On Jan. 6, 7, chess prodigy Hikaru Nakamura took on Komodo,
one of the world’s strongest chess engines and ... oh, blah, blah, blah. I am
thoroughly unimpressed. Even though it was a pawn-odds match, meaning the
monster engine started each game with one of its pawns missing, it still won.
Was anybody surprised, truly?
Image credit: Chess.com
Now, before you go shaking your head at the monitor,
silently accusing me of ‘hating computer chess’ or ‘not getting on with the
times, man’, I’ll have you know that I virtually lived on various chess
sites for many years and have much, much more engine experience than even I’m
comfortable admitting.
I love chess engines. They are fun, they are fast, they are
strong, they make great study partners, and I’ve written about them
substantially in blogs and articles, both good and bad. To this day, I run
every long game I play through Shredder running on a Fritz platform. That being
said, I’m also very well acquainted with Winboard, ChessPartner, Arena, Dasher,
Blitzin, Chesspad and quite a few other engine platforms.
Still, I think matches like these are bad form, bad taste,
and bad for chess. In my mind, it makes a spectacle of the world’s elite.
Nakamura, for instance, could beat anyone reading this blog post 100 out
of 100 games at any time control, assuming the top ten players in the world do
not read my chess entries. And yet, he subjects himself to a sideshow of sorts,
conceding to technology for the world to see.
Sad.
I feel that we Chess Plebians should only view
masters —— especially the FMs, IMs, and GMs ——
as nobles of our game, upper-class wood pushers to be looked up to,
emulated. But as one GM after another (it seems to be all the rage today for
GMs to make asses of themselves playing against engines for a little coin) gets
trampled by chess tech, their ‘clout’, if you will, their street cred,
drops substantially.
Today, as public spectacles such as Man Vs. Machine and our
world champion being careened through the air in car commercials are on display
for all the world to see, I’m betting most of us just want to watch the top players
do battle. We just want to see them meet somewhere, off the books, and duke it
out at whatever their chosen time control. We want to know what makes them
tick, how they study/practice, if they still play for fun sometimes at a club
or coffee shop, and whether or not they think they can beat certain
engines.
It’s like Fischer vs. Alekhine or Kasparov vs. Morphy: We
all say we’d love to see those matches but in reality, the wondering is
better.
I’d personally rather wonder if Naka could put the
hurt on today’s engines than watch him get slaughtered by them.
But that’s just me.
