Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
Sam Sloan
I competed in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship in Cologne,
Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
was a programmer, Don did almost all of the programming, whereas I put
in the chess, deciding that our program would play the Latvian Gambit,
for example.
There were several scandals in that event and rampant cheating. I have
always wanted to write this story, but have been reluctant to do so,
for fear of damaging the reputation of computer chess in general and
of hurting the efforts of the many hard working, dedicated and honest
computer chess programmers.
Now, however, with these events far in the past of 13 years ago, plus
the strongest programs are now stronger than all but the top
grandmasters, I feel that it is time to tell the story of what really
happened at that 1986 event.
In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
e-mail them to me?
Let me just summarize by saying that Cray Blitz did not deserve to win
that tournament. The winner should have been the Hi Tech program of
Hans Berliner.
My own program finished near the bottom in 22nd place. However,
although it did not really matter since we would have been near the
bottom anyway, we too were the victims of cheating. In fact, I found
this so upsetting that I dropped out of computer chess altogether. I
never chess programmed again. My partner, Don Dailey, however, went on
to become one of the top programmers in the field.
One of the games where we were cheated was against Awit, a Canadian
program. Our program, Rex, was almost the only program in the
tournament which had an actual chess board on display. Thus, anybody
could look at our computer and see the actual position. Most other
programs reported moves in machine gibberish, which only the
programmer understood for sure, and this opened the door to much of
the cheating.
Our game against AWIT pitted two of the weakest programs in the
tournament against each other. In this game, both programs brought out
queens early, grabbed pawns, and neglected development. By move 16,
the game appeared to be headed for a draw, because both sides had
kings exposed to queen checks.
International Master Michael Valvo and Grandmaster Hort were the MCs
for the event which was held in the middle of a computer trade show.
Valvo, announcing, came over to our demonstration board and, looking
at the position, said to me privately, "Both of you guys are crazy."
Then, to the public, Valvo, said "This game seems headed for a draw.
There is going to be an endless series of queen checks. There is no
way for either side to escape."
Then, Valvo paused for a few moments and said, "There is only one move
to keep this game going, and that is for white to play Na3."
Suddenly, only about 30 seconds after Valvo uttered these words, my
opponent's computer, which was online at Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
crashed! My human opponent stopped the clock and said that it would
take a half hour before his computer in Canada could start up again.
This was allowed by the arbiter, Valvo. Then, my human opponent, Tony
Marsland, proceeded to set up the board by hand and finally started
the clock again. Amazingly, his program played 17. Na3 almost
instantly!
His program, AWIT, was a selective search program, which meant that
his program did not analyze every possible move but only selected the
top six candidate moves and analyzed those. With a variety of queen
checks available, it is almost guaranteed that 17. Na3 would not be
one of the top six candidate moves, especially since his program had
been neglecting development up until that time.
Later in the game, Marsland had to stop and start his computer again.
This time, he said that when he set up the computer before it played
17. Na3, he had forgotten to tell it that it could still legally
castle, and as a result his computer was not castling. Therefore, with
the permission of Valvo and over my objection, since I could easily
see what Marsland was doing, he restarted his computer and set up the
board a second time.
As it turned out, my program finished 22nd and his program finished
21st. Had this game been a draw, as it otherwise probably would have
been, our positions might have been reversed. As I said before, this
was of no great moment. However, what was of great moment was how the
1986 World Computer Chess Championship was decided by cheating on the
top boards, which I will explain when I get the games.
Here is our game against AWIT.
Sam Sloan
[Event "World Computer Chess Championship"]
[Site "Kohn, Germany"]
[Date "1986.??.??"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Awit "]
[Black "Rex"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "A01"]
1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 d5 4. Bb5 Qg5 5. Nf3
Qxg2 6. Rg1 Qh3 7. Bxe5 Bg4 8. Rg3 Bxf3 9. Qxf3
Qh6 10. Qxd5 Nge7 11. Bxc6+ bxc6 12. Qf3 Nd5 13. Qg4
Qxh2 14. Bxg7 Bxg7 15. Qxg7 Ke7 16. Qe5+ Kd7 17. Na3
Ne7 18. Qd4+ Ke6 19. Qe4+ Kd7 20. Rg7 Qh5 21. Nc4
Ke8 22. Ne5 f5 23. Qg2 Qh6 24. Nxc6 Nxc6 25. Rxc7
Kf8 26. Rxc6 Qg7 27. Rf6+ Qxf6 28. Qxa8+ Kf7 29. Qxa7+
Kf8 30. d4 Ke8 31. Ke2 Kf8 32. c4 h6 33. a4
Rg8 34. a5 Rg7 35. Qc5+ Re7 36. a6 f4 37. a7
f3+ 38. Kf1 Kg8 39. a8=Q+ Kh7 40. Qh5 Rf7 41. Ra6
Kg7 42. Rxf6 Rxf6 43. Qe5 h5 44. Qxf3 1-0
Robert Hyatt
: Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
I have never seen such total rubbish.
