chess genius is sick at poker

saw this at 2p2 nvg and it was quite interesting. the guy has barely played but seems to be pwning

http://tv.pokernews.com/featured-vide...moura+2009%3A+Jeff+Sarwer/51724066001


his website on his earlier chess life and success
http://jeffsarwer.com/

so sick with like 5 year old kids being sick good at chess, scary shiet

and this is suprising coz?

a poker player that looks happy thats somewhat refreshing lol

oh nice he was the villain kid in searching for bobby fischer it looks like. Looks like he had a horrible childhood... after the clip on his website aired on the news (and I guess a vanityfair article), it looks like he and his sister got taken away from their father and put in foster homes... which they ran away from and went living with gypsies. pretty crazy

as a kid he did act kinda nuts lol

"hey, wanna play chesssss!!! WANNA PLAY CHEZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ?!?!?!?"

[x] chess prodigy
[x] cashed in a couple tournaments
[ ] proof he is a sick poker player

Being an amazing chess player covers a lot of important aspects of being a great poker player, but not all of them. It's still too early to say anything about his poker game. Jeff does seem like a very cool guy though and didn't have it easy growing up as a kid so I hope he indeed turns out to be awesome and I wish him all the best.

The chess prodigy that the movie Searching For Bobby Fischer was based on moved on to martial arts and won some martial art tournaments. It's definitely not unheard of for champion chess players to move onto a different field and excel in it.

On November 29 2009 08:14 tomson wrote: [x] chess prodigy [x] cashed in a couple tournaments [ ] proof he is a sick poker player Being an amazing chess player covers a lot of important aspects of being a great poker player, but not all of them. It's still too early to say anything about his poker game. Jeff does seem like a very cool guy though and didn't have it easy growing up as a kid so I hope he indeed turns out to be awesome and I wish him all the best.

Well, a bunch of pretty well known players in the 2p2 thread (first name to mind would be Shaun Deeb) were singing his praises.

True, but that's not the reason he's getting the acclaim he does. I'm just saying people are very naive in their evaluation if a guy is very good in poker (especially when it's based on tournament results). This probably shouldn't bother me much, but I always liked to think that credit should be given where it's due and it tilted me when I heard about the 'best poker players'.

Deeb praising Jeff's game is impressive and certainly makes one wonder, but still it's not proof. He might have been subjected to the same biases ('chess prodigy, started playing poker not so long ago, was very good and aggressive at my table -> therefore he will be absolutely amazing')

well he has to have a great strategic mind, and willingness to learn/study hard, which he says he does in the interview. Is he one of the best player ever? only time will tell really but he definately has a very good start.

it's not like an MTT player actually plays significant samples to have an accurate picture of how someone plays anyways. it would take years of grinding MTT with someone to actually have a grip on their game.

I dont get it, even if he is a chess prodigy and sick good at poker, it doesnt set a precedent of being good in more than 1 game, rmmbr elky or slayer?

A lot of winning poker is understanding how weaker players rationalize their decisions. This only comes with experience.

On November 29 2009 08:46 tomson wrote: True, but that's not the reason he's getting the acclaim he does. I'm just saying people are very naive in their evaluation if a guy is very good in poker (especially when it's based on tournament results). This probably shouldn't bother me much, but I always liked to think that credit should be given where it's due and it tilted me when I heard about the 'best poker players'. Deeb praising Jeff's game is impressive and certainly makes one wonder, but still it's not proof. He might have been subjected to the same biases ('chess prodigy, started playing poker not so long ago, was very good and aggressive at my table -> therefore he will be absolutely amazing')

Hehe, he wrote something along the lines of "This kid is why I'm quitting poker - I'll never be as good as he has the potential to be". Something like that. A couple of other tournament pros (I forget who exactly tho - Imperium maybe?) also chimed in saying they thought he had amazing potential.

That carries a lot more weight than a couple of decent tournament results, for sure.

i mean come on lol

its an interesting story, but being good at simultaneous and speed chess is a lot less impressive to me than being rated 2700+. however, from the video it seemed like he did have a really rare natural talent for the game but just never nurtured it enough to become top notch grandmaster level and would have if his father allowed him to get long term coaching from bruce.

i seriously doubt this guy is even fundamentally sound at this point. being a genius doesnt really mean much of anything. hes probably played <10k hands in his life. its going to take years before hes even competent in a lot of areas of poker.

