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Subject: Re: One viewpoint of correspondence chess

Author: Dana Turnmire

Date: 01:43:54 09/11/03

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From "The Mammouth Book of Chess" page 433.

"...the human uses the computer to check over analysis he has done, and to reach
a verdict on random tactics.  It's a tool.  As computers get better and better,
such occurrances as this (finding mate in 9 etc.) will become more common, and
both players will be guided away from such perils by their machines, until
eventually there is no way out for one side or the other.  Since so many of the
moves were chosen by excluding moves for reasons other than human preference, it
will become impossible for a player to explain why he won a game, or for the
loser to understand why he lost.  They can perhaps point to the strategy they
employed, but it will really have been some random assisted tactical
implementations of the two players' strategies that have decided matters.
Looking at it in terms of the humans versus computers discussion, for a while
the game will have been drifting around inside the 20% of positions in which
humans are better than computers, or the 60% no-man's land where it isn't clear
who handles the position better.  However, should the game drift into the 20% of
positions that computers handle far better than humans, then that is the end of
the human involvement in the game.  The two computers are effectively battling
it out from then on."

"Obviously, as the percentages get slanted more in favour of the computers, the
point at which it is the two computers locked in battle will become more
frequent, and occur earlier in the game."

"Perhaps a ban on the use of computers in championship events could to some
extent be enforced by requiring players to be able to explain, if called upon by
the official bodies, how they happened to find any really strong
counter-intuitive moves.  This would be the equivalent of the drug test in
athletics."

Hopefully some human will be able to analyze the games.



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