Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 13:07:31 03/30/01
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On March 30, 2001 at 15:20:05, James Robertson wrote: >I've noticed that a lot of programs are now battling the web. Does anybody know >how many people are actually voting though? Gambit Tiger, for instance, only has >the percentages, and not the actual numbers of voters. > >Out of curiosity, are these programs actually playing the "Web" or are they in >reality just playing a few dozen chess freaks from this site? Does anybody know >how many voters (even a very rough average will be interesting) there are for >the games Deep Fritz, Deep Shredder, and Gambit Tiger vs. the web? > >I'm hoping the numbers are not too low. The fact that Deep Shredder's game was >advertized on kasparovchess.com and TWIC is really good. Maybe this will attract >substantially more people. "X verses the Web" is an old gimmick. Actually, most of the time, "the web" plays much more poorly than a single good opponent. Imagine, a big committee voting on which move to make. Are most of them spending 24 hours of computer time analyzing a move or GM's themselves? Surely not. In general, it is a farce (to my way of thinking) but a nice way to gather publicity. I think the Kasparov match was different, however. For some reason, a very large group galvanized resources very well, and organized fairly efficiently. The commentary by the experts was quite good (and gave me new respect for I. Kush). At any rate, that sort of high quality match [despite the attempted sabotage] is _by far_ the exception rather than the rule. If you want to see very high quality chess, you will get far, far better by a match between two highly rated opponents than one high quality opponent verses the web. I think I could probably beat most people on the internet (which isn't saying much) but I am absolutely sure that a really good player like Vincent, Djordie, or Come would slaughter me repeatedly. So you get ten thousand morons to collectively make their choice -- how good is that choice going to be? Even if experts give excellent analysis -- will they even understand it? I suspect [snicker] that the higher the number of votes received, the LOWER the quality of the move generated. If a move got a million votes, it is almost SURE to be a real dog. IMO - YMMV.
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