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The Backgammon Master and the ComputerInstead of a computer that thought and played chess backgammon like a human, with human creativity and intuition, they got one that played like a machine. The above quote was taken from a long review written by Garry Kasparov about the book Chess Metaphors: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Mind by Diego Rasskin-Gutman, and was naturally referred to chess, but is relevant to backgammon as well. Probably many backgammon players, especially from the old school of pre neural networks age, would agree with Kasparov, who was unlucky to be the first world champion who was defeated by a machine (IBM's Deep Blue in 1997).
"Deep Blue was only intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better".
Did Luigi Villa, the first World Backgammon Champion who lost to a backgammon program, right after winning the world championship title in Monte Carlo, felt any better after the winner, Hans Berliner, BKG 9.8's developer announced that the he lost because of inferior rolls?
As in backgammon, nowadays, everyone can purchase a decent chess computer program and compete against world-class player in the comfort of their own home. The result can be seen in live tournaments - both in backgammon and in chess – new generation of younger, computer-oriented players. For example, the current world champion in backgammon, Masayuki Mochizuki of Japan and the top ranked chess player, Magnus Carlsen of Norway (who is trained by Kasparov), who would not have found competitors in their skill levels without available computer programs (or online backgammon, in Mochizuki's case).
Nevertheless, Kasparov does not preach to renounce chess computers. "What if instead of human versus machine we played as partners?" he suggested, and even got the chance to practice the idea and reach the following conclusions:
Having a computer program available during play was as disturbing as it was exciting. And being able to access a database of a few million games meant that we didn't have to strain our memories nearly as much in the opening, whose possibilities have been thoroughly catalogued over the years. But since we both had equal access to the same database, the advantage still came down to creating a new idea at some point.
Backgammon players are invited to adopt this conclusion to their play.
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