Introduction

Advanced Chess is a relatively new form of chess, first introduced by grandmaster Garry Kasparov, with the objective of a human player and a chess computer program joining their forces and competing as a team against each other. Many Advanced Chess proponents have stressed that Advanced Chess has merits in:

History

The former world champion grandmaster Garry Kasparov, currently considered the strongest chess player in the world, has a long history in playing "Man vs. Machine" events. Among the most important are his matches against IBM's research computer Deep Blue, which Kasparov defeated in February 1996, scoring 4-2 in a 6-game match, and lost the rematch in May 1997. The first game of the former match remained famous though, as it was the first game in the history of chess, in which a world champion has been defeated by a computer. Though the Deep Blue computer is now defunct, IBM still maintains the website for it and the associated famous match at http://www.research.ibm.com/deepblue/. After this spectacular match, and many other his matches against computers, Garry Kasparov came to an idea to invent a new form of chess in which humans and computers co-operate, instead of contending with each other. Kasparov named this form of chess "Advanced Chess". The first Advanced Chess event was held in June 1998 in Leon, Spain. It was played between Garry Kasparov, who was using Fritz 5, and Veselin Topalov, who was using ChessBase 7.0. The analytical engines used, such as Fritz, Hiarcs and Junior, were integrated into these two programs, and could have been called at a click of the mouse. It was a 6-game match, and it was arranged in advance that the players would consult the built-in million games databases only for the 3rd and 4th game, and would only use analytical engines without consulting the databases for the remaining games. The time available to each player during the games was 60 minutes. The match ended in a 3-3 tie. After the match, Kasparov said:

"My prediction seems to be true that in Advanced Chess it's all over once someone gets a won position. This experiment was exciting and helped spectators understand what's going on. It was quite enjoyable and will take a very big and prestigious place in the history of chess."

Regular Advanced Chess events have been held since in Leon each year, with a little inconsistency after 2002. The Indian grandmaster Viswanathan Anand is considered the world's best Advanced Chess player, winning the three consecutive Advanced Chess tournaments in Leon in 1999, 2000 and 2001, forfeiting the title to Vladimir Kramnik in 2002. After the loss to Kramnik, Anand said:

"I think in general people tend to overestimate the importance of the computer in the competitions. You can do a lot of things with the computer but you still have to play good chess. I more or less manage to do so except for this third game. In such a short match, against a very solid and hard to beat an opponent, this turned out to be a too much but I don’t really feel like that the computer alone can change the objective true to the position."

Advanced Chess strengths

It has been stressed that the strength of an Advanced Chess player does not come from any of the components of the human-computer team, but rather from the symbiosis of the two. This means that, even if a human chess player is stronger than the computer program he is using, he will be able to even further increase his playing strength with good Advanced Chess play, and vice versa: if a human player is weaker than the computer program he is using, he will still be able to play with a strength that is even greater than that of the computer. The strength of an Advanced Chess player lies in the combination of the computer accuracy and unmistakability and the human creativity and sagacity, provided that the both team components do possess these qualities (of course, unmistakability should be regarded in a relative sense).

The individual strengths of a computer chess program lie in:

The individual strengths of a human chess players lie in:

In short, a computer program is tactically superior, whereas a human chess player is strategically superior, making the combination of the two a completely superior chess player. Some experts estimate that the best Advanced Chess playing teams could achieve a performance rating of 3000 Elo (the strongest human player is rated only slightly above 2800).

It has been debated, due to the peculiarities of the human-computer team, whether the human should be considered an Advanced Chess player, or rather the team itself should be considered an Advanced Chess player. It is prevailing view that, due to the fact that the human subordinates the computer in a meaningful intent to win a chess game, and that the human is the one who makes the final decision about the move to be played, the human should be considered an Advanced Chess player. Some have also argued that the term "computer-assisted player" should not be used for an Advanced Chess player, as the key element is cooperation, not assistance.

