Human vs computer

[Jouni]

Inspired by Mac Hack thread: when did computer REALLY pass human at classical 40 moves/2h game? Here's cc time line from Wikipedia:

1967, Mac Hack Six, by Richard Greenblatt et al. introduces transposition tables and becomes the first program to defeat a person in tournament play chessville
1968, David Levy makes a bet with AI researchers that no computer program would win a chess match against him within 10 years.
1970, The first year of the ACM North American Computer Chess Championships
1974, Kaissa wins first World Computer Chess Championship
1977, The first microcomputer chess playing machine, CHESS CHALLENGER, was created
1977, The International Computer Chess Association is established.
1977, Chess 4.6 becomes the first chess computer to be successful at a major chess tournament.
1978, David Levy wins the bet made 10 years earlier, defeating the Chess 4.7 in a six-game match by a score of 4.5-1.5.
1980, The first year of the World Microcomputer Chess Championship
1980, The Fredkin Prize is established.
1981, Cray Blitz wins the Mississippi State Championship with a perfect 5-0 score and a performance rating of 2258. In round 4 it defeats Joe Sentef (2262) to become the first computer to beat a master in tournament play and the first computer to gain a master rating.
1982, Ken Thompson's hardware chess player Belle earns a US master title.
1988, HiTech is developed by Hans Berliner and Carl Ebeling wins a match against grandmaster Arnold Denker 3.5 - 0.5.
1988, Deep Thought shares 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 defeats grandmaster Bent Larsen, making it the first computer to beat a GM in a tournament. Its rating for performance in this tournament of 2745 (USCF scale) was the highest obtained by a computer player.[29][30]
1989, Deep Thought loses two exhibition games to Garry Kasparov, the reigning world champion.
1992, first time a microcomputer, the ChessMachine Gideon 3.1 by Ed Schröder from The Netherlands, wins the 7th World Computer Chess Championship in front of mainframes, supercomputers and special hardware.
1996, Deep Blue loses a six-game match against Garry Kasparov.
1997, Deep Blue wins a six-game match against Garry Kasparov.
2002, Vladimir Kramnik draws an eight-game match against Deep Fritz.
2003, Kasparov draws a six-game match against Deep Junior.
2003, Kasparov draws a four-game match against X3D Fritz.
2004, a team of computers (Hydra, Deep Junior and Fritz), wins 8.5-3.5 against a rather strong human team formed by Veselin Topalov, Ruslan Ponomariov and Sergey Karjakin, who had an average ELO rating of 2681.
2005, Hydra defeats Michael Adams 5.5-0.5.
2005, Rybka wins the IPCCC tournament and very quickly afterwards becomes the strongest engine [31]
2006, the undisputed world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, is defeated 4-2 by Deep Fritz.
2009, Pocket Fritz 4 wins Copa Mercosur 9.5/10.[16]
2010, Before the World chess championship, Topalov prepares by sparring against the supercomputer Blue Gene with 8,192 processors capable of 500 trillion floating point operations per second.[32]
2011, Rybka is stripped of its WCCC titles when evidence of plagiarism comes to light

Jouni

[Sean Evans]

Depends on the human and it depends on the hardware and it depends on the software. The whole poll is a farce!@

Cordially,

Sean

[muxecoid]

I think the question is about great computers vs great humans.

Now some trolling:

2010, Before the World chess championship, Topalov prepares by sparring against the supercomputer Blue Gene with 8,192 processors capable of 500 trillion floating point operations per second.[32]

Who cares about FLOPS? Bitwise operations, that's what really counts.

[Sylwy]

When programmers were kindly enough with their PCs !

SilvianR , after a midnight chess session.

This is the ex Neuschotz Palace (today Hotel Select)/Iasi:

[bbbaro25us]

Sticking with Kasparov's views on the matter, the views of someone directly involved in the answer with this question: should we answer thinking at the human player being at his best, in his best day, in a single game?
Or do you mean the average best player, and/or in long matches?

The man always addressed to as "(possibly) the best chess player of all times", thinks the problem in saying when and how machines surpassed Humans (if it happened, as in some parts of the Game, the best Human is still better then the best machine) is due to the fact that the machine will play always at its best, game after game: and this idea stands stil no matter the hardware and software involved.
Because of this, one could possibly say that if the human wins one single game he still proves he's superior, in a sense, as he played at his best against the machine playing at its (usual) best. In a match played for days or weeks, with multiple games, on the other hand, the machine will win because of its constant quality of play, game after game, while the human quality of play would fluctuate up and down with the passing days (even in the single match really, especially when you go beyond five hours of play).

[rbarreira]

Because of this, one could possibly say that if the human wins one single game he still proves he's superior, in a sense, as he played at his best against the machine playing at its (usual) best.

We could also say that the human got lucky in that game or is simply playing above his average skill level.

Your post reminds me... I've heard that chess players have the habit of calling their average performance a "bad day", and the days when they are particularly lucky or manage to avoid blunders are "normal" or "my actual skill". Probably human nature I guess. (Programmers may also do something similar when commenting on their engine's performance)

[bbbaro25us]

... I've heard that chess players have the habit of calling their average performance a "bad day", and the days when they are particularly lucky or manage to avoid blunders are "normal" or "my actual skill". Probably human nature I guess. (Programmers may also do something similar when commenting on their engine's performance)

Still in a way you cannot really prove they're wrong, even in their display of humanity.
The expected fluctuation of the quality of an engine's move can be guessed, but you cannot do the same for humans, whose play may be influenced by their menthal or physical conditions through countless and unknown factors.

I'm not saying Kasparov is proven right: I'm saying you cannot prove him wrong.
And he knows firsthandly what he's speaking about, supposing he's not JUST defending his honor and his (rightfully deserved) World Champion ego.

[rbarreira]

... I've heard that chess players have the habit of calling their average performance a "bad day", and the days when they are particularly lucky or manage to avoid blunders are "normal" or "my actual skill". Probably human nature I guess. (Programmers may also do something similar when commenting on their engine's performance)

Still in a way you cannot really prove they're wrong, even in their display of humanity.
The expected fluctuation of the quality of an engine's move can be guessed, but you cannot do the same for humans, whose play may be influenced by their menthal or physical conditions through countless and unknown factors.

I'm not saying Kasparov is proven right: I'm saying you cannot prove him wrong.
And he knows firsthandly what he's speaking about, supposing he's not JUST defending his honor and his (rightfully deserved) World Champion ego.

Given Kasparov's 1997 shenanigans regarding Deep Blue, I wouldn't be surprised if he's indeed defending his ego.

One of the things that still annoys me is when people say "Kasparov couldn't even prepare against Deep Blue, IBM didn't provide him with sample games!", even though Kasparov himself played against Deep Blue in the previous year.. I'm not sure if this meme was started by Kasparov himself, but he started other ones like saying some of the moves had to be human.

[Jouni]

Thanks all who have voted! I voted 2005 for two reasons. 1) In one interview just Garry K. said , that after 2005 it was over for human - computer matches and 2) Rybka come out

Jouni

[mhull]

1997 (at the super-computer level) marked the end. IMHO, stamina and deep tactical accuracy alone would have worn down any human opponent had DB-2 played on in human tournaments and matches, especially had the DB-2 team actually been allowed to finish the DB-2 project. The version that defeated Kasparov was not actually complete in terms of all the features they had planned for the match. As it was, the machine's power shocked Kasparov, deflating his once indefatigable ego.

Game over, 1997.