: Our game against AWIT pitted two of the weakest programs in the
: tournament against each other. In this game, both programs brought out
: queens early, grabbed pawns, and neglected development. By move 16,
: the game appeared to be headed for a draw, because both sides had
: kings exposed to queen checks.
: International Master Michael Valvo and Grandmaster Hort were the MCs
: for the event which was held in the middle of a computer trade show.
: Valvo, announcing, came over to our demonstration board and, looking
: at the position, said to me privately, "Both of you guys are crazy."
: Then, to the public, Valvo, said "This game seems headed for a draw.
: There is going to be an endless series of queen checks. There is no
: way for either side to escape."
: Then, Valvo paused for a few moments and said, "There is only one move
: to keep this game going, and that is for white to play Na3."
: Suddenly, only about 30 seconds after Valvo uttered these words, my
: opponent's computer, which was online at Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
: crashed! My human opponent stopped the clock and said that it would
: take a half hour before his computer in Canada could start up again.
: This was allowed by the arbiter, Valvo. Then, my human opponent, Tony
: Marsland, proceeded to set up the board by hand and finally started
: the clock again. Amazingly, his program played 17. Na3 almost
: instantly!
And this would suggest cheating? First, stopping the clock was the
correct decision. Second, awit could play almost anything, it was
_highly selective_ and could play good or bad moves almost on a whim,
as any selective program does...
You said you were going to show how you were 'cheated'. You have only
shown a lack of class and a lot of 'sour grapes'. You could have easily
protested _after the game_ and had Mike have Tony restart Awit from the
questioned position to see if it played that move on its own.
: His program, AWIT, was a selective search program, which meant that
: his program did not analyze every possible move but only selected the
: top six candidate moves and analyzed those. With a variety of queen
: checks available, it is almost guaranteed that 17. Na3 would not be
: one of the top six candidate moves, especially since his program had
: been neglecting development up until that time.
How could you 'almost guarantee' anything? That's baloney, knowing
how Awit played (It was around for well over 10 years as either Wita
or Awit.
: Later in the game, Marsland had to stop and start his computer again.
: This time, he said that when he set up the computer before it played
: 17. Na3, he had forgotten to tell it that it could still legally
: castle, and as a result his computer was not castling. Therefore, with
: the permission of Valvo and over my objection, since I could easily
: see what Marsland was doing, he restarted his computer and set up the
: board a second time.
What would be the basis of your protest. Errors are supposed to be
corrected when they are found. You might have requested that the game
be backed up to the Na3 move again and restarted from there with the
castling status set up correctly, but none of this suggests 'cheating'.
: As it turned out, my program finished 22nd and his program finished
: 21st. Had this game been a draw, as it otherwise probably would have
: been, our positions might have been reversed. As I said before, this
: was of no great moment. However, what was of great moment was how the
: 1986 World Computer Chess Championship was decided by cheating on the
: top boards, which I will explain when I get the games.
You are making baseless statements. Hans Berliner protested the Cray
Blitz vs HiTech game claiming that in one position _no_ computer would
play the move we played. We put a bishop on a square where a knight
could take it, but if so, we would play pxn and create a powerful
passed pawn. His program took the bishop, we took the knight and won
the game with that pawn. Later Ken Thompson noted that Belle also
played that same move. At the ACM event that year, David Levy wanted
to go over the game. Harry Nelson contacted the Cray computer center
to set up time (we couldn't play in the ACM event because it was too
close to the WCCC and we couldn't get machine time for both.) He had
them (with Levy involved) restore the exact copy of Cray Blitz executable
that was on the machine when the backup was done that evening right after
our game with HiTech ended. They then went over the game, and Cray Blitz
played _every_ questioned move, matching the log file I had already sent
to David the night of the game after the protest was made.
He found _nothing_ wrong in our game, no move that had a different score,
no move where the program wouldn't play the move played in the game. In
short, the protest was dismissed as baseless.
I assume you have _other_ data. But since you need game scores to show
that cheating occurred, I smell sour grapes and baseless accusations once
again.
: Here is our game against AWIT.
: Sam Sloan
: [Event "World Computer Chess Championship"]
: [Site "Kohn, Germany"]
: [Date "1986.??.??"]
