One interesting, at least to me, bit of data is how Deep Blue beat Kasparov. There have been a number of different chess programs out there, with various degrees of complexity. Deep Blue, in many ways, had among the simplest algorithms.
The first part was rather simple; it incorporated virtually all of the published opening knowledge in the field of chess. As a "B" chess player, I have a 500 page books giving openings to, say, the 14th or 15th move. Monthly magazines cover the latest innovations. It was straightforward to convert them into a data base. Virtually all good chess programs had such a library. Some of the programs then developed a complex algorithm for weighing the value of every position. (Often times, the calculated value can be given as a number for the player who is playing against a computer.) Deep Blue did not have a complex algorithm. Rather, it relied on speed: its ability to calculate up to 200,000,000 positions every second. (Since that was close to 5 years ago, if it were to operate today it should be able to calculate about 2 billion positions per second. With such horsepower, it was able to examine more plys ahead than any human. Even though it's analysis was based on a simple algorithm: the ability to pick the move that gave the best postion after, say, 10 moves on either side, was usually enough. The point is that, the best way for a computer to compete against a human is brute force power. Even in a situation where it seems straightforward to develop algorithms to define the human thought process: brute force beats the best algorithms. Dan M.
