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Thursday, May 26, 2005

International

International

Chess battles: advantage computers

Richard Jinman

Hydra uses 64 of them that operate as a single machine The computer can project six moves further ahead than IBM's Deep Blue machine, which played a series of matches against Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997.

LONDON: Hydra, the world's most powerful chess computer, announced it had the upper hand soon after the first pawn slid across the board. "Your progress is not good," said Akhtar Hashmi, the technician who was relaying my ineffectual moves to Hydra via the keyboard of a laptop computer. "Hydra's progress is excellent."

Clearly, blind aggression was not going to have the desired effect. If the game had been evenly matched, the computer would have registered an advantage rating of 0. After four moves it calculated my advantage as 3 and falling fast. When I lost my queen in an audacious attempt to baffle the machine, it dropped to 10. "It is time for you to resign,'' said Mr. Hashmi. "Many players would resign at 7."

A few moves later, the advantage was 18 and the game had turned into a rout. "Checkmate will be in five moves," said Mr. Hashmi.

All over in 17 moves

He was right. Hydra quickly herded my king into a corner and the match was over in 17 moves and 14 dismal minutes. It would have ended sooner, but I had been moving my pieces rather slowly.

Hopefully, Michael Adams, the U.K.'s leading chess grandmaster, will exact some revenge when he begins a six-match tournament against Hydra at the Wembley Centre in London on June 21. If he wins, Mr. Adams will take home a prize of £80,000. But Hydra, which is housed in a secure, climate-controlled room in Abu Dhabi and plays its matches via a high-speed Internet connection, has never lost against a grandmaster.

Developed by the Abu Dhabi-based PAL Group, Hydra uses 64 computers that operate as a single machine. It can analyse 200 million chess moves in a second and think up to 40 moves ahead. Its technology can also be applied to supercomputer tasks such as DNA and fingerprint matching, code-breaking and space travel calculations.

Adams, who became a grandmaster at 17 and has played almost 2,000 games in international tournaments, is understandably cautious about his chances. "I know it will be a very tough match, but I will do my best," he said at the announcement of the contest at a London hotel on Tuesday.

"You have to adopt a slightly different strategy against a computer because there is no way you can compete against that massive processing power. I will be using intuition and experience to take the computer into positions it is uncomfortable with."

But it takes a lot to make Hydra uncomfortable. The computer can project six moves further ahead than IBM's Deep Blue machine, which played a series of matches against the Russian champion Garry Kasparov in 1996 and 1997. The first time they met, Kasparov beat Deep Blue 4-2. A year later it defeated him in a six-game tournament in New York. Hydra's Austrian developer, Chrilly Donninger, describes it as Deep Blue's successor. "The basic design is much cleaner," he said. "Hydra's philosophy is to flutter like a butterfly and sting like a hornet."

John Saunders, the editor of British Chess magazine, said Adams stood a good chance of earning some draws against Hydra because he had a "safe, steady" style of play that was well suited to taking on a machine. Kasparov, in contrast, was vulnerable against chess computers because he liked to take chances.

But Saunders does not think Adams will win the tournament and believes computers now have the upper hand over human players. If Hydra wins next month it will be the final confirmation of their supremacy.

"If Michael gets wiped out my feeling is that it really will be the end," said Saunders.

"A few years ago the players were making sure they didn't win by too much, now they are having to hang in there when they play a machine. The advantage is with the computers."

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