Author: Bruce Moreland
Date: 20:50:35 11/10/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 10, 1998 at 20:03:46, Amir Ban wrote: [snip] >I don't know if what you are saying is that what Shay states is merely not >substantiated, or actually untrue. I guess the former. It's conventional wisdom >that the Deep Blue match is one of the greatest PR coups of all time, and I >think this has substance behind it. Both Shay and I can concede your points >without essentially changing our argument. I don't think you want us to argue >the reverse, say like: IBM's have not been able to show anything but loss >through their Kasaprov efforts, and therefore they are sure to play other >matches soon just to try to recoup expenses, and besides this is a lesson to you >all not to try to repeat IBM's costly mistake in launching the Deep Blue >project. > >Fair enough ? Yes, I'd just heard that argument about the short-term stock market effect enough, and felt like stomping on it. I think that it helped them, but you have to admit that claiming that the value of the company increased by 20% due to this is a stretch. [snip] >You are on weaker ground here. Obviously after Hong-Kong DB were looking to play >only Kasparov and no one else, unless you think this is just a weird >coincidence. They played several opponents including computers in the three >years preceding Hong-Kong, but in the three years after somehow things didn't >work out ? How come Socrates/Cilkchess and Zugzwang did not suffer the same fate >? They could come to the Harvard Cup 95, Aegon 96 & 97, Dutch championship, >Paderborn, whatever. The reference was to games with other computers. The Harvard Cup and Aegon don't involve humans, and I thought there was some need to be Dutch in order to play in the Dutch championship, although I remember someone corrected me about one of these events in the last year or so, and it may have been this one. They could have gone to Paderborn but I think that failure to go to this one event is hardly hiding. Not going to Paderborn or some national championship shouldn't be described as "carefully avoided more 'embarassments'" against other computers. > Or they could play humans, like join a tournament, invite >someone like Judith Polgar to drop over for a game or two, or just publish one >or two of those Benjamin games, or just play against Rebel & Genius in their >basement and not lose the game scores. Or come to Paderborn 1999 (they won't), >or give Kasparov a rematch. By an unlucky coincidence through no fault of theirs >none of this happened. Come on. This is drifting away from the notion of hiding from other programs. The point Shay was trying to make, as I read it, is that they got spanked by Fritz and avoided other programs as a result, and it appeared to me that he made this point in an effort to undermine the notion that DB is actually strong. Regarding not playing anybody in public except Garry, yes, that is a shame. I'd like to see them be more open. I don't think they'll play again, for reasons we could probably agree about. I'd be delighted to be proven wrong. bruce
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