Author: Rolf Tueschen
Date: 08:00:04 12/17/02
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On December 17, 2002 at 09:46:28, Tim Mirabile wrote: >On December 17, 2002 at 08:48:37, Vincent Diepeveen wrote: > >>Chessbase can't influence during the game the program Fritz. Nothing unfair >>there. It's kramnik who made it 4-4, let's be clear about it. Fritz got >>4-4 at the mercy of Kramnik, not vice versa. >> >>The alternative were another 4 boring games. 2 wins with white for kramnik >>and 2 boring draws with black. >> >>You sure you would have want to watch that? > >Some friends and I had a chance to speak to Roman D. shortly before the match, >and we asked his opinion. I don't remember the exact quote, but he said >something like while Kramnik knew exactly how to beat Fritz quite easily, he >would have to play in a style that would be sort of embarrasing for a top GM to >play, and he might not be able to bring himself to play this way, given all the >publicity. This is a psychologically good observation I had mentioned already long ago to the 1997 event with Deep Blue 2 and Kasparov. Nobody listened. Now it's interesting that exactly GM Roman made this comment. The more so it is true. In the case of GM Roman you can be sure that he, being out of the actual tournament chess he knows both sides of the medal. He was once a top player and therefore he knows exactly the problems of pride, self-esteem and being a public person, but then afterwards he learned how to adapt to the Amwerican way of life. He played for a few dollars in Central Park(s) and he has a lot of experience with computers, thanks to Crafty and the communication with Bob. He knows what it means to go down on that level to play with computers. Let me just remind you of the psychological circle here. You are a top player, the actually best probably, you have beaten the formerly best, Kasparov, and you are invited to do some commercial for 1 million dollars. You are automatically caught in a double bind. You were invited to Mainz, everywhere where also ChessBase is one of the main sponsors. Now you want to be simply "nice". BTW you also remember how they treated you when you dared to refuse the draw offer by Leko, the baby of the German sponsors from Dortmund! So, you learned that lesson. - Then there is the computer program. Let us say that you are even much stronger than GM Roman. But you are still an actually competing top player. You are very young. You are a public figure. You know the hype of the PR from ChessBase. You know these guys from ChessBase. How important they are for the actual tournament chess. You are split. You can't humiliate yourself, but you also don't want to humiliate the other side. Well, this is impossible. If you play the way you should against this artifical product, you would destroy the whole commercial myst. You begin to think about the good sides of Fritz. So your plan is this. You make a few draws. Then you win quite easily a few games. Then you play intentiously into the strengths of the "thing". Then you tell the press (the public) that the weather was too hot or that you are too tired to play your normal chess. You even pretend (read or better look at my joking web site at http://hometown.aol.de/rolftueschen/topsecret.html) that you had simply forgotten the result of the calculations from some minutes ago, I mean who cares of what you say? 99% of the chessplayers and surely of the general public will no doubt believe you. But here in such an experts' forum we should know it better. So thanks for giving us the opinion of GM Roman. But what is going on in those who insult and threatened Uri? You lost your mind, you are making strong statements, my friend (!)..." Is it really possible that so called operaters are so blind to see the difference between "Kramnik" and "Fritz"? The point is also, would it decrease the income of the accompanied industry if we all would agree that Fritz or any other commercial machine would NOT be already GM-like? Should we go so far to knowingly lie about the truth? Should we completely forget from where this all could have come - from computer sciences? And didn't Bob teach us more than once that we should be careful with our estimations about GM-strength? What Vincent is saying is nothing but the truth. Vlad did play into losing positions - otherwise he could never have been beaten in a single game by such a product. But to be fair let me remind you of the truth that already Kasparov made the same thing. In his famous second game in 1997 he intentiously played an opening that had no perspectives for Black. Therefore he came under enormous pressure. Of course then a machine gives you more problems than you can handle. If you want, Kasparov then came under the influence of his own politics. He lost his mind in the presence of the double bind. He began to believe in super natural and lost his so natural chess instinct. He gave up in a drawn position that should never be ended by a human chess player. All this IMO was already part of the way Kasparov wanted to thank the IBM for the many dollars. He simply didn't play his normal chess, thus were the comments of all GM. Now Kreamnik did the same, and so the myst is still rising. I don't think however that we should accept the general myst. We should explain, at least to the insiders here in that group, that from the chess point of view the whole event was a commercial! And Vincent is right. Kramnik made a lot of good things out of the possible issues. I followed the Nxf7 game without computer help and I was enjoying the game. Still until almost the end I hoped for the final knock-out against Fritz. While long ago the machines must have shown that White should be losing. Thus were the comments on the server. Vincent is right. What is a point worth, if you had already safe almost 1 million dollars? There is only one top human player of Modern Chess who played always his best possible chess and that is Bobby Fischer. Period. All others try to behave in the circus. (In German there is a saying that goes: In life you'll always meet twice!) But to pretend here in the club that for sure Fritz played a fantastic chess, this is absolute nonsense. Fritz played worse than DB in the first game in 1997. Kramnik could have made putty out of it if he had wanted. Fortunately he didn't want to. Rolf Tueschen
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