Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 14:41:49 12/14/01
Go up one level in this thread
On December 14, 2001 at 17:19:44, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: >On December 14, 2001 at 16:48:33, Jorge Pichard wrote: > >first of all the strongest top player is judith polgar and >not zu chen. Judith polgar is world top. Zu Chen may be happy >if she ever beats me in rapid (i'm 2312 FM but good in rapid, >have a national title there). > >Secondly, i don't see how you can ever organize a match against >a chinese player. She's from China. Not from US, western europe. > >Even organizing a match against an afghani is easier than against >a chinese who is playing for the chinese national team. > >She's god in China. Everything gets dictated by the state. > >If she asks someone to get her trainer and he refutes, then >his head gets cutoff by the chinese government. That's in case >he's lucky. Because the real punishment is getting forever rotten >away in a jail without sunlight for refusing trainership for the >glory of China. THIS IS NO JOKE. In china refusing trainership of someone >from the chinese team is considered high treachery against the chinese >people republic. > >Further the irrelevant thing is next. Programs win from GM with XXX rating. >Then next thing is they win from someone with YYY rating but it's higher than >XXX so obviously a 2500 GM is not exactly interesting from PR viewpoint. > >You can get 2700 GMs for $10000 too. In these times they'll be >all in the line to get $40000. they'll be prepared to even play >like 3 matches for that money i bet. > >$300k is insane much for a 2500. > >Only Kasparov and Kramnik are insane that they ask that much as they >ask. > >There are some more plans wasting money. Try www.polgarchess.com >for something real pathetic. Who's going to pay for these plans? > >No one. > >Judith Polgar versus a strong chessprogram would be real nice to see. > >I would love to play with diep a match. Diep knows at least about >good and bad bishop and all these world top win game after game against >programs when they want to because of these simple (and also >real complex at the same time) positional things, >where programs cannot play at, but where humans CAN play at. > >On paper from that kramnik-fritz match the programmers get like >half a million dollar too, but i'm 100% convinced braingames puts it >all in their own pockets and perhaps get some more from chessbase. I don't know anything about repression in China, so I cannot address any of that. What you say is very sensible as far as Judit Polgar's ability (surely the best woman in the world, and better than most men too). But a publicity stunt does not look for the best competition. It is looking for the best PR. To beat the "World Champion" in a match, and you *want* the computer to win -- remember this is sponsored by hardware company -- you would hope that the world champion is ELO 2200 by some incredible sequence of flukes. The company surely is not looking for the best competition. Rather, for the best return on investment. The average Joe on the street knows nothing about Judit Polgar or any of the top Chinese players (the best of which did not even compete for some strange reason). All they know is what they read on the box. "This program beat the Women's World Champion!" They will extrapolate that to mean that the program is better than the best woman in the world. Really, they are probably happy at the outcome (but with a small sample of games, the actual ELO is very much in doubt -- who knows how good she really is?) In any case, think about it from the hardware vendor's standpoint. Turn it around. Suppose that you plan a match of Diep against the FIDE world champion. Would you rather face Kasparov or Anand or Khalifman? Surely, you would hope that the weakest one is champion, because you have a much higher odds of winning. I think if I were Khalifman, I would have milked the title more by playing against commercial programs for cash. I think it would have been attractive to both sides for that very reason.
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