On November 29 2009 11:27 TianYuan wrote: Show nested quote + On November 29 2009 08:46 tomson wrote: True, but that's not the reason he's getting the acclaim he does. I'm just saying people are very naive in their evaluation if a guy is very good in poker (especially when it's based on tournament results). This probably shouldn't bother me much, but I always liked to think that credit should be given where it's due and it tilted me when I heard about the 'best poker players'. Deeb praising Jeff's game is impressive and certainly makes one wonder, but still it's not proof. He might have been subjected to the same biases ('chess prodigy, started playing poker not so long ago, was very good and aggressive at my table -> therefore he will be absolutely amazing') Hehe, he wrote something along the lines of "This kid is why I'm quitting poker - I'll never be as good as he has the potential to be". Something like that. A couple of other tournament pros (I forget who exactly tho - Imperium maybe?) also chimed in saying they thought he had amazing potential. That carries a lot more weight than a couple of decent tournament results, for sure.

meh... Deeb saying something like this doesn't do much for me tbh he's not really an elite MTT player, just a ridiculously sick grinder who can play nasty volume w/o burning out.

FatalErrror

i'd crossbook him in any EPT against anyone but elky or ivey, he's probably the greatest mind to enter the tournament poker world in history, no exaggeration.

seeing people are taking part of this out of context i want to clarify, he has the best mind, not the most developed one, he is still at least a month or 2 of full time play to absorb enough general knowledge to actually have all the tools that the top 10-20 tournament players have. i admit i'd be taking the worst of it as near term as the PCA but would still be happy to crossbook vs almost anyone for a fun sweat, but the PCA is definately the toughest EPT by far and will present jeff with more challenging opponents of different styles to break down and adjust to. sorry to everyone who thought they'd get 6 figure crossbooks down, i'm wayyyyyy too busto for that

Shaun Deeb

FE is not leveling jeff if he sticks to poker for another 6 months I have 0 doubt he'll be considered like in the same sentance with menlo. I've spent a lot of time with him since I first met him in kiev and I wish I could teach him what I know about tourneys because he can take them so much further. And watching him in action was a factor in why I quit I'll never be as good as he will be and once people of his intelligence level see how easy they can crush poker they will all follow. Also, jeff is an awesome guy great friend I consider now as well. Also, I think everyone whose hungout with him so far out here has been so impressed with almost everything he does. He superuses people live including myself 100% of the time his thoughtprocess is so far above levels I could ever imagine it's sick to watch it in play. Also he actually has personality which will really help once the spotlight is on him again.

Imper1um

Played with Jeff quite a bit and also got a chance to get to know him a little bit these last 2 ept's. He's a super friendly/cool guy (he actually busted me out of EPT warsaw after pretty much owning me) I would definitely say that his potential in poker exceeds most good players. The way he thinks about the game and how he get's his opponents talking are his top two attributes as a player. Fundamentally, he's a little bit unsound but if he worked on his game hardcore for a few months I could definitely see him being a top player. Happy to crossbook vs him for now in a few months to a year, i might change my mind

Timex

Talked to him a bunch, a few things to point out -after this event hes played 6 EPTs with 3 cashes - as everyone else has said hes a super cool, reasonable guy - its tough to get an idea of exactly how good he is since he definitely has a very different approach and doesn't really disect hands in the nit-picky way that twoplustwoers do, and his approach is definitely much more of a broad gameplan than a specific one, I really want to see what happens after he travels the circuit for longer, or better yet strarted putting in legit volume online since I honestly have no idea... I do know as I spent more and more time talking to him I became more and more confident hes a sicko - his approach is kind of the complete opposite, 2+2 thrives off of staying out of tough spots at all costs, he intentionally tries to get in as many tough spots as possible -he said his playing strength is probably about 2500 FIDE, and despite being 31 he thinks he could become a top 100 player if he really dedicated himself to it- but if he hadn't quit at a young age and had been studying properly, he thinks he could have one day been a top 10 player - he hates online chess and doesn't really like the idea of playing much online poker either - Despite talking to him a decent amount about poker, his approach is just so far different from mine and every other 2+2ers that I don't really know how much merit I give to the "it will take him 1 month to get good" or "1 year until hes the best claims" since I honestly just don't know what that much about his game, and how its changed in recent months, what he plans on changing in the future etc, I feel like sweating his hole cards while having him like annotate his thought process would be extremely interesting since he didn't do that much specific poker talk, and mostly just talked about broader ideas - The thing I am most interested in seeing is whether he maintains being as lag as he is. It seems like the majority of players start out lag and then become nittier as time goes on, I'm curious whether he'll tighten up or become even more hyper-lag(to give an idea how lag he is, he mentioned that often after really steamrolling a table he'll really tighten up to try and get paid and only play 20-30% of hands... which I'm pretty sure is about what most lags play during their laggy phases in live tournaments)

Since December 2008 Jeff has been playing on the European Poker Tour, where he has three cashes including a 3rd place finish at EPT Vilamoura.

