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Subject: Re: NO Congrats to Stefan Meyer-Kahlen

Author: Alastair Scott

Date: 08:12:48 11/30/03

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On November 30, 2003 at 08:28:22, Matthew Hull wrote:

>It matters not that the engine could not detect a 3-fold, it is a draw according
>to the rules of chess, just like the 50-move rule or checkmate.  Also, an
>operator is not allowed to force his engine to take a lower result.  That's
>throwing the game and thus illegal, unethical, and cheating all at the same
>time.  The TDs allowed it thus nullifying the result of the tournament.

It's deja vu all over again :)

I've forgotten which match it was (they've merged into a blur) but there was a
big hoo-ha when a draw offer was considered to be improperly made by an
operator. It's the same issue this time round - when an "offer" or "claim" is
made, who (or what) ultimately is doing the offering or claiming?

My immediate solution to ambiguity was to completely cut the operator out of the
loop. However, even if two programs were autonomous, there would still be
anomalies in exceptional circumstances: for example, program A improperly misses
a threefold repetition, program B does and refuses to continue, therefore A sits
there expecting a move until B's clock runs out and A claims a win on time ...
which is clearly absurd.

I think some gigantic committee is going to have to thrash out issues like this
for months and come up with a boring document which covers as many situations as
it can envisage ;)

Alastair



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