The byte is stronger than the brain
This post was published 2 years 11 months 3 days ago and its content may not be valid anymore.The brain is no match to the mighty byte. World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost to computer program Deep Fritz (how can you beat a program with a name like that?).
World chess champion Vladimir Kramnik lost his final game in a match against computer program Deep Fritz on Tuesday, ceding a hard-fought Man vs. Machine series 4-2. Kramnik, seeking a final win to level the match, played an unbalanced opening with Black. He built up a good position and equalized. But he then went astray, losing a pawn from which he never recovered. The Russian takes home $500,000 (euro375,000) — half of what he would have received if he had won against Deep Fritz, a commercially available chess program that runs on a powerful personal computer.
On a semi-related note. I happened to lose for my chess game on OS X. The frustration was so much so that I immediately sent that chess game straight to the trash with AppZapper. Who has time for games anyway these days?
If there’s something worth recommending, drop a note in the comments. I’m open to alternate forms of entertainment.
Try Defcon, a really nice indie game from Introversion. It sells for £10 ($15) and is really worth the money. Just play a game in office mode (real time) and leave it in the background while you work, you come back to it when something is happening.
I know it’s currently out for Windows but I’m not sure when it comes out on OSX or Linux but Introversion always release on all three withing 3 months of the game being released.
Funny story about OSX Chess:
In my high school’s Student Council I was their Technology Coordinator. We had happened to buy a G5 to mess around with and sometimes I would play chess. (Sometimes against my friends who hung out with me.)
To my dismay, I could never bet the computer. Never. I’m fairly good at chess, but, obviously not as good as a Vladimir Kramnik or Kasporav, but I’m pretty good. The computer just doesn’t let you win. When I get to the point where I could take a Knight or sometimes even a Queen, the game wouldn’t even let me take the piece. It sort of pissed me off. Of course, I did bet it once, later on, after I discovered that I wasn’t supposed to win and my goal was to lose. At least I think that’s what it was. It could have been that the computer was messing with my mind.