: [Round "4"]
: [White "Awit "]
: [Black "Rex"]
: [Result "1-0"]
: [ECO "A01"]
: 1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 d5 4. Bb5 Qg5 5. Nf3
: Qxg2 6. Rg1 Qh3 7. Bxe5 Bg4 8. Rg3 Bxf3 9. Qxf3
: Qh6 10. Qxd5 Nge7 11. Bxc6+ bxc6 12. Qf3 Nd5 13. Qg4
: Qxh2 14. Bxg7 Bxg7 15. Qxg7 Ke7 16. Qe5+ Kd7 17. Na3
: Ne7 18. Qd4+ Ke6 19. Qe4+ Kd7 20. Rg7 Qh5 21. Nc4
: Ke8 22. Ne5 f5 23. Qg2 Qh6 24. Nxc6 Nxc6 25. Rxc7
: Kf8 26. Rxc6 Qg7 27. Rf6+ Qxf6 28. Qxa8+ Kf7 29. Qxa7+
: Kf8 30. d4 Ke8 31. Ke2 Kf8 32. c4 h6 33. a4
: Rg8 34. a5 Rg7 35. Qc5+ Re7 36. a6 f4 37. a7
: f3+ 38. Kf1 Kg8 39. a8=Q+ Kh7 40. Qh5 Rf7 41. Ra6
: Kg7 42. Rxf6 Rxf6 43. Qe5 h5 44. Qxf3 1-0
--
Robert Hyatt Computer and Information Sciences
hy...@cis.uab.edu University of Alabama at Birmingham
(205) 934-2213 115A Campbell Hall, UAB Station
(205) 934-5473 FAX Birmingham, AL 35294-1170
Sean
Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote in message
news:36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com...
>Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
Sounds interesting ....carrry-on !
>I competed in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship in Cologne,
>Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
>was a programmer, Don did almost all of the programming, whereas I put
>in the chess, deciding that our program would play the Latvian Gambit,
>for example.
Yes gentleman programmer Don Dailey is well known as previous CCC board
member ! He also kicked me out of CCC without destroying even one (1) of my
postings !
>There were several scandals in that event and rampant cheating. I have
>always wanted to write this story, but have been reluctant to do so,
>for fear of damaging the reputation of computer chess in general and
>of hurting the efforts of the many hard working, dedicated and honest
>computer chess programmers.
>
>Now, however, with these events far in the past of 13 years ago, plus
>the strongest programs are now stronger than all but the top
>grandmasters, I feel that it is time to tell the story of what really
>happened at that 1986 event.
>
>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>e-mail them to me?
Hmmmm.....Cray Blitz you say....isn't that Dr. Bob Hyatt Ph.D. program in
the old days ?? So Mr. Bobo cheated did he .....hmmmm.....looking forward
to seeing your data on that !!
>Let me just summarize by saying that Cray Blitz did not deserve to win
>that tournament. The winner should have been the Hi Tech program of
>Hans Berliner.
Uh-Oh !!! Mr. Bobo cheated !!!
>My own program finished near the bottom in 22nd place. However,
>although it did not really matter since we would have been near the
>bottom anyway, we too were the victims of cheating. In fact, I found
>this so upsetting that I dropped out of computer chess altogether. I
>never chess programmed again. My partner, Don Dailey, however, went on
>to become one of the top programmers in the field.
Kudo's to gentleman programmer Don Dailey !
Regards,
Sean Evans
Anders Thulin
Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>e-mail them to me?
It may be better to post them, just as a precaution. If they should
be mistranscribed in any way, it will probably be noticed much faster,
before you have spent too much time on them.
And just to make it clear: do you need all games these two engines
played in the tournament, or only the game/games the played against
each other?
--
Anders Thulin Anders....@telia.se 013-23 55 32
Telia ProSoft AB, Teknikringen 6, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
Sam Sloan
The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
Sam Sloan
On 11 Mar 1999 15:35:02 +0100, Anders....@telia.se (Anders
Thulin) wrote:
>In article <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>,
>Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>
>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>e-mail them to me?
>
Chris Whittington
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>All the games.
>
>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray Blitz
in such a circumstance.
If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I think.
Chris Whittington
>
>Sam Sloan
>
>On 11 Mar 1999 15:35:02 +0100, Anders....@telia.se (Anders
>Thulin) wrote:
>
>>In article <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>,
>>Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>>
>>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>>e-mail them to me?
>>
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
<921166830.28866.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>
>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>>All the games.
>>
>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>
>It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray
Blitz
>in such a circumstance.
>
>If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I
think.
>
Sorry, I forgot to say ....
I think there are clear rules on such situations. If your program fails for
some reason or another, you get a certain time-out period to fix it. I'm not
sure but I think there is a limit on the number of times this can happen,
maybe three, before they say, enough is enough.
If you can't fix it, then you default the game to a loss.
Adjudicating such a situation seems strange.
How did Cray Blitz 'stop running' ?
>
>Chris Whittington
>
>
>>
>>Sam Sloan
>>
>>On 11 Mar 1999 15:35:02 +0100, Anders....@telia.se (Anders
>>Thulin) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>,
>>>Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>>>e-mail them to me?
>>>
Sam Sloan
online by the way (another irregularity) but was in Minneapolis
Minnesota, had run out of computer time and could not continue the
game.
