Author: Steven Schwartz
Date: 07:47:37 06/05/98
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On June 05, 1998 at 00:01:08, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Hi Steve: >Interesting history you have told to us, but now I would like to know, >for the sake of my journalistic curiosity, how it was you or your lawyer >convinced people in the jury about such a technical issue like Elo >rating of a machine? How did you convinced them Fidelity was cheating? >How you explained this thing a lot of chessic people does not know well? >Fernando In the United States a person is considered innocent until proven guilty (although it does not ALWAYS appear that way). Since Fidelity was doing the suing, it was their obligation to furnish proof that our "Over 1700" claim was 1) wrong and 2) purposely wrong (malicious). You are absolutely right. Talking to a jury about ELO points is the equivalent of watching grass grow. And added to that, was the fact that ELO is not an exact science AND their claim of 2000 fell within the parameters our guarantee of "Over 1700". I spent many weeks with my attorneys teaching them what the rating system was all about. Fidelity spent days in the courtroom showing that right after our "Over 1700" claim their sales went down below what they has projected, but since we had access to their records, we could see that it had absolutely nothing to do with our ad. How could a magazine with a subscription of 50,000 cause damage of 1.5 million especially since they filed only about a month after the ad appeared? Basically, in order for the claim to be true, EVERY member of the U.S. Chess Federation would have had to have the intention of buying this chess computer, and our ad would have to had convinced EVERY one of them to change his mind. We sold A LOT of SC 9s and I am sure the Federation did as well. The most popular question we had to answer was, "Are you selling a slower/weaker machine than the Federation?" Of course, we were selling the identical machine but people were puzzled by the difference in rating estimates. The strangest fact of all was that we received a warning from Fidelity about 10 days BEFORE the magazine was about to be released that if the ad appeared, it would likely cause them a great amount of damage. How did they know what was in the magazine BEFORE it was released??? Obviously someone at the Chess Federation told them. The USCF was apparently concerned that our "Over 1700" rating would conflict with their own ads for the Sensory Challenger 9 which were following Fidelity's 2000 rating line. And that would hurt their SC 9 sales. Keep in mind that this machine sold for about $180 and was stronger than machines that sold for twice that much!! About that time, the SC 9 was entered into an Open tournament in Florida by Fidelity. However, they were running it at 8 MHz instead of the 3 MHz that the commercial version ran at (at least those are the numbers that I remember now). They, of course, did not make this information public, but we had a couple of people at the tournament who surrepticiously tested the machine that was playing there. These people also reported the daily results to us. On the day that we first placed the "Over 1700" ad, the machine had completed perhaps 6 rounds and had a provisional rating of about 1880. We deducted the points for the speed differential and came up with "Over 1700". The computer actually finished the tournament with a 2000 rating (so Fidelity should have known at that point that their 2000 rating for the 3 MHz version was incorrect). We had never been sued before (and only once since - by the company that sued TASC over patent infringement involving the Smartboard - a story for another post) and even though I knew we were 100% in the right, I was VERY concerned because anything can happen in a jury trial (just look at O.J.). My faith in the legal system was restored. The judge was a tyrant. He allowed no nonsense. The jury did its job. I was very pleased! I was always very skeptical of the Fidelity/Federation connection and I believe that the suit was meant to stop us from selling the SC 9 to the betterment of the Federation. In fact, if we had gone along with Fidelity's 2000 rating, we would be claiming now that the Diamond II or Milano Pro or Atlanta are playing 2700 chess. I will say it again... exaggerated ratings are for companies with short term goals. - Steve P.S. Don't get me started on the Federation's decision to allow Action Chess official ratings.
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