jc123

Same disclaimer as above.

Maybe fiat money is the worst form of currency except all those other forms that have been tried.

Does anyone else think that BTC is the greater fool theory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory) ?

Will the world allow itself to be swindled by the Winklevoss twins? For all its advantages, it seems there will always be high risk and speculation to it.

Sitting in front of the computer Garry started trying out other lines, beginning with 44...Rf5+. Then he turned to me (his "computer expert") and said: "How could Deep Blue play 44...Rd1 and lose immediately? 44...Rf5+ also loses, but it puts up much more resistance. How can a computer commit suicide like that?" I had no immediate answer, it did indeed look very strange. Garry continued to potter around with Fritz, and suddenly he found the solution himself.

The conclusion is that it was not a bug: "It probably saw mates in 20 and more", said Garry.

The higher the level of competition, it's actually more than becoming a database, but continually studying and making innovations, especially in opening theory. The innovations, inventions, discoveries in opening theory make chess a dynamic game unlike many other games and sports. What was considered the best move in the past, can be proven to be inferior to today's innovation.

It is not fun to play against a database, but on another note, one of the enjoyable parts of the game is it's possible to have masterpieces of your own. You can get into some situations where your play is just how the best human or computer would play. Composing a masterpiece and executing these combinations is very satisfying.

I admire GM's at the levels seen in these championships. Good for them. It is their chosen profession and they excel at it. However, I am no-longer in awe of their mental abilities.

I don't know which parts you admire and which parts you don't. Apart from playing nearly 10K games online, I don't know if you've played through the annotations of some GM games. Through their commentary written after the game, you get a picture of what they were thinking: both breadth and depth. Some of these calculations are remarkable mental abilities, similar to say people who mentally compute large numbers or have perfect memories.

My impression is that the top players of today have deeper, amazing mental abilities than players years ago. In the past superior judgment and evaluation was the key. I classify this era Karpov and earlier. IMO, the latter half of Kasparov's era and beyond, has required players not only to have strong positional understanding, but deeper calculations mentally. I have this theory that Karpov faded in the mid 90s not so much because of what he did, but because of the deeper rigor the newer generation had on calculations. Their depth of calculations was equal to Karpov's. In his era, Karpov had an edge on calculations and could make defensive moves that others thought would not work. The newer generation could calculate deeper and really find attacks that would overcome the defense, and that's why Karpov lost more. Disregarding the computer annotations, the commentary of what a top player was thinking during the game, can still be an awe-inspiring display of mental abilities.