Humans are better at positional chess, Corr. chess proves it

[mwyoung]

Leon Coleman:
"Clearly if Humans had the tactical ability of a chess engine then it would be clear to see that they have better positional understanding.
Pure engines playing correspondence chess against humans prove it."

Human chess masters are not the positional wizards we think them to be, or maybe chess programs are not the positional idiots we think them to be...

That somehow a humans only problem with chess programs is tactics, so if given enough time the humans positional mastery will rise to the top.

This is the idea of some to defend their position that humans still play better positional chess.

The problem for those who want to use this tactic to defend their position is we have games and data for these type of matches.

http://correspondencechess.com/campbell/ham/ham.htm

In 1999 A human correspondence player rated 2508 (ICCF) and 2432 (USCF) could not win a single game, and lost the match against what is now a very obsolete set of computer programs, and hardware.

What do you think would happen to a human master if playing against Houdini 3 on a multi core i7 computer.....Devastation!

[M ANSARI]

All the top correspondence players use engines in their analysis. They might push an engine to look at a line they believe is good, but most of the time if the engine does not confirm that the line is good, they will not play it.

Knowing how to use your chess engine, and knowing the weaknesses of your chess engine is much more important than being the world's strongest positional player. I remember some time back a advanced chess tournament on Playchess that had a lot of very strong GM's (including Nakamura and Svidler), and they were handily beaten by a 1700 ELO player that new his way around his engines.

[gbtami]

Your disproof is completely false, koz the premiss was "if Humans had the tactical ability of a chess engine then" vs (from your link) "Two 2-game matches pitting an unaided human master (computer may be used for database search, etc. but use of chess engine not allowed) vs. a computer played under normal correspondence chess conditions."

edit: The original "proof" (Pure engines playing correspondence chess against humans prove it) also missing some factual point of course.

[mwyoung]

Your disproof is completely false, koz the premiss was "if Humans had the tactical ability of a chess engine then" vs (from your link) "Two 2-game matches pitting an unaided human master (computer may be used for database search, etc. but use of chess engine not allowed) vs. a computer played under normal correspondence chess conditions."

edit: The original "proof" (Pure engines playing correspondence chess against humans prove it) also missing some factual point of course.

My only response can be
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[MODERATION EDITED]
We generally avoid editing posts, but here there was a problem. I inserted [enter] to separate the lines. There was a gigantic one that messed up the ability to read the whole thread since it did not fit probably any screen.

Miguel

[Don]

All the top correspondence players use engines in their analysis. They might push an engine to look at a line they believe is good, but most of the time if the engine does not confirm that the line is good, they will not play it.

It's difficult to have a computer vs engine match with correspondence because humans are using computers anyway. However I will say that if you could, humans would stand their best chance in these games, but assuming a human did not use computers at all I still think his odds of beating a top program would be very low.

Knowing how to use your chess engine, and knowing the weaknesses of your chess engine is much more important than being the world's strongest positional player. I remember some time back a advanced chess tournament on Playchess that had a lot of very strong GM's (including Nakamura and Svidler), and they were handily beaten by a 1700 ELO player that new his way around his engines.

[gbtami]

In your linked games the human not satisfied the premiss (if human had the tactical ability of a chess engine), so your disproof tells nothing about the original statement. This is simple math logic.

A better proof:
take some top100 players, give them a top engine as an aide, compiled without any positional knowledge (fe.: just a simple material eval), then let them play some corr game against Houdini.

[mwyoung]

All the top correspondence players use engines in their analysis. They might push an engine to look at a line they believe is good, but most of the time if the engine does not confirm that the line is good, they will not play it.

It's difficult to have a computer vs engine match with correspondence because humans are using computers anyway. However I will say that if you could, humans would stand their best chance in these games, but assuming a human did not use computers at all I still think his odds of beating a top program would be very low.

Knowing how to use your chess engine, and knowing the weaknesses of your chess engine is much more important than being the world's strongest positional player. I remember some time back a advanced chess tournament on Playchess that had a lot of very strong GM's (including Nakamura and Svidler), and they were handily beaten by a 1700 ELO player that new his way around his engines.

If you read the comment on the games:

http://correspondencechess.com/campbell ... mblack.htm

and the analysis of how these old chess programs played against the correspondence master. You will see even back in 1999 chess programs were able to play and solve many of the positional problems the master threw at the computers. And he clearly says so in his comments.

It is a interesting read, and now what took 21.4 hours for Fritz 6 on their computer can be played in 3 minutes on mine.

Humans don't stand much of a chance with modern hardware and chess programs, in they can not beat Fritz 6 and Nimzo 7.32 on a Pentium III 500 MHz.

It is laughable that they are only left with this argument.

[syzygy]

What do you think would happen to a human master if playing against Houdini 3 on a multi core i7 computer.....Devastation!

The human master using H3 for analysis would most likely beat H3 quite easily at very long time controls. That is how correspondence chess works. And this is clearly what Leon Coleman meant.

That the human master + H3 beats H3 is clearly not because of the human master's tactical abilities.

The human probably doesn't even need to be close to master level.

[mwyoung]

What do you think would happen to a human master if playing against Houdini 3 on a multi core i7 computer.....Devastation!

The human master using H3 for analysis would most likely beat H3 quite easily at very long time controls. That is how correspondence chess works. And this is clearly what Leon Coleman meant.

That the human master + H3 beats H3 is clearly not because of the human master's tactical abilities.

The human probably doesn't even need to be close to master level.

Sorry that is not what he said.

"Pure engines playing correspondence chess against humans prove it."

He did not say pure engines playing against cyborgs prove it.

I play correspondence chess, that is not how correspondence chess works. Computer assistants must be stated to be allowed in the rules. No one wants to play against someone else's computer program, so a lot of event have a no computer rule.

But is your only argument is that humans must have Houdini 3 to beat Houdini 3. And you think that somehow this shows humans have better positional ideas on their own then Houdini 3. When they are stealing Houdini 3's own positional moves and analysis.

This is laughable....

[syzygy]

Sorry that is not what he said.

"Pure engines playing correspondence chess against humans prove it."

He did not say pure engines playing against cyborgs prove it.

It is implicit in what he said. Nowadays, humans playing correspondence chess are well known to be cyborgs. In addition, it is clear from his first sentence ("if Humans had the tactical ability of a chess engine") that he does not mean humans playing all by themselves.

But is your only argument is that humans must have Houdini 3 to beat Houdini 3. And you think that somehow this shows humans have better positional ideas on their own then Houdini 3. When they are stealing Houdini 3's own positional moves and analysis.

Of course it would be fine to use some other strong engine.

But let's see:
- do you agree or disagree that a human master using H3 (and sufficiently adept at it) would beat H3 at (very) long time controls, i.e. that the combination is stronger?
- if you agree, what is your explanation for it? Surely not that the human master's tactical contribution makes the difference?

This is laughable....

What is laughable is your way of reacting to counterarguments, and not just this one. If you are not interested in a serious discussion, then why do you bother at all? To show that you are sooo smart and all the others are sooo stupid? That's just a pity.