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Subject: Re: Paderborn '98

Author: Don Dailey

Date: 12:48:35 06/26/98

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On June 26, 1998 at 14:42:53, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>
>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


IF I did have a tournament, only a programming team could enter their
own programs.  They could send a representative however or ask for
a local operator if they could not come themselves.

Only Bob could enter Crafty.  I don't want a tournament where every
other entry is Crafty based or a variation of gnuchess.

- Don



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