However, this had not been announced in advance of the game.
On the board, Cray Blitz was in an endgame where it seemed to have a
slight advantage but could not find a win, and computers were
notoriously weak in the endgame.
I feel that Cray Blitz should have been forfeited. Instead, Hort and
Valvo spent two hours analyzing the position, and with great
difficulty found a 30 move sequence which led to a win for Cray Blitz.
Without this "victory" Cray Blitz would have finished down in almost
the middle of the field and would not have won the world championship.
But that was not the only irregularity. There were more.
Sam Sloan
On Thu, 11 Mar 1999 15:41:17 -0000, "Chris Whittington"
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
>Chris Whittington wrote in message
><921166830.28866.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>>
Chris Whittington
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>All the games.
>
>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
I think I may have the listings of the games in this tournament.
Which game are you after ?
1. Cray Blitz - Awit 1-0
2. Bobby - Cray Blitz 1-0
3. Cray Blitz - Bebe 1-0
4. Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz 0-1 adjudicated
5. Cray Blitz - Hitech 1-0
I guess it must be game 4 ? Final position was 8 / 2p6 / 2B2k2 / p4bp1 / 3P4
/ 6K1 / 1P6 / 8 black to move, White just played Kg3. Do you need the
game as well ?
I found some comments and rules from the time in various icca journals:
"The positional play of Cray Blitz clearly was the weakness of this
tactically very strong program. It was also rather fortunate that the game
versus Schach 2.7 had to be adjudicated ..." Helmut Horacek
This rule on timeouts was in place for 1995 Cologne:
"A team may request the TD to stop its clock at most twice during the course
of the game because of tech difficuties. The clock must be restarted each
time after at most 15 minutes. If the team can clearly establish thta irts
problems are not in its own computing system but in the telephone network or
in the comms facilities provided, the TD can permit additional timeouts."
Ref: Awit game, the following new rule change appeared for the ACM in 1986,
maybe connected with the O-O-O situation:
"If a failure occurs in the course of the game, the prg parameters must be
reset to their values at the time the game was interrupted. An operator
error made when starting the game or when restarting in the middle of the
game after a failure cannot be corrected"
A comment from the then president of the icca:
"I would like to have some discussion on rules of comp chess tournaments.
therefore I invite all readers to send me their suggestions for changes or
improvements. Also evaluations of existign rules are welcome"
A curious letter, entitled "Sportmanship" from Jonathon Schaeffer:
"In the final round of the WC, Sun Pheonix was playing Bobby. After 39 moves
Sun Pheonix was about to win a piece and a rook and, of course the game. In
making its 40th move Pheonix crashed and several attempts to revive it
failed. Bobby's progrmamers, Krass and Schrufer, asked the TD, Valvo, to
resign on behalf of Bobby. If Pheonix were unable to complete the game it
would have lost. Bobby's prgrammers felt that Pheonix had played a good game
and deserved to win.
That we were having hardware problems that might cost us the game, they felt
was irrelevant to the real issue involved, playing chess. So they resigned.
it turned out that we were eventuallty able to restart Pheonix (using one of
its 20 computers) and make the 40th move.
My point in writing this letter is to praise the sportsmanship of Kraas and
Schrufer. All the often it is easy to place winnign above all else. no
matter how that end is acheived. perhaps there is a lesson in this example
that we can all learn from."
Or perhaps not.
Chris Whittington
>
>Sam Sloan
>
>On 11 Mar 1999 15:35:02 +0100, Anders....@telia.se (Anders
>Thulin) wrote:
>
>>In article <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>,
>>Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>>
>>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>>e-mail them to me?
>>
Chris Whittington
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7e78b...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>The Cray Blitz operator said that the Cray computer, which was not
>online by the way (another irregularity) but was in Minneapolis
>Minnesota, had run out of computer time and could not continue the
>game.
>
>However, this had not been announced in advance of the game.
>
>On the board, Cray Blitz was in an endgame where it seemed to have a
>slight advantage but could not find a win, and computers were
>notoriously weak in the endgame.
>
>I feel that Cray Blitz should have been forfeited. Instead, Hort and
>Valvo spent two hours analyzing the position, and with great
>difficulty found a 30 move sequence which led to a win for Cray Blitz.
>
>Without this "victory" Cray Blitz would have finished down in almost
>the middle of the field and would not have won the world championship.
>
>But that was not the only irregularity. There were more.
>
Looks so, I read the icca journals for the rtime, and posted some snippets
....
Chris Whittington
>Sam Sloan
>
Robert Hyatt
: In rec.games.chess.computer Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
: : Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
: : I competed in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship in Cologne,
: : Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
: : was a programmer, Don did almost all of the programming, whereas I put
: : in the chess, deciding that our program would play the Latvian Gambit,
: : for example.
