Hardware advantages and limitations

In part 2 of the interview, Anand talks about the advantage of Computer hardware in chess and also the limitations.


I liked this bit,


It must be good for the player to have good hardware. The problem is that it often doesn’t tell you what you want. You want it to find an improvement for White, and it may choose to find it for Black instead. If you have good hardware the chances are your work will be good and you can be more confident about the work you have. If you are taking risks then you can feel you are going to have a head start. In that sense it is good. But the computer will only tell you what the position justifies. It is also insidious – it can stop you playing your favourite lines because of some obscure problems somewhere. I would say computers are very useful – especially very powerful hardware – but if working with the computer means you stop taking risks it’s of course going to kill you. But on the other hand if it encourages you to take the right kind of risks then so much the better. Managing it is I think very tricky. It is very powerful but it may not tell you what you want.



The highlightings are mine. The above is quite true of managers who depend wholly on models of decision making.