Author: Ulrich Tuerke
Date: 00:36:17 05/09/00
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On May 08, 2000 at 22:18:37, Adrien Regimbald wrote: >Hello, > >I think that restricting computer engines in a tournament with humans is >rediculous. > >- Some human players is that they are an "external resource". This is >nitpicking over details - a program could easily include such information within >the binary itself. >- Some human players complain about not having an opening book or endgame >tablebases to use themselves. There may be some reasonable argument here .. >computer programmers will argue that the humans had a chance to learn the >openings / endings through books and have memorized the openings / endgame >techniques .. the humans will argue that they don't have perfect recall of this >information > >It seems to me that it is only reasonable to allow the computers access to >opening books / endgame tablebases as needed. Perhaps human players will be up >in arms about it, but it is an extremely unfair handicap for a computer to be >playing against (for example) a GM who has spent their life memorizing the >latest and greatest variations in all of their openings. > >To show how rediculous the perfect recall argument is - if you take this far >enough, human players aren't given diagrams when they play of where the pieces >are best, and humans can't always remember this, so computer shouldn't be able >to have these internal tables of piece/square bonuses for positional evaluation. > If we continue this far enough, a computer's eval would be completely >disallowed, as humans aren't even given piece values when they sit down to play. > >I mean, really, come on - it's quite rediculous. If you took 2 GM strength >players, and you somehow had the ability to take away all the variations that >one GM had memorized, and all of the familiar endgame positions, who do you >think would win? That's exactly what is being done to the computers being >forced to make concessions concerning opening books / endgame tablebases. > >As an author of an engine myself, I get quite incensed when people say my >program is "cheating" by using an opening book. > >What is the opinion of other authors on this? > > >Regards, >Adrien. I fully agree with you. Unfortunately, it will become increasingly difficult, to have a computer participate in a humans' tournament (the chance is already zero today unless you pay a lot). However, I doubt that compromises of the above kind (omit some hardware or databases) will stop this trend. I am afraid, we have to live with it. A "fair" chance to compare were man-machine events where it was clear from the beginning that humans have to play machines. I guess these are all gone now. I think, the best chance today to get human opponents for a prog are in fact the chess servers. Uli
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