: : There were several scandals in that event and rampant cheating. I have
: : always wanted to write this story, but have been reluctant to do so,
: : for fear of damaging the reputation of computer chess in general and
: : of hurting the efforts of the many hard working, dedicated and honest
: : computer chess programmers.
: : Now, however, with these events far in the past of 13 years ago, plus
: : the strongest programs are now stronger than all but the top
: : grandmasters, I feel that it is time to tell the story of what really
: : happened at that 1986 event.
: : In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
: : Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
: : e-mail them to me?
: : Let me just summarize by saying that Cray Blitz did not deserve to win
: : that tournament. The winner should have been the Hi Tech program of
: : Hans Berliner.
I missed this in my first reply. What do you base this on? We played
and beat HiTech in the last round. Simply out-playing it when it totally
misevaluated a position where it voluntarily gave us a passed pawn that
eventually won the game. We both finished with a score of 4 wins, 1
loss. As did at least two other programs. So this "did not deserve to
win" is a comment that I don't understand, in light of the statement you
made "the winner should have been HiTech". IE CB beat HiTech in the last
round. So why _didn't_ it deserve to win? Simply because you or others
thought HiTech was better?
: : My own program finished near the bottom in 22nd place. However,
: : although it did not really matter since we would have been near the
: : bottom anyway, we too were the victims of cheating. In fact, I found
: : this so upsetting that I dropped out of computer chess altogether. I
: : never chess programmed again. My partner, Don Dailey, however, went on
: : to become one of the top programmers in the field.
Did Don also think 'cheating' occurred? The only cheating I have seen
in my tenure in computer chess events was one particular operator that
liked to use the 'move now' key to his advantage whenever he could get
away with it. When "we" played this one program, we just 'watched him
like a hawk, letting him "know" that we "knew" and that we weren't going
to put up with it...'
However, in "our" case, there was _no doubt_ that cheating was going
on, because we _saw_ it happen. And when a couple of other participants
told me to 'watch my opponent carefully' it turned out that others knew
about this as well.
In your case, you didn't show anything remotely resembling 'cheating'
in any way. So that I am not sure what the 'motive' for doing this is,
at present. But time usually clears mysteries up. I assume that it will
in this case as well.
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
>
>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>>All the games.
>>
>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>
>I think I may have the listings of the games in this tournament.
>
>Which game are you after ?
>
>1. Cray Blitz - Awit 1-0
>
>2. Bobby - Cray Blitz 1-0
>
>3. Cray Blitz - Bebe 1-0
>
>4. Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz 0-1 adjudicated
>
>5. Cray Blitz - Hitech 1-0
>
>I guess it must be game 4 ? Final position was 8 / 2p6 / 2B2k2 / p4bp1 /
3P4
>/ 6K1 / 1P6 / 8 black to move, White just played Kg3. Do you need
the
>game as well ?
Here it is:
[Event "WCCC"]
[Site "Cologne"]
[Date "1995.??.??"]
[Round "4"]
[White "Schach 2.7"]
[Black "Cray Blitz"]
[Result "0-1 adjudicated after Cray Blitz ran out of Cray"]
1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 O-O 6. e3 Ne4 7. Bxe7 Qxe7 8.
Nxe4 dxe4 9. Nd2 e5 10. dxe5 Qxe5 11. Qc2 Na6 12. O-O-O Bg4 13. f3 exf3 14.
gxf3 Bh5 15. Bd3 f5 16. Rhe1 Rad8 17. Bf1 Qxh2 18. c5 Qe5 19. c6 Kh8 20.
cxb7
Nc5 21. Nc4 Qg3 22. Qxf5 Rxd1+ 23. Rxd1 Qxf3 24. Qxf3 Bxf3 25. Rd4 Bxb7 26.
Be2
g6 27. Ne5 Re8 28. Ng4 Re4 29. Kd2 h5 30. Nf6 Rxd4+ 31. exd4 Ne4+ 32. Nxe4
Bxe4
33. Ke3 Bd5 34. Kf4 Bxa2 35. Bd3 Kg7 36. Kg5 Bf7 37. Be4 a5 38. Bc6 Bg8 39.
Be4
Bh7 40. Bd3 h4 41. Bf1 Bg8 42. Bh3 Bd5 43. Bg4 Be4 44. Kxh4 Kf6 45. Bd7 Bf5
46.
Bc6 g5+ 47. Kg3 0-1 Cray Blitz ran out of Cray
Chris Whittington
>Chris Whittington
>
>>
>>Sam Sloan
>>
>>On 11 Mar 1999 15:35:02 +0100, Anders....@telia.se (Anders
>>Thulin) wrote:
>>
>>>In article <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>,
>>>Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>>>e-mail them to me?
