Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:58:39 12/21/03
Go up one level in this thread
On December 21, 2003 at 07:37:14, Thomas Mayer wrote: >Hi Bob, > >>> as you may remember and as given in the explanation of the ICGA about the >>> decision the draw was not declared at the correct point and the Jury thinks >>> that then according to the FIDE rule the game can't be a draw. > >> This is wrong. The chess program said "this is a 3-fold repetition". >> If you use their reasoning, _no_ program claimed a repetition or whatever >> correctly, yet they were accepted _every_ time. This is just after-the-fact >> justification for a really ugly decision. > >no, finally, at least as I had understood the reasoning, Jaap said that the game >was still in progress and the draw was not claimed at the board by the operator >- at least not correctly because the move was played -> That was the reason for >him to not count it as a draw... I think all this stuff with the info-window >etc. is nonsense and just a try to confuse everybody. You miss the point. The program said "this is a 3-fold repetition." The operator chose to ignore that and play on. According to the rules, the game should be backed up to that point, and the operator error corrected, which would _instantly_ make this a draw as in that same position, Jonny would _again_ claim the repetition, and the TD would have to accept it. > >This is a sound explanation - but of course I agree with you that the decision >anyway is not correct - a) it's against the rules that the operator has such a >big influence because the engine clearly takes the draw and b) it's also against >the spirit of rules... Correct. And even if you want to talk about "good sportsmanship" it still misses the fact that _others_ were affected (badly) by the decision. I have bent the rules in the past myself, as I have explained in other posts here, and the one thing I later regretted was that I _might_ have changed the tournament result, by doing a "good thing". IE I was winning in the game against Zarkov. I let him stop his clock longer than the rules allowed to fix a bug. I won anyway, so nothing changed. But I would definitely have won had I let his clock run, and I _could_ have drawn had CB not played the rook and multiple pawn ending correctly. After I thought about it, I decided that I would not do that again, but that I would also tell my opponent _why_ I was not going to bend the rules. Even if I had not been in a position to win the tournament, turning a win into a draw affects others, both by final standing with direct scores as well as tie-breaks for programs that had played me and now might have had 1/2 point less on their sum-of-opponent's tie-breaker. Bottom line. Sportsmanship has it place. But that place is _not_ in an event that awards a "world title". > >In the discussion I did ask Jaap about who is playing here - is it the engine, >is it the gui or is it the operator... or a combination ? In my opinion with the >current rules it is mainly the engine and the gui - the operator should only >play a passive role... and that was not the case in that game. > >So Johannes did a mistake here - it is an understandable mistake, think about >the situation, you play against an engine that might lose the title in this game >because of such a stupid bug - and it was his first tournament... As I said >several times I would have been happy that in such a situation Quark would take >the decision out of my hands because it would claim a draw to WinBoard and >refuse to play on. His intentions were good. And Shredder _was_ probably the best program there. But when I bent the rules, I _did_ talk to the TD first to make sure he wouldn't have a cow. This isn't about intentions. This is about the integrity of the event itself. And it was badly damaged. > >Anyway, the TD should have corrected that mistake maken by the operator by >declaring it as a draw... bugs are part of the competition and I have no doubt >that Stefan would have not complaint when the decision of the Jury would have >been different. I agree.. > >There were even some rumours that the ICGA was thinking of disqualifing >Johannes. That was beyond my understanding - we are humans and we make mistakes >- therefor we have the TD to guide us through them. So Johannes decision was >very fair, but wrong - TD should have corrected it. > >Greets, Thomas
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