- Wiki

Don't feel like reading the other 2 pages right now but he's definitely someone to look out for if nothing else.

good posts tian, I def. am curious to see how good this guy can get.

of those posts the only i really trust is timex's.

http://www.chessfriend.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=85

chess players turning to poker en masse

[ ] Chess genius

(he doesn't even have a chess rating ...)
http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idcode=&name=sarwer&offset=0

On November 29 2009 14:44 Patrocle wrote: [ ] Chess genius (he doesn't even have a chess rating ...) http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idcode=&name=sarwer&offset=0

apparently he entered an 86 man tourney this year or last year with very little study or play since his childhood that had 4 grandmasters and he got 3rd, i think they gave him a provisional rating of 2300 fide but he plays at a higher level than that. it seems like he has a natural gift for the game although he never put in the time to be 2500+

fuck this guy imo :D

he seemed cool enough in the interview

On November 29 2009 14:56 Daut wrote: Show nested quote + On November 29 2009 14:44 Patrocle wrote: [ ] Chess genius (he doesn't even have a chess rating ...) http://ratings.fide.com/seek.phtml?idcode=&name=sarwer&offset=0 apparently he entered an 86 man tourney this year or last year with very little study or play since his childhood that had 4 grandmasters and he got 3rd, i think they gave him a provisional rating of 2300 fide but he plays at a higher level than that. it seems like he has a natural gift for the game although he never put in the time to be 2500+

definitely cheating if he went from 0 to 2500 without any games before.
We had the same case in France, some no-name made a tremendous perf. at a tourney and was suspected of using shredder.
As there were no evidences collected during the tournament the guy was awarded the title, but all the grandmasters who reviewed his games are 155% sure he used shredder, as the lines he used were exactly those shredder used, which is absolutely impossible.

Read some material about him.
He was a child prodigy and had very great results at young age.
But the scenario where he has little to no clue at chess and then make the 3rd place of a tournament coming from nowhere is not possible without cheating in Chess

how do you cheat at chess? Pay people to lose to you?

just read the book of Malcolm Gladwell - Outliers
and it talks about winners of high performance, and EVERYONE like Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, that are legends in theirs sports, they had to train REALLY fucking hard to get to the top
so, even if the kid has talent, it's pretty stupid to say that in 6 months he will be near the top even if he works harder than everyone

what's shredder?

On November 29 2009 16:38 Xervean wrote: how do you cheat at chess? Pay people to lose to you?

No you use a chess calculator.
Even an iPod with shredder on it -it is a famous open-source chess-IA designed by an IM - can defeat anybody.

Edit : IM = International Master

the tourney he won was live.. I mean I guess he could use an ipod but seems very unlikely and kinda ridiculous to assume someone wouldnt see that..

Seems like a nice guy, it's a shame he "Doesn't like internet poker".

On November 29 2009 19:16 Xervean wrote: the tourney he won was live.. I mean I guess he could use an ipod but seems very unlikely and kinda ridiculous to assume someone wouldnt see that..

Actually, in France we had this problem at the Paris Open...
The guy was actually using a camera to give inputs, or using someone in the audience, and had earphones to
get the appropriate results.
Referees in Chess sucks big time, and didn't even consider shakedowning him.
With modern chess-programme, very small devices and some IT-cleverness, you can make
an astonishing chess-champion.
In long games, you can even use your device in the toilets ...

interesting stuff on chess cheating lol

yeah i thought chess players were really honorable extremely intelligent players, fucking scumbags lol

so lets recap:
[] chess genius
[] sick at poker

i have played in a chess tournament before and there are tons of people standing over your shoulders watching and stuff. just seems like it would be hard to get away with

In long games, you can even use your device in the toilets ...

Topalov v Kramnik reference ;o?

yep the toilet idea explains it all i guess... i missed that comment. cheating could def be done that way

On November 29 2009 20:12 TianYuan wrote: Show nested quote + In long games, you can even use your device in the toilets ... Topalov v Kramnik reference ;o?

