Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Fair conditions for human vs. computer play

Author: Guido Schimmels

Date: 04:54:07 07/29/98


As FIDE rules were not designed with computers as possible opponents in mind,
 they don't apply to computers. In fact computers break the FIDE rules in many
 ways, if you think of it:
1) They don't note the moves on the form
2) They don't move the pieces nor handle the clock
3) They access external information during the game (opening book, tablebases)

Ok, 1) and 2) could be easily addressed, but what about 3) ?

If I played and Open tournament and had to play a computer,
if I would use my opening and endgame library during the game and analyse on
a little extra chess-board how could the arbiter say I'm cheating if I only do
what
the computer does itself ?

I really think it is very important for the computer chess community  to agree
on special rules for computer-human play - or what sense does it make to
discuss if computers are already GM level or not if we don't define the
underlying game conditions ? And the game conditions have a *huge*
influence on the rating we observe.
When Bob negates micro's to be on GM level, his typical argument is:
Look at ICC, computer's have still big weaknesses which players on ICC
will find out quickly and then humiliate them.
But are the conditions computer play on ICC fair or not ? I don't know, at least
they are very much different from for example the Kasparov vs. Deeper Blue
mach. Deeper Blue surely benefited highly from the human interference between
the games and from the special opening preparation against Kasparov (ok,
Kasparov
deviated from his usual opening play, but so the threat was stronger than the
execution !)

I hope I could make my point clear.
So when we talk about computer strength, which conditions do we talk about ?

- Guido -



This page took 0.01 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.