Author: Jeroen Noomen
Date: 08:22:35 04/06/00
Hi everybody, There have been a lot of reactions to my last posting, in which I told about Fritz SSS* taking part in the Dutch championship. Unfortunately most of the debate was related to 'should computers be allowed to play in human tournaments'. This is of course an interesting subject, but for me the big point is that we are talking about the national championship of my country Holland. That a computer can take part in such an event raises the following questions: 1. Has a computer a nationality? 2. Can a computer be a national champion? 3. Players in a national championship are members of the national federation. Can a computer be a member of a national federation? 4. Can the same computer take part in several national championships? F.e. if the French, the German and the Brittish Chess Federations agree that the same computer can play in their national championship, could we have one and the same player be a champion of many countries? 5. What about the rules, that state that if there is a free place in the championship, this should be given to somebody with the highest rating or to somebody who was knocked out in the semi finals. This has been violated now and this player has every reason to complain. 6. What if the machine will be the champion: Can (in this case Holland) this country put the machine on board 1 of the Olympiad team? 7. I am interested in who is the strongest player of my country. A computer program has nothing to do with this. 8. A national championship is a serious event, now that Van der Sterren refuses to play, his loss by forfeit is affecting the result. What f.e. if Van der Sterren scores the most points, but will be 2nd because of the loss by means of forfeit? Isn't Van der Sterren champion in that case? 9. Can a national chess federation oblige somebody to play a computer? IMO this can NEVER be the case. I'll be very interested in the comments of other readers of CCC on these questions! Thanks in advance and have a good day. Jeroen
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