Kramnik vs Deep Fritz. A Brain Games Event

Man v Machine by Sean Evans (ChessBoa@SoftHome.net)

Kramnik and Deep Fritz 7

The main story in the computer chess community is the upcoming match between the world chess champion, GM Vladimir Kramnik, and the computer chess program, Deep Fritz 7 ( DF7 ), programmed by the Dutchman, Frans Morsch, and sold under the ChessBase product line. Mr. Morsch has been quoted in the press as saying;

"We are not nervous" and "We cannot change anything now. It will be much more difficult for my human opponent."

Frederic Friedel, co-founder of the DF7 team states;

"It wouldn't be the end of the world if a computer became the best player in the world. If one did, you would just exclude computers from competing in tournaments. The humans play on."

The match is being held in the Le Royal Meridiene Hotel, Manama, Bahrain, a country located in the Persian Gulf. Dubbed the Brains-In-Bahrain and billed as "the last chance for human intelligence", the match consisting of eight games is to be held between October 12th and November 1st.

Brain Games Network is organizing the match with a $ 2,000,000 sponsorship from the Emir of Bahrain. The money is to be allocated as follows, $ 1,000,000 for organizing the tournament and GM Kramnik taking home; $ 1,000,000 for a win; $ 800,000 for a draw; $ 600,000 for a loss.

In 1947, Alan Turing specified the first chess program for chess and some fifty years later, many saw the then world champion, Gary Kasparov, defeated by IBMs Deeper Blue ( DB ) in a six game match by a score of 3.5 to 2.5, as letting humanity down and the point of watershed in the short history of computer science. Pure CPU calculating power had beaten the world chess champion.

Four years after the match, Brain Games Network is attempting to promote the match as the great human revenge match against computers.

American, Robert Hyatt, Ph.D., and author of the freeware Crafty chess program compared the strength of the DF7 hardware and DB hardware as follows;

"DB searched an average of 200 Million nodes ( moves ) per second, with a peak speed of just over 1 Billion nodes per second. DF7 might hit 2 Million nodes per second on a good eight CPU Xeon computer. It is behind a factor of 100 in nodes per second.

DB used special-purpose chess hardware that could do many things in parallel. In particular, it allowed the designers to add many positional knowledge components without regard to their cost in speed since they could be computed in parallel with existing eval components. As a result, they had the luxury of adding any positional knowledge they wanted, without worrying about slowing their machine down. It had no influence on speed, just on hardware design complexity. As a result, DBs evaluation was also significantly better than current programs.

If you take the 100x nodes per second advantage, and factor in another 10x due to the evaluation they could do with no speed penalty, they are roughly 1,000 times faster than the program that will play Kramnik. Those are actual numbers, based on actual data released by the DB team."

As DF7 will be running on an eight CPU machine, which is running 1,000 times slower than DB, you decide whether it is the next super Man v Machine match. In addition, DF7 is further handicapped with the addition of several rules. GM Kramnik has to be given a copy of the DF7 program, but not the opening book, to be utilized in the tournament three months before the match; GM Kramnik is allowed to rest every six hours; games are played every other day; see prior matches played by DF7; no programming changes to the program are allowed once the match has started; and the game is adjourned after sixty moves.

Presumably, during the adjournment GM Kramnik could utilize the DF7 disk in his possession to analyze the position. We have to wonder if this was considered when the rules for the match were being drafted.

Still, DF7 is a formidable foe even if it is many years away from the technology envisioned by Stanley Kubrick in the recently released Sci-Fi movie "A.I.".

Match Predictions:

GM Raymond Keene one of the organizers of the match is predicting a narrow GM Kramnik win; and

GM Nigel Short is predicting a win for GM Kramnik.

Our prediction is four wins for GM Kramnik and the balance of the games will be draws.

Perhaps, Kasparov's quote after his loss to DB says it best;

"I think the competition has just started."

Pre-match quotations

For more information on the match visit the following URLs;

http://www.chessbase.com/events/bahrain/bahr04.htm

http://www.brainsinbahrain.com/

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of TWIC, Chess & Bridge Ltd or the London Chess Center.