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Subject: Re: Kasparov's manager answers Hsu

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 23:37:25 01/13/00

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On January 14, 2000 at 00:44:22, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On January 13, 2000 at 23:07:07, James Robertson wrote:

>>If DB plays a match with, say, Leko as a preemptory event and draws or loses,
>>all of the mystique of a super-machine facing the strongest human in the world
>>goes out the window, as obviously it is weaker than many humans. It is better
>>for Hsu to keep his machine under wraps and use its unknown play for publicity
>>and as a weapon.

>Of course GM players don't go into seclusion for several months before playing
>for the world title, right?

I have to comment on this, the way I have several times before.  It is not a
matter of going into seclusion.  It is a matter of being completely unknown, and
that's a different thing.

If someone says that Fritz beat DB, you can say it wasn't DB, and in fact you
yourself did in the part of the above that I snipped.  But if someone says that
Kasparov has not seen DB, the argument is that he can go look at the games of
DT.

Well, that is not fair.  DT is either DB or it isn't.  I don't think that it is.

I think that it's fair to want to see at least some examples of the play of your
opponent before having to play a match, and since DT is not DB, Kasparov didn't
see any.

To have to play something that is absolutely unknown is no big deal when you are
eight years old and are playing in a scholastic tournament.  But when you are at
the top level, where minor factors matter a great deal because the limits of the
human mind are being reached, I think it has to be a big disadvantage to be
pitted against the mystery box from Mars.

It's not like he has to see a hundred games in order to try to cook the thing's
book.  I think he deserves to see a few representative middlegames and endgames
so he can try to figure out the thing's capacity.  During that match for all he
knew the thing was searching forty plies.

bruce



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