Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: World championship titles

Author: Steven Schwartz

Date: 08:24:02 06/05/98

Go up one level in this thread


[Beginning Snipped]

>>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).


>My memory is that a lot of people were suspicious of the fact that
>they finished at exactly 2000.  There was some discussion about
>the USCF using a different and more liberal calculation to insure
>the rating was not in the high 1900's.   Do you remember this
>discussion?  I didn't take it too seriously because I did not have
>any facts, but found the disucssion interesting.
- Don Dailey

I was not privy to any of those discussions. After all, we were
a competitor of the Federation - their largest advertiser, but
competitor nevertheless.

It was ironic that the rating from the tournament was exactly 2000
and it was also ironic that they were claiming early on that it
played 2000 before any games were played.

What was not ironic was that the 2000 rating (whether accurate or
not) was for an 8MHz version and not the 3MHz version being sold
to the public. Was this a service to the public? Hardly!
-Steve




This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.