Yeap, even if in this case it's not sure Kramnik was going to the toilets for this reason.
In the Paris Open, the guy had a mate with the computer, and was giving him the moves.
We are still unsure, cause the last day this "winner" smash his electronic device, which was
hidden in his jacket during the whole tournament, throwing it to the rails of the paris subway.
The evidences were then destroyed and we could not prove how he did the cheating.
But let me be clear: if you have 100% accurency with shredder, you are not playing 2500, no, you
are playing 3000, meaning you are even better than Bobby Fischer, Gary Kasparov, and not by
a small margin...

really? shredder on a normal PC is actually better than grand masters?

On November 29 2009 06:46 Drakk wrote: a poker player that looks happy thats somewhat refreshing lol

yup!

Gee, now that i think about it, i should've just changed the title to: "kid really good at chess, now after 20 years plays poker and cashes in two ept tourneys"

yeah i think it would be more worth sharing and people would give a fuck lol

On November 30 2009 00:49 whamm! wrote: Gee, now that i think about it, i should've just changed the title to: "kid really good at chess, now after 20 years plays poker and cashes in two ept tourneys" yeah i think it would be more worth sharing and people would give a fuck lol

so u have to sensationalize something to get attention ?

On November 30 2009 00:49 whamm! wrote: Gee, now that i think about it, i should've just changed the title to: "kid really good at chess, now after 20 years plays poker and cashes in two ept tourneys" yeah i think it would be more worth sharing and people would give a fuck lol

when i first saw the 2p2 thread i read all of it and watched the video on his website. was a pretty interesting story. also cool to hear what people think about him, especially timex's opinion

LoL at shaundeeb quitting poker cuz of ppl like this guy starting to play poker. Pretty sure that's not why deeb is quitting poker o lolol

I'd really like to play vs this guy if tightening up is 20-30% of hands

Anything out there on how he got into poker and what hes doing for buyins on ept circuit, if its grinded profits or some sponsorship/backing etc?

On November 29 2009 20:53 Baal wrote: really? shredder on a normal PC is actually better than grand masters?

It's complicated to answer this straight-forward.
In a close to infinite game play ("mail chess game" can last 2 or 3 months) shredder might be defeated by a human.
But in traditional tournament format, it's close to impossible for a human to win, or draw against shredder.

And shredder is not even the best chess-IA. The best from the best is Rybka, which is one step ahead shredder or chessmaster, or whatever:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rybka

Hope I answered your question !

hikaru nakamura
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/11/chess/index.html
i saw him playing on stars .25 .5 years ago

stupid chess players. if they were geniuses they would play poker

On November 30 2009 12:03 woodbrave1 wrote: hikaru nakamura http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/03/11/chess/index.html i saw him playing on stars .25 .5 years ago stupid chess players. if they were geniuses they would play poker

There are already plenty that made the moves.
But generally, Chess players, especially blitz-specialists, are quite nervous persons, so I would never bet
on a random chess player to be a good high-stake poker player because of tilt-issue.

whatever happened with this guy?

Dead thread resurrection!

Yeah, Hikaru sucks at poker (sorry Naka). But some lesser grandmasters like Pavel Blatny and Roland Schmaltz have made the switch to poker pro.

played with him all day 2 of the wsop ME. really nice/happy guy but didn't play very well. not a fish certainly but def not a sicko by any means

edit: i'm not giving him enough credit here. i think his attitude is great and that he's probably the kind of intensely self-aware person who has the ability to avoid forming terrible habits and really get good at poker, so i expect good things from him

he played the EPT tallin that finished today
dunno what place he finished tho

honestly its surprising that we don't see more high level chess players in poker considering how successful starcraft and magic players have been.

I guess the psychological part is not so big in chess. For example as Patrocle explained well, there are IA programs now unbeatable but we are far to have those in poker.
And in starcraft, you have to adapt so much to the other, something you find also in poker.
so not so surprising imo.

I had a radioshow with him while we were in Berlin, the guy talks like several languages and despite not talking it for months - he did the entire show in Dutch and was easy to understand. He's a very nice guy, always friendly and pretty good at poker I think.

Two of the guys I know who play the highest stakes at Stars weren't at all impressed by him I must say which was bit of a downer after hearing such great stories from everyone. Gotta say, these guys aren't easy to impress but they said he had some real big leaks to solve before becoming really superb.