How it is played

Both players are sat in a typical chess-playing room, equipped with fast PCs of the equal hardware strength. It is the duty of the tournament organizers to make sure that the players are familiar with the pertinent hardware and software, by means of knowing how to use them. Unlike the traditional face-to-face chess, the players are usually faced to their respective computers. Each player is typically allotted one hour of thinking time (it was the time control used in all Advanced Chess events in Leon), though the particular tournament regulations may vary regarding this matter. During the match, the players will typically form strategic plans in their minds, then enter the candidate sequences of moves into the computer to analyze and make sure there are no blunders and other possible holes. The human player will compare the merits of each candidate sequence after having seen the computer's analysis, and may even introduce a new variation if time permits. The player will typically play out a move for which he established with computer help that it is the strongest move, and if there are two or more moves which the computer considers to be of equal strength (such situations are frequent), the human player will use his own strategic skills and experience and analytical judgment capabilities to decide which move to play. The human player may even disagree with the machine's analysis, though there should be a strong, clear and well thought out reason to do so. The human is in charge during the whole match, and is formally free to play any move he considers the best, at his own discretion. During the opening, the players may consult a large database of opening moves and variations, containing information about who and when played a particular variation and with what success, though a particular tournament's rules may prohibit using databases in such manner. Forming candidate moves, analyzing computer output and examining openings databases is not all that Advanced Chess players do, and is not nearly as easy or boring as it may sound at first sight - in fact many Advanced Chess players claim that this kind of play gives rise to greater creativity of players, as they can now rely on the machine to do the "boring" job for them. During the whole game, the players' computer monitors are projected onto large screens, making it possible for the viewing audience to watch how the strongest players decide about their moves and make their plans. Typically there will be a commentator in a separate room, equipped with the identical hardware as players, which he will use to help him provide a commentary to the audience - this way the audience is given the real insight into the thought processes of the strongest players. Although Advanced Chess play is most successful, most attractive and more in the spirit of the game when performed by the top grandmasters, it is not limited to them - anyone can play Advanced Chess, sometimes with the same success as the strongest grandmasters. Occasionally, average players have been able to achieve a performance rating higher than the one of the computer programs they were using, and on rare occasions higher than the ratings of top grandmasters.

Advanced Chess on the Internet

The ubiquity of the Internet and a high number of commercial and free Internet chess systems has made it possible for anyone to play Advanced Chess over the Internet. Long time, there has not been organized Internet Advanced Chess play though, and few Internet chess systems have regulated rated Advanced Chess play. The world's largest organization for Advanced Chess on the Internet is the Advanced Chess Organization - CCO (this organization used to be known as Computer Chess Organization, and therefore kept the acronym CCO for historical reasons). CCO organizes regular Advanced Chess events, most of which take place on The Free Internet Chess Server (FICS) or the correspondence website http://www.cowplay.com. One need not be a CCO member to participate in its tournaments, though the organization stresses that membership is highly desirable. CCO Advanced Chess events on the Internet usually employ unrated play, due to the fact that rated Advanced Chess play is still unregulated by most Internet chess systems, and use of computers in rated games is considered cheating and ruled out. CCO argues that playing Advanced Chess is not cheating - it would be cheating to secretly use computer help without knowledge of one's opponent. CCO proposes that Internet chess servers introduce a third category of player - Advanced Chess player, among the existing human and computer players, latter of which usually labeled by "(C)", and that Advanced Chess players should be associated with a special Advanced Chess rating category. CCO points out that most Internet chess servers already have software-driven mechanisms which allow players to choose the types of the opponents they wish to play, therefore making it possible for a particular player to exclude all Advanced Chess players, should he not wish to play them - in fact this could be implemented as the default setup.

Computer cheating in online chess games is a serious problem, and should not be confused with Advanced Chess play. Many factors indicate that a large number of players is secretly using their chess programs to aid their play against the chess servers' rules of play, and there is no perfect mechanism to prevent this and ensure fair play on the Internet. Some have suggested that, for these reasons, online rating systems should be abolished completely, or that computer assistance in human rated play should be allowed. Many oppose these views, CCO among them, arguing that it would make the otherwise sharp line between computer cheating and Advanced Chess rather blurred, and that chess servers do possess fairly good mechanisms to ensure fair play. CCO also adds, that if a new separate category of chess - Advanced Chess - were introduced into rated Internet play, it would significantly reduce the number of cheating players, as they could then legitimately play Advanced Chess, without the need to secretly use their computer chess programs to their advantage.

If you are interested in playing Advanced Chess on the Internet, we have forthcoming Advanced Chess events for you! Please feel free to sign up, regardless of whether you are an experienced player, or have just now heard of Advanced Chess!

Copyright notice: This article is Copyright(©) 2004, The Advanced Chess Organization (CCO). You are permitted to freely redistribute and/or modify this article, provided that you give proper attribution to CCO by means of providing a link to this webpage, and that you clearly understand that CCO does not necessarily agree nor disagree with any modifications made to this article by you or by a third party.

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