Author: Don Dailey
Date: 15:37:37 12/09/97
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On December 09, 1997 at 14:55:27, Bruce Moreland wrote: >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 I never seriously considered playing my program Cilkchess on the internet for these very reasons. It's probably a good thing if all you really want is to get in some games in and find weaknesses, but I get very uncomfortable with ambiguious results. I feel the same way about "reports" I hear from people concerning results they get with program x vs program y. Few pople realize that even a small personal bias can go a long way toward distorting a result. There are too many ways this can happen. Here are a few of them: . Tending to end game as soon as your favorite machine has a good position . Tending to hold out forever when your favorite machine is losing. . Counting a drawn (or even lost) game as a win because it was a won position early and the rest of the game was "fluky." . Finding trivial reasons to restart a badly played match or game. (I'm not sure I set the thing right) but only when favorite starts badly. . Not counting the last few games of a match, just the first few that went well. . Forgetting losses, remembering wins (people always do this where their own games are concerned too) . Making ridiculous adjustments (in their favor) for hardware mismatches. Humans are extremely devious creatures! And often extremely irrational. -- Don
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