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Subject: Re: Greed and its consequences

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 17:18:02 04/19/01

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On April 19, 2001 at 17:51:21, Torsten Schoop wrote:

>>If I may speculate, what I believe is going on is that Brain Games wants to
>>present this as a match between world champions
>
>note that Kramnik is not the world champion but Anand is. Kramnik is just a
>"privat world champion" (Kramnik LOST the qualification match versus Shirov).
>For that reason it is consistent that he will play against a  "privat computer
>world champion".
>
>An afflicted
>Torsten

I don't want to get too far afield by discussing that at length.  I think it is
slightly different, because the schism between FIDE and Kasparov had lasted a
long time.  When Kasparov left FIDE, he was the champion, and so he had some
claims to be a champion of some sort.  The programs that will be in the playoff
were 3rd and 4th at the last WCCC, if I remember right.

Why can't those authors and their publisher honor the result of the last WCCC?
Are they trying to say that the result was a fluke, and that Shredder needs to
beat them twice in a row in order to be considered a real champion?  Actually,
it's already beaten them twice in a row, so perhaps it needs to beat them three
times.

I think Bertil's comment that *his* tournament will remove the luck factor is
also silly, given the context.  Presumably, they are going to conduct longer
matches.  The problem with this is:

1) There is still luck involved in this.  You could do a fairly long match and
only attain a result that would be achieved by a slightly stronger competitor a
few percentage points more significantly than a coin flip.

2) Even if you can obtain absolute accuracy, this proves little.  Let's say that
we choose the best computer at computer vs computer play.  The play against
Kramnik is going to be against a human.  So a perfectly valid result (the WCCC),
which was obtained in play against all the active strong programs, is thrown out
in favor of something with an extremely small and arbitrarily chosen field?
Please remember that the second place finisher at the last WCCC was not even
notifified about this playoff, much less invited.

I can deal with this affront to myself, but the affront to Stefan is
intolerable.  He's won these events three times.  That should be enough to
convince anyone that he deserves to represent us until the next tournament.

bruce



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