"WChess" is a new chess-playing computer program. It recently defeated four grandmasters and played two to a draw to become the first program to win the five-year-old Harvard Cup Humans vs. Computer Intel Chess
Challenge. The win showed how close machines have come to trouncing consistently all but the best chess players, and how, according WChess author David Kittinger, "We are right at the threshold of an era where, unless you are one of the top grandmasters, you are going to lose your match to a computer," The Reuter News Service reported.The only solace for the six grandmasters playing last weekend was that most of the humans won most of the time, getting 24 wins, 13 losses and 11 draws as they faced off against seven programs in addition to WChess.
"There is just something about this program (WChess) that is more difficult for humans to figure out," said defending human champion Joel Benjamin, who scored highest among the humans, winning five of his eight games and battling to a draw three times.
Computerized chess programs have been gaining on humans for years, propelled by the brute force of their light-speed ability to compute all possible moves several plays in advance.
WChess, for example can look eight or nine plays ahead to predict where its strengths and weaknesses will be, said Kittinger, who helped design the program for the popular Chessmaster 2000 and 3000 programs.
But the creators of chess programs still haven't been able to bestow creativity and a finely honed sense of strategy that allows many grandmasters to outwit the programs consistently.
Benjamin, who managed to play to a draw against WChess at the Computer Museum, explained afterward that when the computer is your opponent, "You want to play a more quiet, strategic game. Played properly, a computer can't get a sense of where the attack is coming from."
The computer decides on its next move using complex mathematical formulas that consider the characteristics of each piece and its position on the board.
WChess is not yet on the market. Kittinger, in a telephone interview from his home in Mobile, Ala., told Reuters he is currently looking for a publisher and expects the programs to be available sometime next year.
- DISASTER - Everything went wrong for Michael Adams in Linares, Spain, during his semifinal match for the Professional Chess Association world championship, Robert Byrne, former U.S. champion, wrote in his New York Times
column. The 22-year-old English grandmaster was caught unacquainted in one game with an opening system that anyone playing on his high level should know. In another game, he came prepared with a surprise improvement but halfway through the series, he discovered a critical flaw in his analysis. In still another game, he adopted a solid opening but was confronted with superior solidity and ground down.
When a whole series of mishaps like these takes place, it is a good bet that overstrained nerves can be blamed. The tension mounts as one goes up the ladder toward a title match, in this case with Gary Kasparov of Russia. It did not help that Adam's opponent was the brilliant 24-year-old Indian grand- master Vishwanathan Anand. And throughout the series Anand never looked as though he had any trouble.
In Game 1, Adams tried to be clever by undertaking an opening he had never played before. But he failed to fluster Anand, who achieved a slight advantage and later snared the Englishman.
- PSYCHED OUT? - In a recent London Intel Grand Prix, Kasparov - a consummate user of psychology on other humans - lost his cool and match against the computer chess program Chess Genius 2 when he tried hard to win in an even position.
A round later, another chess professional, Predrag Nikolic of Yugoslavia also overreached the same program.
As the next round began, Chess Genius - powered by a Pentium microprocessor that can scan 100,000 positions per second - seemed unbeatable. For many in the audience something deeply disturbing was happening. Their beloved royal game would never the same.
But the computer's third opponent, Anand, quickly restored a sense of reality to the scene when he calmly defeated the computer 2-0. The Indian grandmaster wryly noted his opponent "took defeat very well."