Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 16:06:01 09/22/00
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Thanks Jose and others for your help. I saw nowhere in my Babelfish translations that GM Leotard was pledging to play as if his opponents were human, as I did in my match games. I presume that GM Leotard can then use "anti-computer" strategy. I only ask out of curiousity because I question whether "anti-computer" strategies are effective in correspondence chess, when the chess engine is allowed to calculate for so long. Regardless, a player of his strength should prevail against the machines without having to resort to such measures. Good luck, Christophe! I hope the moves will be annotated, as I did in my matches. Perhaps some French speaker can ask GM Leotard to share his thoughts/calculatins with us. It would be both educational and entertaining. Finally to try to answer Paulo's question, I think this match should favor Christophe much more than my match games. The reasons are: 1) Christophe is surely a better player than I am. 2) Christophe is playing slower hardware. 3) Significantly less computer memory is being allocated to the chess engines. 4) Christophe is playing at a much slower rate of speed. I generally replied the very next day with all my moves. 5) Christophe has not promised to play as if his opponents are human. He may thus employ anti-computer strategies. Already the first 4 moves of each game have been posted and are generally closed affairs. Instead I played two sharp Sicilians against the chess engines and a sacrificial attack versus a King's Indian and strove to unbalance play in all 4 games. I knew that what I was doing decreased my chances against the chess engines, but it created more entertainment for all of us. Also, I got to learn more about chess engines...the hard way! I think this will be a very interesting test and I expect Christophe to prevail for the above reasons. I find it odd though that if Christophe wins 3 games and scores 3-1, he loses because he lost 1 game. However, if he gets the lesser score of 2-2 (all 4 draws), then he wins the match because he didn't lose a game. The logic escapes me there. Best wishes to you, Christophe! Stephen
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