>>>
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
btw some more stats:
Cray Blitz Cray XMP Computer Fortran 100 Kbyes 5,000
move opening library 100,000 nps
Schach 2.7 B 7800 Computer Algol 4 Mbytes 10,000
move openings 1,500 nps
I liked the way Schach 2.7 played the endgame, showing its gigantic opponent
to be a real bean-counter extraordinaire. 39 .... Bh7 etc. And this was
World Champion ? Unbelievable.
Chris Whittington
>>>>>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>>>>>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>>>>>e-mail them to me?
>>>>
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
More stats:
Awit Amdahl Algol-W 750Kbyes prg, 10,000 move opening
library, 8 nps. Yes, eight nodes per second
Sam Sloan
on my web site at:
http://www.anusha.com/awit-rex.htm
In addition, that excellent tome: "Computer Chess Compendium" by
David Levy, pages 401-407, gives all the games from Koln.
However, I still need the Cray Blitz games in computer format because
I am too lazy to go out and buy the book and then enter the games
(which is another reasion why I have waited 13 years to tell this
story.)
Sam Sloan
Chris Whittington
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7f098...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
I got all the games here. I'm fairly lazy too, but I'll type them in if you
have good reason.
What's the good reason ?
Chris Whittington
>
Sam Sloan
as follows:
In the final position, which is 8/2p6/2B2k2/p4bp1/3P4/6K1/1P6/8
Black, Cray Blitz, had a pawn more, but it is almost impossible to win
this position, even for a strong human, much less for a computer.
As I recall, the winning method found by Hort and Valvo involved
bringing the king all the way around with Ke7, Kd8, Kc8, Kb8, Ka7,
Kb6, Ka5 (after the pawn has moved), trading pawns and then bringing
the king around behind White.
Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
found such a solution.
Now, if you will look at the game Cray Blitz lost in round two to
Bobby, you will see how weak that program really was.
Sam Sloan
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
<921170150.492.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
>
>Chris Whittington wrote in message
><921169466.147.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
>>
>>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>>>All the games.
>>>
>>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>>
>>I think I may have the listings of the games in this tournament.
>>
>>Which game are you after ?
>>
>>1. Cray Blitz - Awit 1-0
>>
>>2. Bobby - Cray Blitz 1-0
>>
>>3. Cray Blitz - Bebe 1-0
>>
>>4. Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz 0-1 adjudicated
>>
>>5. Cray Blitz - Hitech 1-0
>>
>>I guess it must be game 4 ? Final position was 8 / 2p6 / 2B2k2 / p4bp1 /
>3P4
>>/ 6K1 / 1P6 / 8 black to move, White just played Kg3. Do you need
>the
>>game as well ?
>
>Here it is:
>
>
>[Site "Cologne"]
>[Date "1995.??.??"]
>[Round "4"]
>[White "Schach 2.7"]
>[Black "Cray Blitz"]
>[Result "0-1 adjudicated after Cray Blitz ran out of Cray"]
>
>1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3 d5 4. Nc3 Be7 5. Bg5 O-O 6. e3 Ne4 7. Bxe7 Qxe7
8.
>Nxe4 dxe4 9. Nd2 e5 10. dxe5 Qxe5 11. Qc2 Na6 12. O-O-O Bg4 13. f3 exf3 14.
>gxf3 Bh5 15. Bd3 f5 16. Rhe1 Rad8 17. Bf1 Qxh2 18. c5 Qe5 19. c6 Kh8 20.
>cxb7
>Nc5 21. Nc4 Qg3 22. Qxf5 Rxd1+ 23. Rxd1 Qxf3 24. Qxf3 Bxf3 25. Rd4 Bxb7 26.
>Be2
>g6 27. Ne5 Re8 28. Ng4 Re4 29. Kd2 h5 30. Nf6 Rxd4+ 31. exd4 Ne4+ 32. Nxe4
>Bxe4
>33. Ke3 Bd5 34. Kf4 Bxa2 35. Bd3 Kg7 36. Kg5 Bf7 37. Be4 a5 38. Bc6 Bg8 39.
>Be4
>Bh7 40. Bd3 h4 41. Bf1 Bg8 42. Bh3 Bd5 43. Bg4 Be4 44. Kxh4 Kf6 45. Bd7 Bf5
>46.
>Bc6 g5+ 47. Kg3 0-1 Cray Blitz ran out of Cray
>
>
>
>
1985 Cologne rule:
"A team may request the TD to stop its clock at most twice during the course
of the game because of tech difficuties. The clock must be restarted each
time after at most 15 minutes. If the team can clearly establish that its
problems are not in its own computing system but in the telephone network or
in the comms facilities provided, the TD can permit additional timeouts."
Since the Cray Blitz team apparently couldn't get any more moves from the
Cray - they weren't allowed more machine time, then the decision to
adjudicate the game, rather than forfeit it to Schach 2.7 seems unusual, to
say the least. It wasn't the phone line. It wasn't the comms. It was the
computer system.
