Improving Your Game with the Help of
Computers
While the famous Man versus Machine
matches of Garry Kasparov against IBM's Deep Blue supercomputer and
Vladimir Kramnik’s match against Deep Fritz get all the media
attention, the question is: How can computers help people play
better chess?
There are articles on how to beat chess-playing computers. One tip
is to open with a highly unusual move. Computers know all the common
opening moves. If you open with your own unorthodox, silly,
suboptimal move instead of the Ruy Lopez or Caro-Kann, it's forced
to use up processing time to calculate the optimum response instead
of waiting until the middle of the game. Now the question becomes:
If you want to use the Sicilian Defense or The Queen's Gambit
Accepted when you play a real person, why practice something you
invented just to trick a computer? What use would this be in a real
game or tournament? Not much! However, if you've discovered a new
super opening and want to test it out against a computer, you can do
just that. You can also stop and analyze the game at any point.
Playing chess with a computer is good
as:
- A training tool.
- A resource to make it easier to
learn from past games.
- A tool for analyzing the game.
- A way to practice when no person
is available.
There's a wide range of chess computers
and software on the market. Brands of chess computers include
Excalibur, Novag, and Saitek. Chess computers are available in
handhelds, portable, and desktop designs. Chess software includes
Shredder and Fritz.
The same computer you play with when you have no partner can also
teach you what you're doing wrong. If you're a beginner, a good
chess computer or software program can play against you and point
out your errors. Playing with a computer will provide you with good
feedback, too. If you're already a grandmaster, you don’t need a
computer to teach you, but to support your strategies against your
opponents.
Of course, you need to learn the basics from playing with other
people and reading the best books on the subject, too.
In the book Mortal Games: The Turbulent Genius of Garry Kasparov,
Fred Waitzkin relates how, during the world championship tournament
of 1990 against Anatoly Karpov, part of Garry Kasparov's team
consisted of a database of past chess plays, with someone constantly
scrolling through them to research them. If Karpov opened a game
with the Zaitsev, that night they would research that opening on the
assumption that he might open with it again. Of course, he and his
team thoroughly researched his King's Indian defense.
Naturally, computers are used to analyze chess positions and
theories. The game is far too complicated for anyone to have
developed a complete start-to-finish guide the way a basic strategy
for blackjack has been developed, but the end game has been
analyzed. Chess computers have databases of all 3-, 4-, and 5-piece
end games.
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