5 minutes or less that this position is a draw.... can in the same day go out and win a tennis match using totally different thinking and totally different functionality.. Try that, computer chess engine!
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Paul,
First of all, the problem is titled 'A chess position to defeat computers'. Sorry, but I have to disagree. This position cannot be used to defeat modern engines even running on modest hardware. Penrose claims that even supercomputers don't understand the position. I say bollocks.
Try playing moves from the position with a modern engine running on infinite analysis. I did it with Komodo and Houdini and it's not long before the evaluation falls to 0.00. i.e. as soon as the 50 moves rules comes within the search horizon of the engine.
This whole thing boils down to a very simple fact: in chess, there is the 50 moves rule, which is in fact 100 plys for an engine and this is beyond their search depth. Change the 50 moves rule for a 15 or 20 moves rule and any engine will correctly assess the initial position. Nothing esoterical going on here, as Penrose claims.
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Mathieu, I am in agreement with your position. If a computer just moves its King around, then it understands the position. It realizes that any pawn move would lose. Penrose has no point to make at all.
Fake news. (Whether or not that mysterious chess tournament on another thread was also fake news I do not know.)
Mathieu, I am in agreement with your position. If a computer just moves its King around, then it understands the position. It realizes that any pawn move would lose. Penrose has no point to make at all.
Fake news. (Whether or not that mysterious chess tournament on another thread was also fake news I do not know.)
Well, is it fake news when the guy is using government money to conduct research on the pretense that this chess position might be a proof that quantum stuff is happening in our brains and that's why we match well against standard computers for that kind of problems?
I mean, it's not my money because it's in another country, but I still have a problem with that kind of 'research' being conducted in such places as Oxford. As a society, we need to invest in research, but when the money is wasted on such stupid projects, it's not helping anyone.
Any GM or anyone in the chess community called Penrose on his absurd claims? Because the guys at the funding agency clearly won't be able to do so.
Re: A chess problem solvable by intuition but not by computers
Article now up on chessbase.com and Friedel brings some sense to that drivel by Penrose. And yes, Friedel has the perfect example, dating back to 1912, of a position that can fool chess engines for real.
Penrose is just being the typical old physicist tackling into other fields, thinking he's a universal genius because he worked on black holes. Move along folks, nothing to see here.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softwa...chess_problems , http://chessexplorer.republika.pl and en.chessbase.com/post/computer-generated-chess-problems-for-everyone talk about specific <composing/solving> engines of puzzles, but perhaps not from the standard way of having a middlegame engine switch at some point in its middlegame to run alone against an ending tablebase look-up ending-engine (usually to improve depth of ply to encourage speed-up during look-up table accesses).
I'm not sure whether or not such an engine would benefit much or slow down too much by having a pointer to a solving/composition ending engine, rather than simply a tablebase look-up table engine.
In the case of a composing engine, does it use its own ending engine composing engine to check the validity of a study which it has constructed, or some other middlegame or tablebase or mate-in-n solver?
Before I respond to Mathieu, I have a question about this problem that no one has brought up yet:
Why does it require 3 dark-square Bishops for Black? Why don't 2 Black dark-square Bishops suffice to demonstrate the problem? Perhaps Wayne Komer, in your analysis, you have found something that indicates Black does require all 3 dark-square Bishops?
I'm not sure if it was mentioned in Mathieu's reply or elsewhere: the purpose of the 3 bishops is to ensure that the search tree for "all possible moves" will be exponentially larger and thus limit the search depth. Three bishops clog the search tree better than two or one.
Though, which computer will generate a 50-moves rule so quick as humans?
I don't know how these days a blockade is programmed but it's quite obvious that locked pieces have zero moves. If White does not take any of rooks and no move with a pawn on c6, those locked pieces will stay forever in the zero-move state. Thus we left with White king and three Black bishops to dance around for a 50 moves rule. That's in a principle 4 piece tablebase. Should be solve-able for a decent computer in a blink (with proper programming) :)
Egidijus, I thought of a reason why this can't be reduced to a 4 piece tablebase. All 4 piece tablebase positions require the Black King be included. But the Black King is locked in, so you would have to include all the pieces that are locking it in. You end up having to include all the pieces!
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Egidijus, I thought of a reason why this can't be reduced to a 4 piece tablebase. All 4 piece tablebase positions require the Black King be included. But the Black King is locked in, so you would have to include all the pieces that are locking it in. You end up having to include all the pieces!
Well, Egid *did* say "with proper progamming" ... the tablebases are only usable (in normal circumstances) when the number of pieces on the board drops to less than 4,5, or 6 - whatever level of tablebases are employed. The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with. I haven't tried myself, but I would have to believe that the tablebase includes checks for the 50 move rule of course.
I think Mathieu pointed out elsewhere that specific cases *like* this could be programmed but the payoff for that would obviously be so low that it isn't worth the effort. Including blockades, there must be many such positions...
Well, Egid *did* say "with proper progamming" ... the tablebases are only usable (in normal circumstances) when the number of pieces on the board drops to less than 4,5, or 6 - whatever level of tablebases are employed. The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with. I haven't tried myself, but I would have to believe that the tablebase includes checks for the 50 move rule of course.
I think Mathieu pointed out elsewhere that specific cases *like* this could be programmed but the payoff for that would obviously be so low that it isn't worth the effort. Including blockades, there must be many such positions...
Yes, Kerry, I wasn't being critical of Egid, just wanted to point that out for this particular case. Sorry if it came across the wrong way.
The one sentence you wrote, "The fact that some pieces are pylons is not something most/any chess programs would specifically have code to deal with" is (I believe) the whole point Penrose is making. We humans can adjust our thinking to the fact that so many pieces, and most of them Black, are not movable. We can very quickly draw the conclusion since Black can only move dark square Bishops that 50 move rule will apply.
The chess engine would know that 12 of the pieces on the board cannot move, but there would be no code to treat those pieces as a group and then add in the fact that Black can only move dark square Bishops and then apply a heuristic that lets it know 50 move rule will apply.
By the way, it was I who mentioned this heuristic and the fact that while it could be added, there would be almost no payoff ever. Perhaps Mathieu mentioned it also.....
Anyway, I think Penrose has a valid point even if as Mathieu says his research might be a little over the top in terms of potential payoff. But there are companies trying to create robotic systems, and the ultimate vision of that would be a robot that could do everything a human could do, something on the path to the Data character on Star Trek NG. Or let's even consider self-driving cars. An engine that drives your car for you would need to adjust to weird situations that the designers might never that thought of. I personally don't think that can happen without a neural net, some fantastic hardware, and a LOT of training. Any attempt to just write such an engine from scratch and cover all scenarios is doomed to failure, imo....
....although "failure" in this case might mean only that some scenarios are going to come up that the engine can't handle, and the same can be said of humans. I guess the question is, can they make from scratch a system (no neural net, no training) that can outperform humans in avoiding accidents. That might be possible.... remains to be seen.
Overall I think Mathieu's criticism of Penrose here is unwarranted. If the research could lead somehow to better robotic systems, the payoff would be huge.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
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