Author: José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba
Date: 11:33:37 09/09/99
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On September 09, 1999 at 13:53:19, Steven Schwartz wrote: >Could someone quickly summarize for the members the >circumstances surrounding the Rebel vs. Hoffman match >for which there is currently a poll question. > >It occurred to me that not everyone is up on the >actual circumstances that led to the poll question. > >For those who have not yet voted on the current 6 >poll questions, you may do so by clicking on the >"Computer Chess Resource Center" link at the top >or bottom of this page. > >- Steve (ICD/Your Move) A few months ago Ed Schröder conducted a poll in Rebel's forum, asking people questions related to the future of computer chess. One of his conclusions from the poll was that it was more important performance against humans than against other engines, IIRC. But unfortunately there are not many games (at standard time controls) available between top chess programs and top humans. To provide these games, Ed made an open challenge to all the grandmasters of the world. One game was to be played every month between Rebel (I think he means developing version of Rebel) and a grandmaster, at standard time controls. The incentive for the grandmasters to play is: 500 dollars for a win, 250 dollars for a draw and 0 dollars for a lose against Rebel. In the fourth game of the monthly GM challenge, Rebel was playing white against GM Alejandro Hoffman from Argentina. Rebel crashed ten times during the game, and then its team decided to resume the game on a second machine. Needless to say, that meant huge time loses for Rebel. Two Rebel moves could not reproduced later, and they are blamed as decisive mistakes. The hardware was blamed for the problems, and it was later revealed that it had not been extensively tested. In the end Rebel lost the game. Congratulations to GM Hoffman, who by the way showed he has lots of guts by playing the Benkö Gambit against a computer. And now some people say this game is not significant to measure Rebel's relative strength against humans, as it lost due to hardware failures. Other people disagree, of course. And this clearly becomes an interesting poll question for the CCC. José.
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