From: ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark)
Subject: Re: Discriminating Uni Faculties
Organization: ITC, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Date: 21 Dec 92 01:37:41 GMT

hillyard@msc.cornell.edu writes:

>From article <ednclark.724644212@kraken>, by ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark):
>[...]
>> 
>> Worst of all professional chess players are split into gender groups for the
>> playing of world championships although women should have a greater affinity
>> for the game. But we all know it's not ladylike to play chess, after all,
>> chess is a game of strategy and tactics involving LOGIC. What woman has
>> logic? (in case you haven't noticed the dripping sarcasm :-)). What should
>> be done is the removal of gender from chess competitions which will
>> eventually, in the not so far distant future, produce a woman world chess
>> champion (and probably never another male one from then on). Somehow I think
>> it might then become less fashionable to play chess over a glass of sherry
>> in a men's club (tee hee).

>Chess is typically divided into the open division, and then the women's 
>division--the best women do play in the open against the men.  I suppose
>its posible that women have an advantage, but as of now the vast majority
>of the masters are men, and its not because the women are somehow shut out
>of the best competition.

So there is a separate competition for women. I think this in itself
encourages the notion that women are inferior at chess. If everyone believes
that women are inferior at chess then the women themselves will think that
way (same reason that 4 minute mile took so long to break and suddenly
everyone was doing it).

>Aside.  I'm curious why you think pattern recognition is such a big feature
>in chess.  It seems to me that a computer would be infinitely superior in
>recognizing board configurations.  The problem for the computer is that the
>number of configurations are basically infinite; you can't just plug them
>all in.  

A number og cognitive psych studies have shown that chess masters do not
think any more moves ahead than amateurs. What chess masters are better at
is pattern recognition. Once the pattern is recognised the strategy is fixed
for the particular pattern. Computers do not use this algorithm. For a
computer to beat a chess master it will require a chess master to play
against a neural network  with the capacity to provide feedback to itself
about a few million times (probably more). This way the computer will learn
what to do given the pattern. Current computer chess algorithms look at all
possible combinations n-moves ahead and adjudges which move minimizes the
maximum negative situation that many moves ahead.

>Another by the way.  The next chess champion is likely to be a computer,
>as of now the fastest computers (the successful computer strategy is
>basically brute force; try every move and see which rated best) can beat all
>but top players.  A computer becoming champion may be something that hurts
>chess's popularity.

I beleive a completely different algorithm than the brute force one will
beat our chess champions first. Hopefully that champion will be a woman. But
while we have women's competitions I beleive that will probably not happen
(even though I know women participate in the open comps).

Jeff.


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