@kingpowa: That is not correct, there are no unbeatable chess computers. But still, there is a reason computers play chess and Scrabble much better than they do poker or bridge: computers do not have a "theory of mind", i.e. a concept of how human opponents think which lets one develop strategies that exploit those quirks. There is also the fact that card games involve incomplete information, which means it takes more computing power to make the calculations, although I think this is a lesser concern: computers can still do a math problem involving ranges (and there are computers which play short stack NL exceptionally well).

@NMcNasty: I think it's because the kind of analysis required for poker requires some personal skills, which chess doesn't really develop. Because the board and chess pieces are an abstraction, you can ignore your opponent, and probably should, in order to focus. So being socially clueless is of no disadvantage in a chess game. In poker, the typical Aspie type who has chess skills has to develop that theory of mind, as ignoring your opponent is generally disastrous.

On August 16 2010 15:11 kingpowa wrote: I guess the psychological part is not so big in chess. For example as Patrocle explained well, there are IA programs now unbeatable but we are far to have those in poker. And in starcraft, you have to adapt so much to the other, something you find also in poker. so not so surprising imo.

Psychological part is huge in chess and that is one of the biggest problems for a GM when facing a strong computer, or was when those matches made sense and were held.

Starcraft and poker are games of imperfect information, while chess is a game of perfect information. The reason why the programs are so successful @ chess is that there has been enormous amount of interest in chess programming, mainly because chess was always considered something like an intellectual stronghold for people, a bit mysterious with all that "intuition", "sense" and patterns and things that seems you cannot program. So they cracked it
Modern chess programs are really cool.

starcraft should be (much) easier in theory, but you cannot do much in practice because there is no usable API AFAIK, like you cannot take over micro. Imagine a program with arbitrarily high APM which never does any mechanics mistakes. You have very little space left against such a program, i.e. you have to obtain a huge edge by tricking it with your builds, because you are at a huge disadvantage at micro/macro. Obv. it is not possible to do this for a long time, so as soon as the developers detect how to do proper scouting/countering to tricky builds, it would be over. Note that the computer should not be as good as humans in the metagame, it just would need not to suck balls and the mechanics would decide.


Poker strategies change with the stack size. For certain (small) stack sizes Poker is solved. For deep-stack poker I guess writing a competent bot would be hard. Several opponents is harder than HU probably. I believe it is still easier than chess, but it took them 30 years to solve chess in a way that a good program on a laptop rapes a GM. With poker it should come faster because after all there is so much money involved.

sick

I played chess until I was 12 and I was also a "prodigy".

Now that I have learned how to play go I marvel at how much depth people see in chess. From the point of view of go, it's such a limited game.

The reason why the programs are so successful @ chess is that there has been enormous amount of interest in chess programming, mainly because chess was always considered something like an intellectual stronghold for people, a bit mysterious with all that "intuition", "sense" and patterns and things that seems you cannot program. So they cracked it

The same holds true for go, and although enormous progress has been made, the best computers still struggle against your average club player.

The real reason computers outrank humans in chess by so much is that superior tactical foresight is worth a lot in chess and there is not enough strategical depth for humans to be able to outweigh that advantage.

What's happening with Chess is that it's gradually losing its place as the par excellence of intellectual activity. Smart people in search of a challenging board game might try a game called Go.
~Hans Berliner, The New York Times, Feb 6, 2003

I agree what you said regarding go and tactics.

In go, pieces dont move, so it's much easier for humans. And then again, there interest in chess has been much bigger than in go, maybe because so much more people know and play chess somewhat regularly compared to go.

The tactics thing regarding chess came after the programs started to play so well. So basically it was not part of the game before the computers came in. If you are a player: all those super-ugly openings they play today with grabbing the pawn and holding it in a way which seems very anti-positional (all those Moscow gambits or whatever it is called in Slav Defense, for example); those kind of things became possible because of computers. Before that, humans did not know they could hold it, and they didn't play it. Chess was much more "positional" in 60s and 70s than now.

What I'm saying-the programmers did not KNOW tactics was so important. They found it out: it was an engineering achievement, one of the many they made in the field.

it's not that simple, chess has alot more limited moves whereas go has alot less constraints.

On November 29 2009 18:06 Patrocle wrote: Even an iPod with shredder on it -it is a famous open-source chess-IA designed by an IM - can defeat anybody.

