Author: Côme
Date: 03:08:08 09/09/02
Go up one level in this thread
On September 09, 2002 at 04:58:21, Ingo Althofer wrote: >Yesterday I found the homepage of Martin Fierz, and on this his interesting >report on the computer Checkers tournament that had been played in Las Vegas >some weeks ago. The article is nicely written and worth reading, even for normal >computer chess enthusiasts. See www.fierz.ch/vegas.htm > >However, there is a point where I disagree with the author. In a few remarks - >and maybe mainly between lines - the reader gets the impression that the author >has not a very high opinion of Jonathan Schaeffer's work in the Chinook project. > >As I saw similar ways of thinking or argumenting in other areas of research let >me start explaining by an analogy from my own discipline. In mathematics we have >the expression "there is a right of the first proof". Look at some difficult >problem (for instance P !=? NP) and assume that someone has proved an answer. >His proof may be as lengthy or awkward as imaginable - as long as it is >logically correct, it is a fantastic result and the author deserves full honors. >Later, other scientists may come and find shorter or more elegant or more >general proofs. This will not diminish the honors of the first prover. He was >the one to find the bridge. It is much easier to polish or smoothen an awkward >proof than to find the proof as a pioneer. Claude Shannon for instance was a man >of ugly first proofs. When you read through some of his work in information >theory you can laugh about his (sometimes) awkward ways of argumenting - and >sometimes third-year students do this. Then I explain the right of the first >proof and try to encourage them "Come on! Find your own first proofs!" > >In top level computer checkers there was such a "come first" situation. During >the early 90's of the 20-th century Jonathan Schaeffer and his group did a great >job in tackling the game of checkers. During their enterprise they made several >mistakes (and Jonathan Schaeffer even was so great to give an honest description >of these mistakes and woodways in his book "One jump ahead"). But what counts is >the success: Chinook was the VERY FIRST computer program being superior to all >human players. I don't really agree here, Remember tinsley retired from the match after 6 draws because he was litteraly dying from cancer ! so chinook draw a dying man :-) Then he was replaced by Don lafferty and Chinook drew the match ! Remember Lafferty despite being the second best player in the world he was really a LOT weaker than tinsley ! I think tinsley rating was +2800 and Lafferty like 2650 ! So I do believe a full strenght Tinsley would have kicked chinook badly. Laffert played hundreds of games with tinsley and he said he only beat him ONCE and it was very late at night and tinsley was tired :-) Therefore the Chinook team deserves honor still today - and not >small-minded discussions on the userfriendlyness of a database access code. > >And in my mind it is also ok when in the forthcoming title match Chinook as the >defender will keep its title when the match ends in a draw. Chinook did its job >years before the others did, and therefore they deserve this advantage. > > >Thanks again to Martin Fierz for his nice report! > >Ingo Althofer.
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