Author: Amir Ban
Date: 08:48:53 02/17/00
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On February 17, 2000 at 10:39:28, Mig wrote: >Hello Everyone, > >This is Mig Greengard, also of KasparovChess.com and, by the way, the mystery VP >mentioned by my good friend, basketball star Shay Bushinsky. I thought I would >add some comments and clarifications to what was unquestionably a total disaster >and also a very emotional situation for Shay and Amir, as well as Mickey Adams. > >We've all been through about four hours of non-stop phone calls around the world >regarding this episode tonight. [Now last night, I wrote this late last night >but didn't want to post till I heard from Amir and/or Shay.] It was a lose-lose >situation for all concerned and Shay and Amir lost worse than the rest. > >Before I go on it's VERY important to me to say that GM Adams behaved at all >times in a very sportsmanlike manner and in no way insisted on anything >unreasonable at any time. I don't really expect the audience here to see things >from a human player's point of view (!), but I do wish to stress that he was >accomodating until things just got out of hand at a very late hour. > >Criticism, and there is plenty to go around, should be centered on >KasparovChess.com and our lack of proper documentation for the players. When >things broke down we had no real rule book to refer the players to, no list of >contingency plans or time limits for how long a communications breakdown should >be to be considered a forfeit, etc. So instead of simply referring to a rulebook >we had a nightmare of phonecalls and recrimination. As embarrassing as this poor >preparation is for me and all of us, I prefer it to seeing GM Adams undeservedly >criticized or rumors of conspiracy floated. > I don't know if there was a rulebook to refer to, but there were arbiters, and (at Kasparov's insistence, I think) the matter was referred to the chief arbiter Postovisky. I noticed that your statement on KC.com was vague on the fact that he made a definite ruling, and on what that ruling was, so let's make it public here: Postovisky ruled that the first game is a draw and the second game should be played. The chain of events is that KC management wanted to forfeit the match before Postovisky made the ruling. After the ruling, when we convened for the telecon, as you remember my first question was if the arbiter's ruling changes KC's mind about forfeit, and the answer was NO. >As for human players, most of them are going to blame, and not necessarily >incorrectly, ANY AND ALL technology-related delays on us. That's because as >organizers we have an obligation to make sure things are working for each >player. If it's not, the levels of stress involved are not conducive to decent >chess, in a human. If both players had been human I believe everyone would have >had a different attitude. Discrimination against the machine? Probably, but as >it gets later and later, as nerves and five hours of tension build, a human is >at a severe disadvantage against a computer. Plus, it was Junior's connection >that went down. Adams, due to his ongoing match against Seirawan, was unable to >change dates without breaking his commitment to the organizers and sponsor >there, so really had no choice. Starting the second game at 7 p.m. with no >guarantee that there would be no further problems was not a serious option. >Eventually a deadline had to be set, he could not be expected to sit there >through dinner time on the edge of his seat waiting for the call to start play. > The timeline simply did not happen this way. In Bermuda time, the draw was agreed around 4:40, and we said we would start in about 20 minutes. I posted to this effect on this board. Communication looked normal at the time, and KC wanted the break in order to install the timestamp feature. As far as I know, we were ready to start around 5 pm, and the only reason this didn't happen is that at that time Adams was asking for a a forfeit. According to my timekeeping, there was less than 40 minutes between the conclusion of a draw and the demand for forfeit. So far as I know, we were ready at the time to play, but this was not asked. It was not so much "Can you start now, or you forfeit ?" but simply "You forfeit". So there were no evening hours involved here for Adams. It was pretty much over a few minutes after 5 pm for him, and while I have no first-hand knowldedge direct knowledge of who was driving this I didn't see any real interest in Bermuda in whether we can play. Amir
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