/ 23 October 2022

Rise of the indomitable chess machines

Gettyimages 1242455291
While sophisticated programs increase the risk of cheating in tournaments, they reveal ever deeper insights to analysts and players. Photo by Peter Gercke/picture alliance via Getty Images)

The opening scene of the Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster Terminator 2 :Judgement Day where the malevolently looking T-800 endoskeleton crushes a human skull signifies to the audience that artificial intelligence had surpassed human intellect — and not in a good way. 

In the chess world, that moment finally arrived in 2006 when Russian world champion Vladimir Kramnik was defeated by the chess program Deep Fritz by a score of 4-2. That result effectively concluded the era of Man v Machine matches that had gripped the public’s imagination since Garry Kasparov successfully defended the honour of humanity by defeating an early version of IBM’s Deep Blue in 1996.

Today one can download, for free, in a matter of seconds, the latest version of the chess engine Stockfish and thus have on tap an analyst that far outperforms chess legends like Bobby Fischer, Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen and swiftly comes up with the most optimum move of all time. 

Of course, it is mute and gives no explanation of how it reaches its conclusions other than an assessment of the current position and a line of analysis of what it considers best moves for either side. This can all be quite beyond the casual user and on many occasions, it will baffle experts and astound grandmasters. 

Major tournaments are regularly covered online and the games will have an evaluation bar next to them (something akin to televised poker where a player’s hole cards are exposed to the viewer) which will assess the quality of each move as it impacts the position. 

Evaluations are roughly weighted around the value of a pawn. Thus an assessment of 0.5 would equate to half a pawn indicating a slight edge whereas anything beyond two would constitute a serious if not winning advantage. The best players in the world are constantly being examined under this silicon scrutiny that is there for the entertainment, rather than instruction, of the internet audience that can number into the thousands. 

The chat facility, as one might expect, attracts a slew of impolite comments when a player rated in the world’s top 10 misses an opportunity to make a move that the engine gives as plus six and instead, it is now only plus 1.7 It should be added that the trend of modern tournaments is towards faster time limits with less time for reflection and thus more room for error.

In 1976 the English master William Harston published an amusing book called How to Cheat at Chess and in that age of innocence gave advice such as: “Playing in the centre or on the wings, depending on whether your opponent’s eyes are far apart or close together, and deep in your opponent’s territory or close to home, depending on whether he has long or short arms.” 

Now, of course with the advance of computer technology, cheating is a serious factor — even at the highest levels. At the Chess Olympiad in 2010, a grandmaster in the French national team was aided by his trainer who followed his charge’s games on his cellphone and communicated the engine’s move via a prearranged code based on which table he was standing behind. 

In 2019 a Latvian grandmaster whose trajectory up the rating list belied his advancing years (he entered the top 100 players in the world at age 58) was infamously pictured using his cellphone in a toilet while competing in the Strasbourg Open. 

Then there is the chess story that is currently putting chess back in the news concerning Carlsen’s suspicions against the somewhat eccentric American grandmaster Hans Niemann, which caused him to make the unprecedented move of withdrawing from a tournament after losing to the 19-year-old. 

They met in an online tournament soon afterwards and the world champion stunned everyone by resigning on move two as a mark of protest. He had to play at least one move in order to continue playing in the event, which he went on to win in a canter. 

That Niemann used chess engines during online tournaments is no longer disputed but the jury is still out on whether he has duplicated it over the board. I personally doubt it but his future opponents may be affected by one of the most famous expressions in chess coined by Aron Nimzowitsch: “The threat is stronger than its execution”

I usually play on the largest chess server at chess.com which has apparently the most cutting-edge anti-cheating software around. Recently I switched to a comparatively slow time control where each player has 10 minutes in which to execute all their moves (blitz is three minutes and bullet is one minute and if that is not quick enough there are some exponents of the art of playing with only 15 seconds for the entire game!) enough time for a serious game I thought — and apparently much else. 

After a week I was getting daily messages from the chess site with the following information: “We have detected that one or more of your recent opponents has violated our Fair Play Policy. As compensation for potentially unfair rating losses, we adjusted your following ratings …” 

Giveaway signs that some of my opponents were making use of an engine were that they had played less than 100 games – mostly wins – and the account was only opened a few weeks earlier. I recall playing one such gentleman who had as his avatar a legendary Filipino grandmaster, and after losing three games in a convincing fashion he told me not to worry as he was that very player he was representing. The following day his account was removed from the server.

In 2017 a seismic event occurred in the world of chess engines when the Alpha Zero program emphatically destroyed Stockfish over a match of 100 games – winning 28, drawing 72, losing none. Then there is the astonishing fact that Alpha Zero only learned to play chess four hours before the match took place by playing a series of games against itself. 

Stockfish examines 70-million moves a second whereas Alpha Zero looks at a comparatively meagre 80 000 moves, perhaps indicating that the “brute force” calculation model has been surpassed by something more akin to positional judgement. Although Alpha Zero has been retired like its distant ancestor Deep Blue, there is an open-source program based on the same principles called Leela Zero that does battle with the latest version of Stockfish.

The impact of the chess engine on our game has many upsides as well as significant downsides. As a player and an analyst, I feel fortunate to live in an era where I have at my fingertips a piece of software of godlike chess strength that can give me answers to such simple yet complex questions as “I wonder what the correct plan is here?” 

To illustrate the might of the engine, we can go back to 1972 to the legendary world championship match between Fischer and Boris Spassky when, in game one, Fischer needlessly captured a pawn with his bishop allowing it to become trapped and soon captured. Although he fought back desperately he eventually succumbed to the Russian’s endgame technique and his undoubtedly rash move was labelled “blunder of the century” and became one of the most talked about moves in chess history. 

Giving this infamous position to Stockfish, the engine soon reaches an assessment of equality. The bishop is indeed lost but through some intricate manoeuvring about 20 moves later the engine is able to find the haven of a “fortress” which in chess terms means although he is a clear piece down he has created an edifice that cannot be breached!

I recall analysing a game played by a local chess player who in his youth defeated Jan Timman, later becoming one of the strongest players in the world. Exploring a path that neither player followed, with my trusty chess engine whirring in the background, I came across a fantastic sequence of moves of breathtaking quality, and just for a moment, while delving through that long-forgotten game, I felt what I imagine Howard Carter felt when he stumbled across Tutankhamun’s tomb… 

Mark Rubery is a Fide Master and was SA Closed Champion in 1998. He has been the chess columnist of The Star since 1996 and is syndicated in the Pretoria News, Cape Argus and the Daily News, Durban.

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Mail & Guardian.