<blockquote id="quote"><font size="2" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by pareidoliac</i>
<br /> At any rate the game of go is so much more complex and deep and matching up to reality that i would be much more impressed by the mind of a go master (which requires virtually no memory at the highest level- it makes chess seem like political tic tac toe.
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Fred, over the last 3 year (since my first Android device), I've downloaded (from Google Play) a number of card games like whist, hearts, spades, etc., and chess, reversi (othello), sudoku from AI Factory (qsoft). I used to play a lot of othello when the kids were young.
Anyway, with all these games, I usually read the rules and then just start playing and it's pretty easy to get the hang of it fairly quickly. Well the other day I downloaded their version of Go, and I have to tell you for the first time in my life, I am absolutely clueless. I can't get othello out of my head and the more I read the rules, the more confusing it gets. I think I finally understand the basic idea, but I can't imagine if I had to be the one counting who was winning instead of the game software. I wouldn't have a clue.
This strikes me as the kind of game that is cultural, where people learn it when they're little and play it all their lives, so yeah, maybe a Go master is a master in the same sense that Bruce Lee was a master at what he did. If you live and breathe something all your life and the lives of your parents, grand parents and great grandparents, well that might mean something altogether different than if you take two people who've never heard of the game and see how they progress. Same goes for chess. Bobby Fischer's mother used to set up a board across the bathtub when he was a kid, so that he could play even then.
When he was young he used to play both sides of the board. Make a move as white, turn the board and make a move as black, and so on, each time making the best move possible. I saw him talk about it in an interview when he was in his late teens or early 20s. "Sooner or later I would win" he joked.
Most of the new computer games allow you to do this very easily. You set it up to rotate the board after each move (usually for two players) and then black goes, and white etc. A couple of times I've tried Bobby's method of playing both sides. It's truly wild, you find yourself saying "oh wow, so that's what this looks like from the other side." I've played thousands upon thousands of games against the computer, and some openings I have very extensive knowledge of from White's side, like with "The Colle System" but I know very little about what it looks like from black's side.
The fact that he did this for years, is astonishing and points to the fact that his great skill was learned, much like Bruce Lee's.
Have you ever played against the new chess engines, like Rybka, Houdini, Fritz, Stockfish? I've downloaded previous versions of a bunch of them (all free if you don't get the latest). They are so powerful now that even if you dumb them down to 50%, it's almost impossible to win unless you are a Grandmaster.
But I came across an interesting phenomenon. You can make the engine play against itself, and just sit there and watch. The game is very odd, and is long drawn out process of crazy moves that always goes on for a very long time. It will never beat itself fast.
Well, I discovered something very interesting after reading Garry Kasparov's wikipedia page. He suggest that the future of chess will be: man and computer against man and computer (we already have man vs man and computer vs computer).
After reading about Kasparov's idea, I decided to do a little experiment. Playing Rybka at full strength, every so often, when it was my turn, I would have Rybka analyse the position and see what it would do, and then I would do that move. Then we would go back to playing regularly. Maybe 4 or 5 moves later, I would again have Rybka analyse the board, and take his advice.
Well the first time I tried this, and many times later, I beat Rybka in somewhat of a brilliant and quick fashion. In other words, me and Rybka together are better than Rybka alone, because Rybka vs Rybka is one of those long drawn out crazy games I told you about, whereas me and Rybka vs Rybka is more of a brilliant game. So, I can see what Kasparov is getting at and I've been following this from the sidelines to see if the idea ever gains traction.
Well now back to trying to figure out what the hell is going on with Go.
rd
