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

[carldaman]

Mark, I would agree for the most part, but the stronger the human the more he'll be able to step in and steer/dictate the course of action; and this is not based on his inferior tactical skill - so what is it then based on?

It's not uncommon for a reasonably strong human (at least expert level, let's say) to ensure that the engine doesn't fritter away an advantage by allowing a fortress, or a drawn endgame it mistakenly is too optimistic about.

Regards,
CL

[carldaman]

We are talking strictly about human + engine vs unaided engine at correspondence time control.

The 1700+ player can be weaker tactically, but with lots of time on their hands and the ability to move the pieces + being aided by a strong engine, he can still steer the game positionally.

I've seen such players at the club level. The reason they're lower rated can be manifold. I'm using an extreme example (1700+ rated) to make a point. If I used 1900+, what would you say then? I know 1900 rated players (OTB) who used to be over 2100 (OTB), but weakened with age.
Even correspondence ratings go down with age.

Regards,
CL

[Don]

Maybe I am down playing my own positional skills, but it does not take great positional skills to do this. I clearly know my positional skills are inferior to chess programs. Even though together we can find stronger moves as a team.

They are probably not inferior if the computer uses a 1-ply search.

I can agree that computers are better positionally if what you mean by that is that their search effectively enhances their rudimentary evaluation to the point that they recognize subtle positional aspects from the point of view of a human chess player. But that is of course just adding tactics from the point of view of the computer.

I would not say their evaluation is rudimentary. I know that the evaluation concepts that are in Komodo go well beyond what I knew before working on Komodo and even Larry had to help figure out what was important and what was not. I'm not a great player but I was far above the average tournament player.

I think when people try to compare a program to a human, in their minds they do an unfair comparison. They KNOW that computers are superior at searching so they to "remove" the search element and compare. But they don't remove that element from the human's thought process, only from the computers. So what they are comparing is a computer doing no search (in order to "judge" it's pure positional ability) to a human doing what a human normally does and they consider that fair and square.

What is missed is that humans are actually superb searchers. Samuel Reshevsky once said that he looked many moves ahead when making a move and even said he could easily go 20 moves in critical positions. I know how I think too and as a class A player I did a lot more than just check out a few tactics when I played in tournaments, I tried to imagine the positional consequences of the moves I played based on thinking ahead about the responses of my opponent and my counter-responses and so on. The net effect is that I played better positional chess.

So all of this comes down to your perception of how chess skill works and what you really think you are comparing. In our minds we have some vague abstract model of what is really go on but I suspect that our cognitive mental models of what is different between programs and humans is distorted and badly broken. For one thing you cannot separate search from positional play as if one has nothing to do with the other. Or if you really insist on doing that you have to apply the same restrictions to the human player - and I think you will see there is no way to do that.

The way computers play chess is just completely different from the way humans play. If you could come up with a definition of "positional chess" that is independent from the process at which a particular entity arrives at a move, then I will not contest that computers are better positionally in that particular sense.

That is like coming up with a definition for how good a runner is without actually considering his performance. People do try to do that sort of thing but it's almost purely based on hero worship and other nonsense.

If you want a definition the best one is the player who consistently outplays another is the better positional player.

[Don]

Mark, I would agree for the most part, but the stronger the human the more he'll be able to step in and steer/dictate the course of action; and this is not based on his inferior tactical skill - so what is it then based on?

It's not uncommon for a reasonably strong human (at least expert level, let's say) to ensure that the engine doesn't fritter away an advantage by allowing a fortress, or a drawn endgame it mistakenly is too optimistic about.

Computers are not better at every possible thing in chess. There are types of positions that humans have the upper hand. But that is no different than with humans, where the name of the game is to not let your opponent have his way, you avoid his strengths in favor of your own strengths.

It's pretty obvious that humans no longer have the positional skill to steer the game their way against humans. Like any other good player the computer isn't going to lay down and die so that you can get your ideal position against it.

Regards,
CL

[mwyoung]

If you want a definition the best one is the player who consistently outplays another is the better positional player.

YES!

[michiguel]

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....

No, they could have Stockfish and Chiron (just to name two), as the 3-Hirn experiments of Ingo Althoefer has shown.

Miguel

Lets play Miguel Your team of Stockfish and Chiron and you and you pick the move you want between the two programs Vs. Houdini 3.

All game analysis must be public, to be verified it was played by stockfish or Chiron and we use equal hardware.

Can we put money on this?

Lets play....

A bet? Don't be silly. I just gave a source of research that has been done already.

Miguel