Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 06:53:15 01/12/04
Go up one level in this thread
On January 12, 2004 at 03:47:11, martin fierz wrote: >On January 11, 2004 at 22:11:02, Tom Kerrigan wrote: > >>On January 11, 2004 at 16:42:15, martin fierz wrote: >> >>>On January 11, 2004 at 16:11:06, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >>> >>>>On January 10, 2004 at 16:24:59, Jim Bodkins wrote: >>>> >>>>>The US doesnt play chess really. USCF has 90,000 members out of 1/3 billion >>>>>people and just went bankrupt (over about $300,000 - chump change to a pro >>>>>basketball player) and had to sell its store to an english firm. Most of the top >>>>>US players (USCF) are immigrants not native. >>>>> >>>>>I'm a native American, so dont get mad. We play baseball not chess. Chess isnt >>>>>culturally a part of the US at all. People (Garry) come here mainly because of >>>>>money not chess. Chess software doesnt interest most programmers in my >>>>>experience. OS's, databases etc do. >>>>> >>>>>The US will get hammered, but the guys will probably have fun anyway. >>>>> >>>>>... oh, and we do Mars missions. :) >>>> >>>>I believe people on this message board have forgotten their history. :) Shannon >>>>was American, the revolutionary programs MacHack and CHESS were American, the >>>>world champions Belle, Deep Thought, and Cray Blitz were American. >>> >>>you are forgetting the first computer chess programmer - alan turing, not >>>exactly american :-) >> >>My bad. I'll change my point. The majority of groundbreaking work on computer >>chess was done by Americans. > >that is a better way of phrasing it! except if slater is right and shannon was >before turing, but i don't believe that. The problem is that Turing didn't do "computer chess". He did a hand simulation that was not based on minmax at all... There were a couple of mechanical chess players as well, one built by Shannon prior to 1949, as I have an early 1949 photo of him sitting by this machine. But that isn't "computer chess" either. > > >>>>I'd say computer chess is a fairly significant part of American culture. >>> >>>and this is the wrong way round: some americans made very significant >>>contributions to computer chess. but "part of the american culture"?? there are >>>many things that come to my mind when i think about american culture, both >>>positive and negative (think football, baseball, everbody having guns, free >>>speech, the whole idea of the american dream etc). but certainly not computer >>>chess... >> >>I was speaking relatively, of course, in response to Jim's post that Americans >>suck at computer chess because chess itself is not part of our culture. I'd say >>that computer chess is most definitely a part of our computer science culture. I >>suppose you could argue semantics about "significant." >> >>-Tom
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.