TITLE: A Pawn and a Move AUTHOR: Eugene Wallingford DATE: May 02, 2016 4:30 PM DESC: ----- BODY: So, a commodity chess program is now giving odds of a pawn and a move to a world top-ten player -- and winning? The state of computer chess certainly has changed since the fall of 1979, when I borrowed Mike Jeffers's Chess Challenger 7 and played it over and over and over. I was a rank novice, really just getting my start as a player, yet after a week or so I was able to celebrate my first win over the machine, at level 3. You know what they say about practice... My mom stopped by our study room several times during that week, trying to get me to stop playing. It turns out that she and my dad had bought me a Chess Challenger 7 for Christmas, and she didn't want me to tire of my present before I had even unwrapped it. She didn't know just how not tired I would get of that computer. I wore it out. When I graduated with my Ph.D., my parents bought me Chess Champion 2150L, branded by in the name of world champion Garry Kasparov. The 2150 in the computer's name was a rough indication that it played expert-level chess, much better than my CC7 and much better than me. I could beat it occasionally in a slow game, but in speed chess it pounded me mercilessly. I no longer had the time or inclination to play all night, every night, in an effort to get better, so it forever remained my master. Now US champ Hikaru Nakamura and world champ Magnus Carlsen know how I feel. The days of any human defeating even the programs you can buy at Radio Shack have long passed. Two pawns and move odds against grandmasters, and a pawn and a move odds against the best players in the world? Times have changed. -----