Last chess game of the year...

[lsur]

I played my last serious game for this year last night, in the Bury League against Newmarket. I won ,though admittedly, my opponent wasn't brilliant. What was pleasing though was the way I developed the pieces before attacking and then the economical way I was able to finish him off.

Comments

[keirf]

... and then after a few years you'll be very good, then you'll take a break, and the knowledge will all drift away.

Perhaps I can sell you my chess books.

[lsur]

Hmmm...that happens when you are young. I'm approaching this with the desperation of impending old age and death (whichever comes first) I've already had the break :¬)

Hey dude

[trencavel]

No idea if you are German - im partly

Re: Hey dude

[lsur]

Nope, English but I have an enthusiasm for Germany going back a few years when I was a busker there.

Re: Hey dude

[trencavel]

And now? Are you a squatter?
Good attitude!

Re: Hey dude

[lsur]

Stuck in the UK for now, working in an office. I would like to move to Germany but the unemployment there is through the roof, especially in the eastern part (incl Berlin.)

[ninshubur]

You could always try to write a chess program and so combine two of your interests. Be warned though that all attempts to write a chess program that uses a more human approach than the traditional brutal "search&evaluate really fast" so far have been rather unsuccessful. I suppose this vulnerability to brute force is one reason why I always prefered Go to chess: the last time I checked, a reasonably good Go player could handily beat any Go playing program devised so far.

[lsur]

I think computers are already giving grandmasters a hard time. It's the Go program which has yet to be built. Something to do with pattern recognition which makes Go a more difficult game to program. That would be a worthwhile project though I don't play (beyond the basic rules) and would have to spend time getting up to speed. I like the aesthetic purity of Go, that wide open board.

[ninshubur]

Well, I know that the top notch computer chess programs give even the best of the best chess players a hard time. My point was that these successful programs approach the game in a way that is fundamentally different from the way a good human player thinks about the game and that the way computers play chess is not applicable to Go because of the combinatorial explosion of the number of possible moves down the game tree. I still think that writing a simple chess program (even if naturally it won't be as good as the top dogs) can probably both teach you quite a bit about chess and a lot about computer programming and is a relatively simple but worthwhile project because of this, especially when your interests lie in both areas of knowledge.

[lsur]

One approach might be to use some sort of neural network. It's very involved though. They don't solve all problems. I would sooner tackle the Go problem though.