Author: Jonas Cohonas
Date: 01:32:13 02/06/03
When we witness human v comp events, that although this is a computer chess forum, a human is involved. What i mean is that we see for example people saying g3 would have won because my computer say so or even worse "it just does" with no further evidence to back such statements up. When Kasparov opted for the draw it was not part of a conspiracy, but human eval at work so to speak, i think Terry have really hit the nail on the head when he pointed to the fact that legally any human influencing the result of a betting match, other than trying his best, would be in a lot of trouble which could cost them their career, reputation and whatever finances they have made from competing, there is simply too much to lose to be part of a conspiracy.. Well back to the human aspect, my dad once asked Tony Miles if he thought Kaspoarov had any weaknesses on the board and Tony after a long think said: "well maybe he is sometimes too optimistic", the point here is that he did not point to a weakness on the board, but a character weakness (related to chess of course). Now if we look at game 3 which DJ won, some would say that Kasparov lost it, he said about Rh5 that he thought it drew, had it been Leko to play in that position i guess we can all agree that he would not have played Rh5, but gone for the repetition instead, probably not because he would have seen Rh5 losing, but because he is more pessimistic by nature, in the sense that if a position is unclear for both parts and he has a clear draw by rep or otherwise he will go for that. Kasparov we could say was too optimistic when he played Rh5 which he thought was a forced draw + it kept small winning chances open for him, this approach when you are as good as Kasparov will favour him in the long run against humans, whereas the opposite seems to be true against the computer, maybe that is the price for being too optimistic... If we look at the recent comp v human matches, Gulko v DF the match was drawn, Van Wely v Rebel drawn, Kramnik v DF drawn, Hiarcs v Bareev drawn, this pattern is IMO NOT a product of some obscure conspiracy to bore the hell out of the spectators ;) (for the record i found none of the above matches to be boring, ok maybe Gulko v DF was a big 10 on the yawn'o meter) where if those matches had a different pattern, say humans always won or vice versa i could begin to understand these stupid conspiracy theories. I believe that the reason for the drawing pattern (no pun intended) is that it seems to be the best, humans and computers can get from these matches, mostly humans of course. In the case of Gulko v DF and Bareev v Hiarcs, it looks more like fear of failiure than the wish to draw the match, whereas the other matches it seems that the fear of failure (and good play by the comp + the programmers seem to get better at opening preps as the match progresses) occurs when the human loses it's first game after that, they seem to just want to draw the match and get it over with, maybe it is human pride, who knows... Anyway the truth is, we will never know if g3 would have won in that particular situation atleast not in our lifetime, we will never know anything for sure in chess unless it is mate or completely winning (don't take me literally on this, the point is the important part). In conclusion, let's not forget to ASK questions instead of stating "facts", but then again we are only human ;) So what do you think? Regards Jonas
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