Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 09:27:44 11/07/01
Go up one level in this thread
On November 07, 2001 at 01:48:40, Gian-Carlo Pascutto wrote: >On November 07, 2001 at 01:27:01, Uri Blass wrote: > >>I want to see a tournament of programs and not a tournament that is also of >>operators. > >You can run those for yourself. > >The whole *point* of the Dutch open and similar competitions is that >it's a competition between programmers IMHO. > >I do not think this can be understood unless you have written your >own program end been to a tournament like this. > >-- >GCP I have done more of these events than anybody still active (that I know of anyway). I therefore speak from the perspective of "experience". I would have _loved_ to attend an acm event where I could sit across the board from my opponent and talk about the game we are playing, or about the games being played on other boards (we always had projection screens with all games up on them so all games could be followed from the audience.) Instead, we had to continually be ready for our opponent to move, watch for queries about the chess clock (if I missed one, the program would just "sit" until I replied). If I had to go to the little boy's room, I had to find an operator to relieve me, or else take a chance on losing time while I was gone. The list goes on and on. I would have _still_ attended, even if Ken Thompson and I had gotten our way and required everyone to have a serial interface to connect to a central referee. Now we have everything we need. Reliable chess server code that could be run in the tournament hall on a cheap computer (FICS). Reliable and well-tested interface code (xboard/winboard) with a well-defined protocol that carefully describes every message that can be sent in either direction, etc. It's long past time to at least remove the humans from the loop. Then the best typist doesn't win the sudden-death games just because he is ahead on time. The best program with the best time allocation will now win. Which is what these events are _supposed_ to determine, in fact...
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