Quote:
Originally Posted by NL Loki
But yes theoretically if you have a very tactically gifted human, who also plays a brand of chess that is extra brutal and tricky (e.g. Tal or Nezhmetdinov), they could potentially beat up noobs faster than an engine with tricks.
In the odd game or two? Sure. Over thousands of games averaging fewer moves to victory over amateurs than a top engine? No chance.
Chess is a game with complete information. That's the crux right there. Let's assume an engine is able to find the objectively strongest move in any given position (it's not, but it gets significantly closer to this than any human being), that move will always be the one that leads to checkmate the quickest with the best possible reply in mind. If the human opponent chooses an inferior reply, checkmate will be delivered quicker.
Whereas a human in a position in which he holds a winning advantage over his human opponent might consciously make a slightly inaccurate move (which is still totally winning but the computer would assess it as +5 instead of the possible +14 or whatever) to reduce any ounce of counter play his opponent might have, a computer will never do that. The computer doesn't care about counter play, initiative or any of the other esoteric concepts humans have invented to make this highly complicated game more manageable for our brains.