Opensourcewhathaveyoubeensmokinglolwut?


and it isn't designed by an IM. seriously.



(also... do you mean AI? or is the joke on me for that one...)

go-moku also has less constraints than chess and more valid moves on average probably. Accidentally, the variant with LEAST amount of constraints has been solved. Like checkers, which also has less constraints than chess and has been solved too.

to make it clear: I'm not arguing chess is harder than go from programming point of view. As of now go seems to be much harder, but we know better when people actually spending as much effort on go as they did in chess. I suspect right now there are an order of magnitude more active chess programmers than go programmers.

On August 16 2010 18:31 lucifer wrote: Show nested quote + On November 29 2009 18:06 Patrocle wrote: Even an iPod with shredder on it -it is a famous open-source chess-IA designed by an IM - can defeat anybody. Opensourcewhathaveyoubeensmokinglolwut?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/glaurung-chess/id305558605?mt=8

They say it's free.

Not tried it myself but I know the PC version and it is one of the strongest engines and it's free.

Edit: this is not what he meant obv. but the PC version is open-source, and it is rated 2-nd in the computer chess rating lists after Rybka 4.

pluzich so? He said shredder. I'm like wtf?




He also said it was designed by an IM.

Michael Feygin
Leonid Milov
Thomas Henrichs
Jan Michael Sprenger

are the four IM's from germany. The designer/programmer/whatever of shredder is not among them.



edit: the Stockfish engine is opensource yes. took forever to find out wtf you meant tho. Might help if you provided the name. (Stockfish)

Jeff is a great guy, I've known him for a over a year now and he's definitely an intense guy with mega talent in poker/accomplishments so far

On August 16 2010 18:46 lucifer wrote: pluzich so? He said shredder. I'm like wtf? He also said it was designed by an IM. Michael Feygin Leonid Milov Thomas Henrichs Jan Michael Sprenger are the four IM's from germany. The designer/programmer/whatever of shredder is not among them. edit: the Stockfish engine is opensource yes. took forever to find out wtf you meant tho. Might help if you provided the name. (Stockfish)

He confused everything there. The famous engine by IM is Rybka. Version 2.3.2 is free, which is quite old. I think there is no iPhone app for that.

Shredder sucks imo.

P.S. When you asked for a link in your initial post I thought you just wanna free program for your iPhone

On August 16 2010 16:05 pluzich wrote: Show nested quote + On August 16 2010 15:11 kingpowa wrote: I guess the psychological part is not so big in chess. For example as Patrocle explained well, there are IA programs now unbeatable but we are far to have those in poker. And in starcraft, you have to adapt so much to the other, something you find also in poker. so not so surprising imo. Psychological part is huge in chess and that is one of the biggest problems for a GM when facing a strong computer, or was when those matches made sense and were held.

I didn't know that.
Could you please explain why how ?

If you are familiar with the programs used (shredder or Rybka), do you know if (and if yes, how) it takes into account the moves of the other player during the match or the previous one ? How it "adapts" to the opponent ?

I just knew their existence but not how they work. I thought that they would almost take independently every move and calculate the best one, processing a huge amount of scenarios.

On November 29 2009 10:26 nolan wrote: it's not like an MTT player actually plays significant samples to have an accurate picture of how someone plays anyways. it would take years of grinding MTT with someone to actually have a grip on their game.

+12

playing yes, talking no

On August 17 2010 06:03 kingpowa wrote: Show nested quote + On August 16 2010 16:05 pluzich wrote:   On August 16 2010 15:11 kingpowa wrote: I guess the psychological part is not so big in chess. For example as Patrocle explained well, there are IA programs now unbeatable but we are far to have those in poker. And in starcraft, you have to adapt so much to the other, something you find also in poker. so not so surprising imo. Psychological part is huge in chess and that is one of the biggest problems for a GM when facing a strong computer, or was when those matches made sense and were held. I didn't know that. Could you please explain why how ? If you are familiar with the programs used (shredder or Rybka), do you know if (and if yes, how) it takes into account the moves of the other player during the match or the previous one ? How it "adapts" to the opponent ? I just knew their existence but not how they work. I thought that they would almost take independently every move and calculate the best one, processing a huge amount of scenarios.

I think he means the psychology affects the human players. It doesn't affect the computers much. Modern chess engines uses an evaluation function based on material advantage and how "active" all pieces are to decide a score for a position. It then basically "bruteforces" a LOT of positions trying to see what can get it the best score in the long term.