Cray Blitz shoudl have lost by forfeit, and Hitech should have been World
Champion. Q.E.D.
So why wasn't it ?
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7f098...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
: Chris Whittington
:>
These used to be on the pitt ftp site. They had a directory that had
a single file with all the games from most of the ACM events and (I think)
all the WCCC tournaments (one file for each tournament if my previous sentence
wasn't too clear.)
I don't have the games here, nor any of the old logfiles, due to that being
a long time and many machines ago. I do have the console printout for all
5 rounds of the 1986 WCCC game, which captured everything Cray Blitz printed,
so I can give analysis, scores, depths and variations for any move.
In the case of the HiTech game, the 'main point of contention' was move
29 for white, Bb5. We liked this move from 18 seconds on, with a score
of +.175 at depth=9 (last iteration). The PV expected Qe6 as the reply.
HiTech played Nxb5 after about 6 minutes of thinking, and our score jumped
to +.344 (A very high positional score for Cray Blitz of that time frame).
By move 35, HiTech had folded its tent and left, with CB having a score
of over +1.1. By move 50 the score was +5.5 and at move 60 it
announced a mate in 8.
Chris Whittington
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7f8b8...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>Chris Whittington has provided one of the questionable games, which is
>as follows:
>
>
>Black, Cray Blitz, had a pawn more, but it is almost impossible to win
>this position, even for a strong human, much less for a computer.
>
>As I recall, the winning method found by Hort and Valvo involved
>bringing the king all the way around with Ke7, Kd8, Kc8, Kb8, Ka7,
>Kb6, Ka5 (after the pawn has moved), trading pawns and then bringing
>the king around behind White.
>
>Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
>found such a solution.
I agree, and given the play of Cray Blitz in the ending Kh7 !!!! Yuk. It is
hard to see how it could ever have won that endgame.
>
>Now, if you will look at the game Cray Blitz lost in round two to
>Bobby, you will see how weak that program really was.
I'ld be pleased to provide it for you .....
Bobby Amdahl Pascal 500Kbytes 5,000 openings 400 nps,
finally placed 6th out of 23 with 3 points out of 5
[Event "?"]
[Site "Cologne"]
[Date "1985.??.??"]
[Round "2"]
[White "Bobby 400 nps"]
[Black "Cray Blitz 100,000 nps"]
[Result "1-0"]
1. e4 e5 2. Nc3 Nf6 3. f4 d5 4. fxe5 Nxe4 5. Nf3 Be7 6. d4 O-O 7. Bd3 f5 8.
exf6 Bxf6 9. O-O Nc6 10. Nxe4 dxe4 11. Bxe4 Nxd4 12. c3 Nxf3+ 13. Bxf3 Qxd1
14.
Rxd1 Re8 15. Bf4 c6 16. g4 Bd8 17. Kg2 Be6 18. a4 Rf8 19. Bd6 Rf7 20. Re1
Bd7
21. Rad1 Bh4 22. Re2 Kh8 23. c4 Kg8 24. Rd3 Rd8 25. b4 Rc8 26. Ree3 Bg5 27.
Re1
Rd8 28. Bc5 b6 29. Bd6 Bh4 30. Re5 Bf6 31. Re2 Bg5 32. h3 Rc8 33. a5 bxa5
34.
Re5 Bd8 35. bxa5 Bf6 36. Re1 Bd8 37. a6 Bh4 38. Re2 Rd8 39. Bc5 Bg5 40. Rb2
Rc8
41. Rb7 Be6 42. Rd6 Bxc4 43. Rxc6 Rd8 44. Rxf7 Kxf7 45. Bxa7 Rd2+ 46. Kg3
Bd5
47. Rc7+ Kg8 48. Bxd5+ Rxd5 49. Bb6 Rd8 50. Rb7 Rd3+ 51. Kg2 Rd2+ 52. Kf3
Rd3+
53. Ke4 Rxh3 1-0
Chris Whittington
>
>Sam Sloan
>
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c8tvf$es5$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
Two points.
1. You said I was in your killfile, after I got angry with you for your
accusation, whcih you subsequently had to withdraw, that two posted
CSTal-Crafty games were 'fiction'. When they weren't.
2. There's a photograph in the icca journal of Berliner (from HiTech)
announcing an 'astonishing' mate in 8 with GM Hort. Was this the 'mate in 8'
to which you refer ? Because a casual reader of your text above might assume
that it was Cray Blitz that was announcing mate in 8.
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington wrote in message
I found this wonderful ACM/IEEE Computer Society News Release from December
1985 which stated, inter alia:
"The world's best experimental and commercial computers are expected to
compete. Hitech, Bebe, Cray Blitz and Belle are expected to participate and
play should be approaching the GRANDMASTER level."
Printed in ICCA-Journal 1985.
