Author: Don Dailey
Date: 08:57:32 07/26/98
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On July 26, 1998 at 10:30:39, Fernando Villegas wrote: >Hi Bob and Dan: >The reason why GMI are commonly opposed to play compuyters and/or to dismiss >them from the beginning - reason of not so high players is different, of course- >is in the sychic structure of those guys. A chess player of high level is not >just a guy that play ches, but a chess-player and almost -not always, but very >frequently- nothing else. They have commited fully to that, his entire life and >self apreciation depends on that and what is more, they chose a kind of >professions where there is not room for doubts according the strenght of those >commited. That is a kind of very hard, difficult to face way of living. Just >think how it would be if in ANY profession or activity a so precise and definite >kind of clasification would exist. Life is bearable as much as you feel not all >has been lost, that you still have an opoportunity. So if you are not in the >top, you always can blame bad luck, politics or whatever. So you can bear the >fact you are not a winner, the top gun. The french writer Anatole France said >that the fact the french academy once in a while gave a chair to evidently poor >writer was a proof of the wisdom of that organization, as such an always >unfalible one would be unbearable. If the academy gives a chair to a non entity, >said France, then the losers has a good reason to accept his fate as much the >academy has proved beyond doubt his many failures. But in chess there is not >room for that. If you are a 2000 player, you are such without excuse. No room to >bad luck, etc. Now, returning to GMI, people that they live all the time in that >scheme, to ask them that besides what they actually endures should accept >without complain the arrival of these monster that, risking nothing, can deprive >them of the only thing they have, his pride, his sense of power, maybe is too >much. Each time a high level player play a game, he risk his entire being, his >self, but at least he does so that against a guy that is in the same >predicament. But a computer? What a computer lose if he loses? How could a GMI >that puts his self-steem in his perfomances in a board could sustain it if then >a mere toy can beat it to pieces? I have putted a lot of master against my >programs and thet normally are beaten and is very sad to see how those men got >depresed and then try to deprecate all the business talking of the "silly >machines". >Fernando Hi Fernando, I appreciate what you are saying. Concerning the psychic structure of good chess players, I have noticed a few qualities myself. In most cases, they believe they will win, they believe they are better and in these ways they are not always objective. Often, they feel that the position they are playing is better even when it isn't. This of course varies from player to player but as we all know even computers have this problem. More often than not, both computers estimate an advantage for themselves. Perhaps computers actually have an ego? - Don
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