Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: What is Botvinnik's legacy to computer chess?

Author: Eelco de Groot

Date: 16:39:06 02/22/00

Go up one level in this thread


On February 21, 2000 at 13:14:14, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>On February 20, 2000 at 17:24:00, Eelco de Groot wrote:
>
>>On February 20, 2000 at 14:51:08, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>
>>I find the scam idea a little far-fetched.
>>Botvinnik had to I believe plan the city energy supplies or something like that
>>too for which the computers were also used a great deal of the time.
>
>Weird elements:
>
>1) They never played a game.
>
>2) There sample trees are incredibly strange, as reported by Berliner.  Some of
>the positions are illegal, some are refuted by simple tactics, and some require
>heavy tactics in order to come to the conclusions the program supposedly
>reached.
>
>3) The notion that you could use a chess program to do industrial work is
>completely insane.
>
>4) A year or so ago there was a call by one of Botvinnik's descendants for funds
>to continue this research, making this the first known case of multigenerational
>vaporware.
>
>I think this it is very likely that this whole thing is a modern instance of
>"The Turk".  The whole thing is just too outlandish to believe.
>
>bruce

Okay, especially 2) and 3) sound like fair arguments to me. Thanks for giving
some more background information. Bruce, maybe you looked some of this up, could
you maybe mention where you found this?

Thanks,
Eelco



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.