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Subject: Re: Taking a stand and a poll

Author: Mogens Larsen

Date: 01:44:51 07/09/01

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On July 08, 2001 at 23:28:08, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>You need to get out of this "programs aren't GM's" thing gracefully at some
>point, probably soon.  You've got a bunch of people up in arms about it, and no
>matter whether or not you've been right at some past point, at some future point
>you will be wrong, and you will have to admit it, and all of these guys you are
>arguing with will use that as an opportunity to try to make you eat shit for
>about a year.

There's no reason for Bob to change his mind at all about this issue. He's
chosen to argue the chess aspect of the grandmaster title (what a rotten thing
to do) instead of singular results here and there. And since there are no
definition of "GM strength" so far, it's a perfectly legitimate argument. One
that can hold water for a long time if argued with style.

Personally, I find the debate to be ludicrous. Even if everybody here decided
that computer programs are of GM strength (given that we can agree on that
first) and sign a statement with our own blood, it won't change a single thing
anywhere. We have two very different entities (computer programs and humans)
that don't actually compete and we're trying to evaluate one against the other.
That doesn't make sense.

A chess program with all bells and whistles could probably achieve all the norms
needed, but that doesn't constitute general proof. Some (me) would say that a
few things like opening book and maybe EGTB should be removed first, before a
"real" human vs. comp comparison makes sense. That's probably really silly, but
I don't care one bit.

A definition of a computer program GM could be: Achieving the required norms
without book and egtb, using only a single cpu computer and the program must not
be modified at all. That would do it for me I think. The important requirement
of the above restriction is the ability to play unaided grandmaster chess. Not
strength achieved through hardware or book cooking.

Regards,
Mogens



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