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Subject: Re: Hmm . . . is Junior5 not good enough??

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 19:10:24 10/20/98

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On October 20, 1998 at 16:34:52, Komputer Korner wrote:
[snip]
>This possible huge clock time hole for potential cheating, together with the
>draw controversy and the abrupt game terminations are the time bombs of SSDF
>integrity. These along with SSDF's refusal to disallow secret autoplayers may
>ultimately bring the SSDF down.
If someone cheats on time, who will look like a blithering idiot -- the one who
trusted or the cheater?  I think cheating on time would be ludicrously idiotic,
because the cheater would _really_ look bad if caught.  It would sound like, "I
know I am unable to compete on the merits of my program's strenght, so I had to
do some dirty underhanded stuff to make my program look stronger than it is."

It is not the integrity of the SSDF that is in question.  They should not have
ever been accused of wrongdoing, if the wrongdoing is on the part of the program
manufacturers.

As to hidden autoplayers -- which is better, a hidden one or none at all?  I do
think it does cast some small aspersions on the manufacturers that they hide
their autoplayers.  But I can understand why they might.  If the autoplayer of
program x is public, and y is private, then program y can play 10,000 games
against x and look for weaknesses it can exploit and find ways to strengthen y.
X, on the other hand does not have this advantage.  If your program learns as it
plays, public or private should not make much difference.  If it does not, then
I can probably find a hole somewhere and beat you twenty times in a row (even if
my program is significantly weaker than yours!)

I think a much better way to play them would be to use a network or simply use
FICS or ICC or the like.



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