GAME TESTING
CYRUS (ZX SPECTRUM) VS. COLOSSUS (ATARI 800XL) Man vs Computer and Computer vs Computer Cyrus Chess vs Colossus Chess, or Richard Lang versus Martin Bryant. Who are these gentlemen? They are two British programmers who, in the late 70s and early 80s, specialized in programming software able to play chess with enough strength to put even good ranked players into trouble. The history of many logic and electromechanical machines dedicated to the 'noble game of chess' is not recent, as it dates back to the beginning of the twentieth century. Over time, notable names in information technology such as Von Neumann, Turing, Wiener, Zuse and Shannon have also been involved in building computers and developing specific algorithms. The challenge of beating humans at this charming game has always been an excellent application ground for mathematicians and computer scientists (see also David Levy's famous bet, who in 1968 betted that no chess computer would beat him within 10 years). To date, the "battle" between man and machine is basically over. The machines, or rather the chess engines have prevailed over the best human players in the world for at least fifteen years. Engines developed in the traditional form have now achieved their peak and programs such as Stockfish, Houdini and Komodo easily exceed the most valued human champions by about 600 ELO points. On paper it is actually an abyss. The current "human" world Page 30 of 40
champion is the Norwegian Magnus Carlsen, followed closely by Italian American Fabiano Caruana (up to two years ago he used to play for the Italian Federation, then he joined the USA), the "U.S." players Nakamura and So, the Russians Mamedyarov, Karjakin, Kramnik and Svidler, the Indian Anand, etc.) and everyone of them has been using software engines for some years now to train themselves as well as to "learn" their style of gameplay. For some months now in chess software industry (and more generally in strategy games) what is happening is a real Copernican revolution: the algorithm based on Artificial Intelligence called AlphaZero, developed by DeepMind, an AI company controlled by Google, not only has been able to repeatedly beat the world champion of Go, but has brilliantly defeated the best chess engine Stockfish in a challenge out of 100 games held last December 2017 (results: +28 =72 -0, that is 28 wins, 72 draws and 0 losses). AlphaZero, in just 4 hours of training playing against himself, has "learned" to play and then smashed Stockfish v8 with 25 victories and 25 draws with the white pieces and 3 wins and 47 draws with the black pieces. An unexpected and, to say the least, sensational achievement in the world of chess engines, which breaks new barriers in AI software applied to problems similar to complex games such as chess. Chess and home computer: the protagonists Let’s now have a look to our RETROMAGAZINE ENGLISH YEAR 1 ISSUE 0
