Hacker News Reader

This is no longer the case; human computer hybrids are no longer competitive in chess.

From Wikipedia:

Computer chess engine Zor won the freestyle 2017 Ultimate Challenge tournament. The best human plus computer came in 3rd place. In 2017, chess computer engines are superior to human plus computers.

View on HN

Well, it's a finite space, and with a big enough lookup table then a chess engine will always win.

If you're truly not aware of the issues with optimizing problems in "finite spaces", I recommend you take an online course in:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinatorial_optimization

His argument still stands. The fact that combinatorial optimization is difficult doesn't change the fact that the problem space is finite and can theoretically be enumerated by a very fast computer with lots of space. This also means that the heuristics that are typically used (that dramatically reduce the problem space at a rate tied to the size of the problem) can make the exploration of potential solutions much easier than it once was.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com