Author: Albert Silver
Date: 12:50:06 04/22/01
Go up one level in this thread
On April 22, 2001 at 14:02:59, Duncan Stanley wrote:
>On April 22, 2001 at 12:26:25, Stefan Meyer-Kahlen wrote:
>
>>
>>I have received from the ICCA President David Levy a copy of an open letter
>>concerning the Kramnik match. I agree with all the points of his proposal and I
>>agree to participate in a qualifying match for the right to play Kramnik
>>according to the terms of the ICCA. Below you will find a copy of this open
>>letter.
>>
>>Best regards
>> Stefan Meyer-Kahlen, author of Shredder
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>An Open Letter to Professor Enrique Irazoqui
>>[ The Cadaques tournament and the Bahrain match ]
>>
>>Dear Professor Irazoqui,
>>
>[ snipped ]
>
>IMHO this 'open' letter is what is known in the trade as a 'spoiler'.
>
>When it comes to it in Bahrain the nature and type and selection process for the
>cyber opponent will be completely irrelevant.
>
>The public will not care one jot nor one tittle for complaints about 'fairness'
>in selection of a chess machine.
>
>One chess machine is much the same as any other, and probably completely
>unfathomable in any case.
>
>Fairness to members of the human race is one thing, but nobody gives a monkeys
>about 'fairness' to a machine, and probably rightly so.
Well, let's also remember that no one thinks it is really about what is fair to
the programs but rather their programming creators: the programmers. When one
says it's not fair to Shredder, it implicitly means that it isn't fair to the
programmer and/or developing company.
>
>One can understand the issue is a big deal to computer chess 'nerds', but please
>don't imagine the wider world could care less.
>
>BGN are putting up the money and the organisation and the idea. Tney really can
>organise it any way they see fit. Their current mechanism, whilst perhaps
>unappealing to people here, is probably just as good as any other under the
>circumstances and short time frame.
>
>Changing the whole procedure (and I note the ICCA doesn't offer to actually *do*
>anything, they've conveniently proposed all work for someone else), the time
>frame, the relative monies, the whole caboodle; a couple of days before
>BGN/Irazoqui were about to fire off ........ what else but a "spoiler"?
Levy's proposal is of course very reasonable in as much as it gives other
programmers their fair shot at this much publicized match against Kramnik. He
argues that as the GM in question happens also to be the current World Champion
(compared to the Polgar-Junior match for example), the match should be between
World Champions as opposed to top competitors. It's not that the idea is
unreasonable, but the question is whether BGN cares at all about this. Notice
they didn't hesitate very long to drop the pretense of it being a match between
WCs and changed the title accordingly. Their second appeal to Stefan to
participate also underlined the priority given to time. As far as I recall, the
second appeal allowed him two days to change his mind, repeating that the
qualifying event must absolutely begin by April 26th, end of story. So the
priority isn't in the title of the program playing Kramnik, but in the speed in
which the opposing program is determined. That at least is how I saw it. Under
the circumstances, by removing any such officializing pretenses, and no longer
usurping the rightful title of Shredder (no matter how the public sees this -
unfortunately), they are freeing themselves of institutional constraints and can
pretty much do as they bloody well please, which is what I think will happen.
Two other things came forth though:
- The inadequately long period between World Computer Championships (three
years!). I find it hard to see how this can ever come close to being useful when
such a period would represent not only generations of hardware, but also
generations of software. For humans this might possibly make sense, but for
programs and computers, this is utterly useless. Please do not tell me about
costs and such. I do sympathize, but the fact remains that it is COMPLETELY
unsatisfactory. At the very least, a WMCCC should be organized on a yearly
basis. When Shredder won its title, it wasn't even Shredder 4 at the time. Now
it is on version 5 and by the next event should already be Shredder 6 with
tweaks taking it along its way to version 7. That's too long. I am absolutely
not trying to discredit Stefan's victory, but am trying to emphasize the problem
here. Serious efforts must be made to try to fix this. The internet seems to be
the key, and I can't imagine it is impossible. An event was organized a couple
of years ago on ICC by a couple of tournament organizers and the programmers,
and I think that is without a doubt the way of the future. This would greatly
increase the number of programmers and programs participating, and could only be
a boon to this event. I hope the ICCA will consider this, and endeavour to
rectify this state of affairs for what has become a rather exclusive and
rarefied event.
- The possible need for a new category of title representing the most successful
computer player against humans. This actually underlines a problem with the
actual title because it was always my understanding that the World Computer
Chess champion, or WMCC, was in essence intended to represent the ultimate
computer chess player, period. I cannot believe that it was designed to
represent the best "computer killer". Certainly, it is now fairly clear that one
(the best computer killer) does NOT necessarily represent the other (best human
killer) even if they can indeed be one and the same.
Albert
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