Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:55:27 12/09/97
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You've got to take computer vs computer games on ICC with a grain of salt, since the manual operators can do things to try to influence the games. Sometimes the things they are improvements, but other times they make the program play an unsound opening it wouldn't ordinarily play, or play an overly aggressive move it would otherwise avoid, or they tweak the program's tweakable parameters so it is playing in some odd fashion. And sometimes, when a program is in time pressure, they will simply turn the program off and start playing the game themselves. In my opinion this is not so much unethical as it is unscientific. It's not really a computer program that you are playing, it is an account, and part of the account is the operator, who has his own distinct attitudes about what his role is, and there is no way to hold him accountable to anything other than his own sense of what is and isn't fair. The operator in this game told me he forced move 54 (I believe it was this move, from looking at the PGN with my eyeball, all of my computers are busy now), because "I wanted to see the mate", or words to this effect. This disappointed me. Sometimes other things happen. You get people who don't update their notes, so they are saying they are using one thing while using another, or their hardware is wrong, or they are an inexperienced operator and waste a lot of time, etc. Other operators will change programs in the middle of a game, and may not remember what program they used three games ago, so it is very hard to know exactly what beat you. Ferret is capable of beating any other micro program, and who knows what else. The reverse of course is also true. That is the second KNN vs KP my program has had in the last month or so. bruce
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