Author: Amir Ban
Date: 10:25:02 11/14/98
Go up one level in this thread
On November 12, 1998 at 16:33:46, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >On November 12, 1998 at 08:30:20, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>As I said before, you simply *DON'T* accuse someone of cheating unless you are >>*certain*. And if you yourself have been caught cheating in the past (can you >>spell Polgar?) then you *really* ought to be careful with the accusation. The >>Be4/Qb6 issue *could* have been explained if he had investigated... Because >>both Bruce and I played with this and found that Qb6 doesn't win a pawn as he >>so boldly and forcefully proclaimed. And if he had invested that time, none of >>this would have happened. Or if he had simply kept his mouth shut *until* he >>had time to properly investigate, he would also have not said anything. But he >>just opened his mouth and inserted his foot promptly... > >I looked at some of these positions. I don't remember which ones. I know for >sure that I looked at that position where DB played Be4. Mine didn't want to >play Be4 in a day or two, but it was moving up the list of candidates, and the >score for the move it wanted to play was at or near zero. > >I don't really care if the move won a pawn or didn't win a pawn or lost the >game, or whatever, other than minimally. What I was interested in determining, >and what has been determined to my satisfaction is that a program could be less >optimistic about these positions than all of the people who were watching >thought it must have been. > >It is my contention that during that point of that game, DB spent a lot of time >because it had been optimistic up until then, but was beginning to realize that >it was going to be a draw. I have no evidence to support this other than it >took a long to move, there have been references made to "panic time" in the >newspaper, and that mine experienced a score drop when set to think for a long >time. > >I think that DB made a human-looking move out of sheer frustration. > >I think that a cheating accusation could come out of this is insane, and that it >could be supported by anyone in the computer chess community is even more >insane. To suggest this is not just to say that one person suffered a serious >moral lapse, it's to suggest that the whole team was morally bankrupt, since I >assume they would have had to conspire to do this, and in order to execute such >a stunt in real-time they may have even had to organize this beforehand. > >That is an incredibly serious thing to suggest based upon, 1) incomprehensible >output (everyone raise your hand who has written a program that produces output >only understandable by you); 2) extra time added to a search, which we all do >for one reason or another, and it's easy to determine that there could be a >reason to do so here; 3) the accusations of the opponent, who is not a technical >person, and who has no way of knowing what the thing was capable of *without* >cheating, although he might think he does. > >If DB every plays again I would hope that they would make their output more >readable in case this happens again. > >bruce You are on the wrong page here. You are not even answering the right questions. You may have been influenced by Bob, who's trying to portray this as a primitive accusation by people who can't understand simple facts or draw easy conclusions. Briefly: - You discuss the wrong move 37.Be4, while the problem is centered around 36.axb5. In both these move Qb6 is the apparently right move, but in move 37 it doesn't win a pawn, so Be4 is a plausible choice. In move 36 Qb6 definitely wins at least a pawn (and axb5 doesn't), so the question is why would a computer not play it. You will find, I guess, that yours like any other program wants to play 36.Qb6 and can't be persuaded not to. If you find otherwise, tell us because that is news. - Making this as a "human" over-valuation of a positional advantage, which is straightened out by a program like Ferret running overnight doesn't do justice to chess intelligence of the people involved. The only possible reason NOT to play 36.Qb6 is that black can toss 3 pawns for a speculative king attack. Kasparov was aware of this during the game, and was of the opinion that this is beyond the understanding of today's computer chess. So far he's been proven right on this for every program except DB. - I don't know where you got the impression that the suspicion was based on not being able to read the printouts. I'm only aware of the case that I made out of the printouts, so I guess you are talking about me. The printouts are a mess, but I can read them. The fact is that reading them doesn't remove the difficulties, but only raises others. The answer to these is definitely not within the printouts. - Same about the extra time: neither I nor anyone else ever said that the fact that DB spent a lot of time on some moves indicates cheating. There is no extra time in move 37 that you discussed, so what you say about it is not relevant. There is panic time in move 36, but that's not what is suspicious, but the fact that there are anomalies in the timing behavior, which cannot be explained by the printout alone. - The part about a "non technical" person: Since I'm behind most of the case, I think I am qualified, but I would argue that Kasparov alone is qualified enough, and you are really assuming more naivete in him than you actually can. In any case, the way he suggested of settling this, of trying this for days and weeks on every other program, is a perfectly valid suggestion that could have been made by an expert. I would guess you and Bob, being programmers, consider yourself more qualified than Kasparov to make such complaints, but since both of you have so far failed to get the chess-related problem involved or even to get the move right, that may not be so. This is brief. I have no intention of detailing all the case here. I've done this in the past, several times, and by now I've more or less posted all the information I have. Anyone who was sufficiently interested must have been paying attention, and anyone who was not paying attention, must not have been very interested. So are we insane ? Kasaprov raised this, and he believed there was cheating, based on chess issues and personal impressions. I was asked to give opinion on a technical document (the printouts). I would have told him that the printouts don't support his theory if that would have been the case (say if the issue was really 37.Be4), but I couldn't. My interest here is to settle this issue either way, and I don't care which way. What I find surprising and inappropriate is that the story ended here. Was there intervention ? This question is going nowhere because IBM is not cooperating. I think anyone who saw what I was asking would have agreed that if a good answer exists, it could have easily been provided by IBM, and the case would have been closed. This did not happen, and instead the question has become: why shouldn't this be diuscussed and settled on its factual merits ? I think IBM showed here zero accountability and responsibility. Whether or not intervention took place, I'm disturbed by this: In hindsight they certainly could cheat AND get away with it without sweat. A few days ago I went back and reread the text of the post-match press conference and commentary. A year and a half later, this makes interesting reading. I was surprised that the printouts were discussed so much, and I realized that in fact everyone expected publishing the printouts to resolve this. Garry says so. C.J.Tan implies that the printouts will show this. Then he backs off and says IBM has still to decide which printouts to publish (so as not to confuse the public :)) Garry protests immediately, and asks specifically for move 35 and 45 of game 2 (he never got them). In any case, C.J. says that anyway all posible information will soon be in journals and books (so why worry about some printouts now ?), and of course IBM is busy doing science and do not want to compromise itself for future matches. It should come across that IBM was trying hard not to disclose any information, and the second best thing they could hope for was that the information would prove to be unreadable. You have to take this into account when considering what Hsu and you said about not being able to read the printouts. If you consider this in the timeframe in which it was said, you realize that all the parties involved including Kasparov did not know that this was absolutely the last time these issues could be raised. IBM were not around for further discussions after this, and they just closed the shop and went home. By the way, in the commentary part I can see that the commentators understood the chess-related issue Garry was raising. Mike Valvo is perfectly right when he says king-safety evaluation may explain it, but he doesn't yet know yet how much. Reading this, C.J.Tan strikes me as insincere, evasive and hypocritical. He was certainly running this show, not Hsu. Hsu, judging from the interview by Keith Ian Price, sounds a bit out of the loop, and hardly interested. If all this depended on character assessment of C.J.Tan and Garry Kasparov, I think I would choose Garry. Amir
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