A short state of play
For most people, the critical milestone in the so-called fight between Man and Machine was on May 1997 when Garry Kasparov, the reigning world chess champion, was defeated of by a computer, namely Deep(er) Blue under official tournament conditions.
By 2005–2006, computer chess programs became clearly stronger than human chess players. Today’s best chess programs can easily beat the world’s best human chess players, even when they’re run on fairly conventional hardware or mobile phone application. Consequently, there is little interest in putting human against computer in official tournaments. There are now computer-only chess leagues, where the top chess programs play against each other; for instance the Thoresen Chess Engines Competition (TCEC).
However, such achievements were relying on brute force with massive calculation capabilities. In 1997, Deep Blue was able to evaluate 200 million positions per second. More recent programs like Komodo or Stockfish have huge opening and endgame databases they can consult at the speed of light.
We think that the real milestone in the battle between Man and Machine is rather in November 2019 when Lee Sedol, one of the world’s top human champions of Go, has decided to retire from playing the strategy game…
