Pawned

by Posted on

While my father has­n’t met a chess com­put­er that could beat him in at least four decades, I’ve strug­gled to ever win a game against a com­put­er or program.

Today on the flight home from Ver­mont, I fired up Hand­mark Pock­et Chess Deluxe for a game. I was grog­gy from sleep but beat PCD with sur­pris­ing ease.

I’m look­ing back over the game to try and deter­mine what I did this game that I nor­mal­ly don’t. Maybe some of these things will serve me in the future:

  1. I’ve nev­er tried the sin­gle-square King’s-side open­ing before. It was actu­al­ly an acci­den­tal slip of the sty­lus, but I went with it. It allowed me to essen­tial­ly devel­op a Queen’s-side open­ing with pro­tec­tion I don’t nor­mal­ly enjoy.
  2. I moved my Bish­ops out to the fourth rank, which helped me con­trol more of the board even though I did­n’t have a spe­cif­ic plan for them.
  3. I wait­ed until the com­put­er moved its Queen before I brought mine out.

Still, I’m sur­prised at the sim­plic­i­ty of the trap that forced mate.

Here’s the game:

1. e3 Nc6 
2. d4 Nf6 
3. Nc3 d6 
4. Bc4 Bf5 
5. f3 e6 
6. e4 Bg6 
7. Be3 d5 
8. Bd3 dxe4 
9. fxe4 Nxd4 
10. Bxd4 Be7 
11. Nf3 O-O 
12. O-O Qd7 
13. a4 Ng4 
14. Qe2 Bf6
15. e5 Bxd3 
16. Qxd3 Be7 
17. a5 Qc6 
18. Ne4 Rad8 
19. Neg5 h6 
20. Qh7# 1-0

Any­one see any­thing I did right?

Published by splicer

3 Replies to “Pawned”

  1. I most­ly see things the
    I most­ly see things the machine did wrong. Your game seems to my very lim­it­ed eye to be just nor­mal rea­son­able play. Maybe if you and I played it would be an even match. (When I got out my set — which tech­ni­cal­ly isn’t even mine — to play through these moves, there was tons of dust on it…)

  2. Steve,
    There are three paths
    Steve,

    There are three paths to beat­ing com­put­ers (not Deep Blue) at chess. The first is to devi­ate from the book. That forces the com­put­er to think for itself dur­ing the open­ing so you are not play­ing against the Fis­ch­ers, Alekhines, and Capa­blan­cas of the world. The sec­ond is to make every pos­si­ble equal trade to get to the endgame as soon as pos­si­ble. Com­put­ers are ter­ri­ble in the endgame. The third is to study chess dili­gent­ly and play as much as possible.

    Com­put­ers gen­er­al­ly force me to play dull, bor­ing chess. You can’t psych them out.

    Not to take any­thing away from your win (many of my wins have been the result of an egre­gious error on the part of my oppo­nent), but I have nev­er seen a com­put­er play such an inept game, even fail­ing to see the mate-in-one.

    Dad

    PS Thanks for get­ting me to get the board out and push a lit­tle wood, even if it was just fol­low­ing your game. Actu­al­ly touch­ing the pieces is so much bet­ter than click­ing on a screen. Sort of like the dif­fer­ence between actu­al sex and read­ing Penthouse.

  3. I remem­ber beat­ing a
    I remem­ber beat­ing a com­put­er chess pro­gram once on its high­est lev­el. This was around 1994, so I’m guess­ing its mem­o­ry did­n’t have a vast library of open­ings. And, yeah, when the com­put­er has to “think” for itself, its in trouble.

    I’ve got the moves writ­ten down some­where, but as I remem­ber, the com­put­er made a real­ly bad move ear­ly in the game, which set up its ulti­mate defeat. I’d no doubt gone off book by then — which prob­a­bly con­fused its poor CPU — but, specif­i­cal­ly, I’d brought my queen out real­ly ear­ly. I real­ized lat­er that prob­a­bly gave the com­put­er many more pos­si­ble moves that it had to consider.

    In your case, you had both your bish­ops in play, and both play­ers’ queens were in play. Whoa — any­thing can hap­pen! Look out, Handmark!

Leave a Reply