Kevin Pacey wrote on Tue, Feb 23, 2016 05:20 AM UTC:
Much earlier Ben Reiniger posted: Go is now starting to fall to computers:
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35420579
I've been told it was a 2 Dan strength player who recently fell to a
computer program, but without the player giving it any stones as a
handicap, and thus it's still a shocker for me. Neural net techniques now
seem to make any board game of skill vulnerable to computer dominance in a
relatively short time. Go seemed to hold every advantage for being
computer-resistant, especially given its huge 19x19 board, but now the end
seems near for human Go players. I had thought Go might not come to that
for about 100 more years. This was even taking into account any
development in the field of quantum computers.
So, I am personally waving the white flag, as far as hoping that any chess
variant might in future be computer-resistant for any significant length of
time, if serious computer programmers target it for computer dominance.
Serious organizers of any kind of board game of skill competition will from
now on inevitably need to hope for effective anti-computer assisted
cheating measures, it seems. One of the reasons I became more interested in
chess variants was the hope that I had that this scenario could somehow be avoided at
least for a considerable while, with some chess variant periodically
invented that would become reasonably popular at some point. If I am to
remain interested in chess variants (i.e. inventing, appreciating or playing them), I'll
need to concentrate now more on enjoying them for their own sake, though
afaik a number of modern organized cash prize events are starting to happen
more regularly, say in Canada, in the case of bughouse at least.