Author: Alois Ganter
Date: 13:52:59 05/02/01
Go up one level in this thread
On May 02, 2001 at 13:10:50, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On May 01, 2001 at 04:09:05, Alois Ganter wrote: > >> >> >>For cheating in computer tournaments with human operators one should not play >>advanced chess. Its sufficient that the human "sense of danger" is superior to >>nowadays programs and can avoid many losses without the need for the human to >>calculate a single line. Telling the program when to consolidate rather than to >>take further risks makes a huge difference. >> >>1. Say you have an area on your screen which means "Do not take any more >>material. Consolidate! Defend your King! Retreat! Repair your pawn structure". >> >>2. Another screen area could be "Watch out for passed pawns!". >> >>3. Against humans: "Do not block the pawn chain!". >> >>If you smell danger, you put your mouse arrow into that area after entering the >>opponent move. Maybe your judgement is wrong. No problem. The only risk is that >>the program plays passively. >> >>But it would also lose much less games. >> >>Taking the vanities and the ruthlessness of some of the chess companies here >>into account judging by the ugly way they fight in public, it looks like they >>are prepared to do anything to win important tournaments. >> >>That should not be allowed. So I personally prefer results from automatic >>matches. As an alternative the rules for human operators should be much more >>strict than they are now. >> >> > >That is worthy of a challenge. "Have you _actually_ looked at the rules >governing computer chess events, either computer vs computer as in the ICCA >tournaments, or computer vs human as in the USCF rated events we all play >in?" > >I would assume not. > >Because human intervention is _expressly_ forbidden. The human is only allowed >to enter moves after the game is started, unless the program asks a question >about time remaining on the chess clock, in which case the operator is allowed >to answer. Having the programmer there is more important _between_ rounds when >opening preparation is needed, or some programming concept needs adjustment. > Of course this is all forbidden. "Cheating" is forbidden by definition. Operating a program with the mouse allows a lot of coded forbidden entry, while operating with a keyboard does not. To repeat: The rest position of the mouse arrow between entering moves can illegally communicate information to the program in computer chess tournaments with human operators. So the ICCA should implement a mouse ban at least. > > >>> >>> >>>>On the other hand every program can trivially defend against abusing input from >>>>an autoplayer interface. No human interference, no cheating. >>> >>>I suspect that it is not so simple. >>>I remember that Ed had a lot of problems with it and I also remember strange >>>things with the autoplayer. >>> >>>Uri >> >>Ed had problems because of a faulty DOS driver not written by himself. Under >>Windows it should be different. I work in Internet server development and see it >>as a firewall analogy. >> >>Autoplaying by serial interface means that you can completely control the input >>to your program. If you do not like the input, you behave like a brave little >>firewall: log it for your admin and ignore it. > >Suppose I simply send you as many ICMP ECHO REQUEST packets as you can absorb >and respond to? What is that going to do to (a) your machine's cpu cycles; >(b) your ability to receive packets from the opponent's machine? > >I can think of several ways to cause you a bit of grief without your knowing >unless you watched everything carefully. IE I send my move once character at a >time buried in a 1518 byte packet. Maybe with 20 big (but empty) packets >between each valid one. It is doubtful that would get logged by anything unless >you really had a firewall looking at the packets carefully. a) Auto232 is RS232. There is no TCP/IP based protocol. b) If however it ran via TCP/IP you could simply start Netmon under Windows 2000 server and monitor the traffic down to every single byte. So what you suggest could be easily detected. With fair play you'd typically expect packets of 45-60 bytes per move (40 bytes IP-header + move data) and no traffic between moves other than indeed the occasional Echo request to check connectivity. Guys like Eklund from SSDF sound to me like they'd be quite able to configure a Netmon session. > >I don't think you can design a non-abusable interface...
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