Author: Ricardo Gibert
Date: 21:01:08 12/06/99
On ICC, I often see computers winning games against strong players by "unfriendly" means. Consider what happens when the position is dead drawn, but the computer player does not realize this and makes an unending series of aimless moves that drains the human opponent of time on his clock. It isn't any secret that computers have "faster reflexes". This is boring and inflates the apparent strength of the program. I propose that computer programs should offer/accept draws when the following conditions hold: 1) There have been no pawn moves or captures played by either side over the past 10 ply played. Of course the 50 move rule counter is perfect for this. 2) The evaluation has remained relatively stable over this period of moves. Fluctuating within a _very_ small range. Notice the computer player could possibly offer/accept a draw when it is material up. It is also possible that the position could be winning for the computer, but I think that's OK, since the computer has demonstated an inability to find the win. When a position is a winning one, the score should degenerate in favor of the side that has the winning position. I know this is not perfect, but restricting this to blitz or bullet would keep the chess "friendly" and entertaining. A second proposal I have to make the chess more "friendly", is to keep the computer from forcing wins from sheer speed of play. Force the computer to consume a little more time per move so that it does not win on time just by virtue of its inhuman speed. You can have this trigger a draw offer when it gets low on time, _then_ if it is refused, you can have the computer take the gloves off and play at full speed. The "drawback" to all this is that computers employing the above 2 ideas will wind up with lower ratings, but I think those ratings will then reflect their strength due to chessic reasons rather than non-chessic ones. Computer chess programers egos will take a hit when their programs ICC rating goes down, but they will gain in the long run by virtue of having produced a more enjoyable program that is bound to thereby be more popular. In a serious competitive setting or against another computer, these "features" should be turned off of course. Perhaps this could be tested on ICC with unrated games to see what the impact would be on playing strength.
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