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Aberg variation of Capablanca's Chess. Different setup and castling rules. (10x8, Cells: 80) [All Comments] [Add Comment or Rating]

💡📝Hans Aberg wrote on Thu, Apr 24, 2008 06:36 PM UTC:

H.G.Muller:
| Well, let us take one particular position then: the opening position of
| FIDE Chess. You maintain that the outcome of any game starting from this
| position is fixed?

Since there is only a finite number of positions, there is theoretically an optimal strategy.

| A quick peek in the FIDE database of Grand Master games
| should be sufficient to convince you that you are very, very wrong about
| this. Games starting from this position are lost, won and drawn in
| enormous numbers. There is no pre-determined outcome at all.

They probably haven't searched through all positions to find the optimal strategy.

| Computers that use the statistical approach, such as Rybka, are
| incomparably strong. Humans, using the way you describe, simply cannot
| compete. These are the facts of life.

I suspect that humans are not allowed to search through zillions of positions like computers do. Specifically, if strong human players are allowed to experiment to search out of the weaknesses of the computer programs and using other computer programs to check against computational mistakes, I think that these computer programs will not be as strong.

But as for the question of piece values, humans and computers may prefer different values - it depends on how they should be used.