Thread: Top Blitz Chess Player Alexander Grishchuk Vs. Kuka (A German Robot)!

Матч за звание абсолютного чемпиона мира среди роботов по шахматам

I can't read the Russian description. But here is some in English:

KUKA Monstr, created by the German company KUKA Robotics, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of industrial robots. Though it is younger than its Russian opponent, its creators favored it to win the match. They say that blitz chess is precisely where KUKA can fully manifest its intelligence, accuracy and speed.

Alexander Grischuk played six blitz games against KUKA. In the first three the grandmaster had white, and at first he had the initiative, but he could not break the resistance of his opponent. In fact in the third game he had to take refuge in a rook endgame. After the three draws the "Metallic Mind" had white, and its preponderance became apparent: KUKA Monstr won all three games and the match ended with a score of 4.5:1.5.

This is a very unfair advantage for the robot. Blitz chess involves a lot of brute force calculations and there's no time to mire the computer in positional quandries with ambiguous results. A chess computer calculates one move at a time to a certain depth (number of moves) and assigns a value based on well worn chess fundamentals. A powerful computer can play beyond the possibility of any human mind as far as depth of moves goes.

In normal tournament play, this is not as big of an advantage because computers can't reliably assign value to possitional factors. Given enough time and preparation, a human can drag a computer into a positional game where the normal value of moves and captures doesn't apply.

In blitz chess, there's no time for that. Hence the fact that the Russian drew 3 times with white and lost 3 with black. Even Chessmaster 9000 can give a good blitz player a run for their money with the correct settings and book openings loaded.

Lasty, psychology. Computers don't feel 'uncomfotable'. You can't put them into a game they don't like. But with humans you can.

Chess is a wonderful game and one of my passions in life. Once we take the human element out, might as well have robots play robots, because it's never a fair match between computers and humans.