Thank you for your friendly comment.

I bought Fritz 12, although I have to admit I now have Rybka 3 and Aquarium 2010 as well…

Friend mode on Fritz 12 is indeed a good thing (for the ego)

I am currently using Aquarium in Tournament mode to record my games vs engines. This shows me my current Elo and I then set the engine strength 200 points above this rating. At this setting you only win about 25%of games but you learn a bit and that is my real goal.

I’m guessing that you probably bought Rybka 3 or Fritz 12? I have recently purchased Fritz 12, and found the “Friend Mode”, where it handicaps the engine based on performance to be very useful and fun. This goes back to at least Power Chess (’95 and ’98,) which has a “progressive resistance” mode which was similar. (What’s the point of playing the computer if it *always* beats you? Even though that’s the beauty of computers.) Computers also can play a vital role in analysis of games and have contributed to theory.

Aside from that, fortunately there will always be human chess. And fortunately there are computers as well. Currently the gold standard for computer AI is Go, which is very difficult. But there’s still a lot in chess left to be mined, as well as in fiction.

I’ve also been meaning to post a ‘Tools of the Trade’ at my blog on the engines that are out there, both freeware and pay. Your post reminded me of that, as well.

Thanks, again!

Nice website and an interesting article.

Have a look at Nemeth’s games for some really funny anti computer chess too (king’s on the 4th or 5th rank in the early middlegame).

Deep Blue was probably (at best) 2750 Elo and using brute force as a playing style. Kasparov was undoubtedly below his best due to emotional reasons as your article points out. I certainly would have liked to see a rematch.

What I personally find telling in all this is the aversion that current GM’s have to playing computers. I suspect they know who the winners would be and so stay in human to human play.