
Strengths and Weaknesses in Computer Play Strengths So a lot of work in computer chess goes on ensuring that the tree of variations is grown appropriately, and that branches that are tactically interesting receive more attention. Similarly we must ask how big to grow the tree – well obviously the time constraints of tournament play restrict our choice – but also we don’t want to stop in the middle of a sequence of captures and recaptures – as the evaluation function might wrongly conclude we are a piece up or down incorrectly. Humans are thought to be particularly good at recognizing the significant moves in a position – it is believed that Grand masters only consider an average of 1.7 moves in any position (obviously recaptures keep the average down). This means it may not consider all possible sacrifices very deeply.Įffective pruning is vital to ensuring we consider only the most appropriate moves.

Having identified lines that are not promising, it will not evaluate these lines as fully to save time. Mostly the computers use techniques based on ordering moves, so they try the most promising first. It is important to identify quickly when a particular variation is not worth following up.

Chess positions have a lot of variations, and the more possible positions we come up with the more time must be spent evaluating them. This means it has less time for calculating the possible variations, and so a more complex evaluation function may result in loss of tactical ability. Yet, clearly some more sophistication is needed in the evaluation function to play sensible chess. How chess computers calculate variationsĪs you can see the computer may be doing a lot of work in evaluating a single position. A positive score means the computer is ahead and a negative score means that the human is ahead. The computer subtracts your score from its own score.


So make up your mind and click here to subscribe to the “Learn to beat computers chess course” by the International Chess University. The chess tutorials or lessons are delivered using a learning platform developed to satisfy your needs and make you feel welcome in our community. We are committed to provide some of the best online chess lessons. IchessU is the only online chess school where you can learn chess from some of the best chess tutors. The piece values are the same, but not all humans would consider some of the other factors that a computer does. A chess computer assesses who is ahead in a slightly different way to how many human players would. But, fortunately, they still have weaknesses, so with a little preparation the results of playing against chess machine can be improved. Since Deep Blue victory over Gary Kasparov it has become apparent to all that computers are very good at playing chess.
PLAY CHESS AGAINST COMPUTER TRIAL
Your First Trial Lesson is FREE! Schedule it HERE
