Written by: Emadeldin Teama

The revolution of computer engines in chess

Computer technology made a huge progress in the last 40 years. It invaded every aspect of our lives and every field.in this article we are going to discuss how computer engines revolutionized chess.

How does a chess engine play the game?

Chess engines are much different than humans. In a chess game, a human player depends on intuition, on his basic understanding of different positions and then the human chess player starts to calculate variations.Computers depend solely on calculations. They don’t get tired like humans and they don’t get nervous when they are under attack. Computer also calculates the activity of the pieces based on how many squares every single piece is controlling and give an evaluation based on that. This can be very efficient in the opening and the middle game , however in an endgame it can be inefficient.

Many Grandmasters in the early days of computer engines tricked the computers into a losing endgame using that weakness.Generally chess Grandmasters know by heart many endgame positions. They know how to win it even if it takes 30 or 40 or 50 moves ahead because of their understanding of the basic idea of the given position. Computers on the other hand can have a fixed depth of calculation (i.e : 20 moves ahead only) so for example it can evaluate a totally drawn position as winning for them while it is a known draw.

Sometimes a chess engine would push so hard to win a draw position by playing a losing move!
This was the main way grandmasters won at early times of chess engines against the giant computers. However, now the algorithm for the computer has changed dramatically and the engines now are simply almost unbeatable!

The First encounters of chess engines against humans

There has been many encounters of chess engines versus human starting with the basic chess engine called Mac Hack VI in 1966 all the way to Chess X.X in 1978 having mixed results . However in my opinion the first real challenge was in 1989 when an engine called Deep Thought played in a tournament full of grandmasters and top players of this time.

In 1988, Deep Thought shared first place with Tony Miles in the Software Toolworks Championship, ahead of a former world champion Mikhail Tal and several grandmasters, including Samuel Reshevsky, Walter Browne, and Mikhail Gurevich. It also defeated grandmaster Bent Larsen, making it the first computer to beat a grandmaster in a tournament. Its rating for performance in this tournament of 2745. This was an outstanding result for a chess engine and a big alarm for the chess world that computers are going to surpass humans soon!

In 1989, Levy was defeated by the computer Deep Thought in an exhibition match.

Deep Thought, however, was still considerably below World Championship Level, as the reigning world chess champion Garry Kasparov demonstrated in two convincing wins in 1989.

In 1994 a new chess engine called Chess Genius entered the chess world. The “Chess Genius” program was entered into a Professional Chess Association rapid chess tournament in 1994. It defeated and eliminated world champion Kasparov, but lost to Viswanathan Anand in the next round. This was the first time a computer had defeated the world champion in an official game, albeit at rapid time controls.

The match between Deep blue and the legendary Garry Kasparov

In 1996 Kasparov played a six-game match against IBM’s Deep Blue . Kasparov lost the first game (Deep Blue–Kasparov, 1996, Game 1), the first time a reigning world champion had lost to a computer using regular time controls. However, Kasparov regrouped to win three and draw two of the remaining five games of the match, for a convincing 4–2 match victory.

In May 1997, an updated version of Deep Blue defeated Kasparov 3½–2½ in a highly publicized six-game match. Kasparov won the first, lost the second, and drew the next three. The match was even after five games but Kasparov was crushed in Game 6. This was the first time a computer had ever defeated a world champion in match play. A documentary film was made about this famous match-up entitled Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. In that film Kasparov casually says, “I have to tell you that, you know, game two was not just a single loss of a game. It was a loss of the match, because I couldn’t recover.”

In game 6, Kasparov blundered very early into the game. Kasparov cites tiredness and unhappiness with the IBM team’s conduct at the time as the main reason. Kasparov claimed that several factors weighed against him in this match. In particular, he was denied access to Deep Blue’s recent games, in contrast to the computer’s team that could study hundreds of Kasparov’s.

Fritz against the world champion Vladimir Kramnik

In October 2002, Vladimir Kramnik (who had succeeded Kasparov as Classical World Chess Champion) and Deep Fritz competed in the eight-game Brains in Bahrain match, which ended in a 4–4 draw.

Kramnik was given several advantages in his match against Fritz when compared to most other human–computer matches, such as the one Kasparov lost against Deep Blue in 1997. The code of Fritz was frozen some time before the first match and Kramnik was given a copy of Fritz to practice with for several months. Another difference was that in games lasting more than 56 moves, Kramnik was allowed to adjourn until the following day, during which time he could use his copy of Fritz to aid him in his overnight analysis of the position.

Kramnik won games 2 and 3 by “conventional” anti-computer tactics—play conservatively for a long-term advantage the computer is not able to see in its game tree search. Fritz, however, won game 5 after a severe blunder by Kramnik.

Game 6 was described by the tournament commentators as “spectacular.” Kramnik, in a better position in the early middlegame, tried a piece sacrifice to achieve a strong tactical attack, a strategy known to be highly risky against computers who are at their strongest defending against such attacks. True to form, Fritz found a watertight defense and Kramnik’s attack petered out, leaving him in a bad position.

Kramnik resigned the game, believing the position lost. However, post-game human and computer analysis has shown that the Fritz program was unlikely to have been able to force a win and Kramnik effectively sacrificed a drawn position. The final two games were draws. Given the circumstances, most commentators still rate Kramnik the stronger player in the match

Conclusion

With the advancement in technology.it has become clear that chess engine can beat any world champion in a chess match. the current world champion Magnus Carlsen said that he doesn’t like playing against chess engine as it makes him feel stupid!

Moreover, a new technology of Artificial intelligence (AI) has been developed recently to play chess. A chess AI called Alpha zero defeated the strongest chess engine in a 100 game match with only wins and draws to all the games. However, chess will always be a puzzle that can’t be solved. And despite the technological advancement we will still enjoy the human versus human games while learning from the machines!!