Kevin Pacey wrote on Tue, Dec 15, 2015 06:08 AM UTC:
I recall I've read that the best human International Checkers (10x10
variant) still beat a computer program in a recent year. That game has a
larger board size than Arimaa, standard chess or checkers, and like Arimaa
the moves are easier to visualize for humans than say for standard chess.
The issue of board size is one possible computer-resistance factor Juhnke's
Chessbase article didn't go into. However, serious programmers may have not
devoted much attention to International Checkers since it isn't as popular
as standard chess or Arimaa (plus both of those had cash incentives for
programmers to succeed at beating humans).
My own guess at what factors could make for computer resistant games
includes 1) larger board size (than say 8x8) which I suppose generally
favours humans; 2) ease of game piece movements for humans to visualize
(though perhaps this is much overrated, e.g. as was ultimately the case
with Arimaa); 3) difficulty for a computer to evaluate a given position in
any search (I think computers will always outdo humans at this in chesslike
games), and 4) difficulty for a computer to prune its search of unpromising
moves adequately enough to search deep enough to be effective against a
skilled human (a huge branching factor [of legal moves per turn on average]
alone may not be necessary, nor suffice - as shown for Arimaa, as a
programmer may find tricks to prune a huge number of branches at each
turn).
In spite of all the above, I feel that any game or chess variant might only
prove computer resistant for so long before future hardware/sofware
developments help computers end up on top. Does that make looking for
computer resistance futile? Well, perhaps new computer resistant
games/variants can be invented as necessary, to buy humans some time -
hopefully for many decades, if not for centuries. Standard chess itself
went through various rule changes over centuries, after all. I see computer
resistance as perhaps a worthy goal, as I alluded to earlier, that is to
restore some lost glory for highly skilled humans who play chess of some
sort (not to mention lost glory for humanity in general), in the eyes of the public, and
to also reduce the possibility of computer assisted cheating as much as
possible (though modern portable communication devices
still have increased the potential for human assisted cheating).