every one here always looks to the future with the belief that computer chess is getting better and better at a steady rate . its like they just expect that well it will go up by say at least 50 elo a year, even larry say that he will be disapointed if the gain of rybka 3 is ONLY 50 elo .but WHAT IF there were no more hardware gains , what we have now is all we are going to get . does anyone here still believe there would be this steady increase of say 50 elo a year ??????? if so for how long ? vas so far has proved to be the magic man and larry is a genius in his own right , but even so unless saved by the ever increasing hardware 3200 will be the end of the line . and i dont believe there ever will be a chess computer rated over 3400 unless something drastic happens . but the crazy thing is if there was only rybka and there was no hiarcs,fritz,shredder ,naum etc etc and rybka was only rated vs humans no computer games it would aleady be over 3400 . the problem is computer ratings are like the SEC is in football . the teams keep knocking each other off .on the other hand if annand quit playing people and played only strong computers in the top 10 , his rating might be 2500 .