In our times, there has been a shift in the attention of chess lovers from watching grandmaster vs. machine matches to watching chess-playing computers compete against each other to win a set of games. Formerly, people were eager to see who played chess better, whether machines or humans. The change in attitude comes in the wake of the fact that machines consistently won against the best grandmasters in recent chess games.
Most recently, Vladimir Kramnik was defeated by computer super player Fritz v 1.0. It is now apparent that these competitions are useless because computers have a more complete grasp of the possible moves that can be made any time in a chess game. For this purpose, the new machines have been built with enormous storage capacities and speeds which enable them to choose one out of millions of possible moves to make.
Chess is actually ideal for programming into a computer. The only difficulty to be hurdled is the amount of memory available for massive computations and the speed of the computer itself. These things are no longer difficult to have with modern technology. When computers think they do nothing else but that, unlike humans who are subject to all kinds of distractions. Those are the factors that make computers better chess players than humans.
In spite of the advancements in technology, the possibilities of chess games have not been completely encoded into programs and more work is seen ahead to make even more perfect chess-playing computers. We can expect more awesome chess games between machines in the future.
In fact, even humans are now interested in studying the way machines go about deciding on the proper moves to make in their game. Study is being devoted to the techniques of machines in playing chess, in this way to expand our own awareness of the games possibilities.
However, the future of chess for humans is by far not dim. In fact, the development of chess-playing machines may lead to better techniques for playing the game. The only change in the status of the game for humans is that for human beings, chess has become less a game to win than a game to learn from.
Today, the advantages of playing chess games have been scientifically proven by tens of independent studies conducted all around the world. These advantages have to do mainly with developing the powers of the mind.
One facility that chess develops in humans is the facility for spatial intelligence or the ability to derive logical meaning from the relative positions of objects in the real world.
Chess also enhances the capability of persons to coordinate things because it requires the player to make all his pieces on the board act as a whole towards capturing the opponent’s king. Another obvious benefit that can be gained by playing chess is accurate reasoning power.
The future understanding we have of chess lies in computers to achieve, the future benefits of chess are meant for humans to reap by playing the game, not only to win but more so to learn and grow.
Doc. No:110-JS-ULT5-jn17zx
John Skelly is the owner of Quality-Chess.net, a site where you can find a large variety of top quality chess products including wooden chess sets or glass chess sets
