Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 11:42:53 06/26/98
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On June 26, 1998 at 12:16:09, Tom Kerrigan wrote: >On June 26, 1998 at 05:03:16, Ernst A. Heinz wrote: >>What about organizing an Internet-based event that everybody can >>participate in from his own "home desk"? > >I trust you to operate your program correctly, but what about the insane >computer-chess people? There are two kinds of computer chess tournaments, those where entries are accepted from the people who produce the program, and those where anybody can buy a copy of the program and participate. Some people don't draw a distinction between these sorts of tournaments, but I do. It is an odd situation. You can't do this sort of thing, for instance, with a baseball team. It's either the team playing or it isn't, you can't have a copy of a team. In car racing, you can go buy your Chevy or your Toyota or whatever, and you can race it, but the "competitive ego" of the entry, if I may coin a term, very apparently exists within the driver and the pit crew, not the car. If the driver screws up, or even if the car screws up, this is considered to be the responsibility of the driver or the pit crew, not the car maker. In computer chess, when someone buys a program and operates it at a tournament, the competitve ego is seen to exist within the program, not the operator. What this means is that if the operator screws up, or cheats, or messes with the opening book, or even if the operator does something "sportsmanlike" and gives away a half point because he won't call the opponent's flag, this reflects upon the program, not the operator. We had a tournament on chess.net, and one of the programs was about to lose on time, so the operator took over for the program, and finished the game. I am sure that you can find this game, with the player recorded as the program, and not the program/operator pair, in PGN collections on the net. So this game is mis-attributed. I don't think this is likely to happen much in "human" chess, it seems to be an oddity of "computer" chess. I think this is a nasty situation, and as a consequence I am very reluctant to participate in such tournaments. bruce
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