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
: Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
: stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
: Sam Sloan
That was against Schach I believe. CB had already found the proper
way to win that game... I gave its analysis to Mike (it had to give
up a pawn to win, but it had already seen that and the PV we gave to
Mike matched the plan they found to be 'winning'.
But none of that matters. The rules of the tournament clearly said
that when a game couldn't be continued beyond some fixed time limit,
so long as at least 6 hours of playing time had been used, that the
games would be adjudicated on the basis of 'best play'. We had a
very tight schedule with Cray Blitz, to get a compute dedicated to
us for the chess tournament. We notified the TD (Mike) in advance
of round one, exactly how much computer time we had. Cray had given
us 7 hours for each round. Mikes ruling was that exactly 7 hours
after a game started (with Cray Blitz one of the opponents) that the
game would be stopped and adjudicated at that point. IE we could not
stop early if we thought we had a won position, we had to play until
what we called 'pumpkin time' came (the time that cinderella's carriage
turns back into a pumkin, if you remember the story).
I don't see how an adjudicated game can qualify as 'cheating'. Our time
limit was known and publicized before the tournament started, and Harry
Nelson (our operator on site) told each opponent about our time limit.
In the last round, Hans got quite bitter about adjudication, even though
our score was +5 and his was -5, so I called Cray and got the operator to
let us continue to play, although from move 55 or so we were on a 'non-
dedicated' machine which slowed us down by a factor of 10 or so. But we
were already 'too far won' to lose, by that point.
In any case, there have been adjudications at nearly every ACM/WCCC event
I have played in. They are covered in the rules. Generally the adjudications
are done by IM/GM players, although the program authors get to participate as
well, if the TD thinks their input is useful. And these adjudications have
_always_ been based on 'best play' not what adjudicators think the computer
can really do. Although in the case of our adjudication, the only issue in
that regard was would the program sac a pawn (eval was +2.5 around move 35)
in order to reach a classic 'outside passed pawn wins' position. Our PV
and score showed that we had already decided to do this so we would probably
have won without adjudication. Again I have the console printout for all
5 rounds, so I can give specific analysis as needed.
But back to your post. You mentioned "cheating at the top boards" and
now have offered _no_ explanation of what cheating supposedly took place.
You said 'no problem' in the CB/HiTech game. Here are the opponents and
what happened (wrt to CB):
round 1: Awit. score was +1.5 by move 13, +2.3 by move 25, +5 at move
36, black resigned at move 41.
round 2: Bobby. Our worst loss in years and the game that probably won
the tournament for us. By move 30 our score was +.3. By move 40 -.145,
by move 50 -4. This game was important because it pointed out a fatal
error. When the summer of 1985 arrived, my wife and I had decided to
leave USM and come to UAB for me to work on my PhD. During that interval
of packing and so forth, Bert Gower and I were playing lots of games at
night between Cray Blitz (running on our vax) and his Novag SuperCon.
We kept noticing that the games we lost were lost by poor pawn structure
where our pawns got 'staggered' enough the opponent could penetrate in and
endgame. I added 4 famous lines of code that fixed this quite well and
from that point forward, we lost no more games to that supercon. This
code simply evaluated 'holes' in the pawn structure and penalized them.
We went to the 1985 ACM event in denver and lost two games, one to BeBe,
which had never beaten us before, and one to HiTech. I didn't look at
the games, as I was neck-deep in PhD courses at the time, and just told
Bert "looks like they are catching up with us, we need some new things to
try." I should have looked. At the 1986 WCCC we beat awit easily, but
against Bobby we refused to push any pawns at all, and got rolled up in
an endgame. In playing over that game that morning before the next round,
I was mystified. And in looking at the 1985 ACM games I noticed the same
sort of "don't move those pawns, ever". Bert and I were thinking about
what might have happened, when I remembered the 4 lines of code for 'pawn
holes'. We took 'em out, replayed over the game and it was like we had
a different program. We used this version of the program for the final 3
games.
round 3: BeBe. Cray Blitz was back. It attacked a sicilian dragon as it
used to do, and by move 20 the score was +.355, by move 30 +2. by move
35 +4.2 and black resigned at move 46 with our eval > +7.
Round 4: Schach. Difficult game against a good program. By move 17 we
had won a pawn, and by move 35 we were up 2 pawns (+2.3) By move 40 we
had found that we could hold that pawn and start repeating the position,
or we could give up a pawn and penetrate with our king. CB couldn't see
deep enough to see that it wasn't really giving up a pawn, but it could
see deep enough to see that if it didn't, it was going to have to repeat
and draw. At this point our eval was down to +1.3 again as we had to
give it up. The game ended at move 46 with our eval at +1.28 and inching
back up, as this was the end of our scheduled machine time for the evening
and adjudication followed, in CB's favor.
Round 5: HiTech. Already mentioned. HiTech had a good position at one
point (move 28 had our eval down to -.022, but then came the infamous Bb5
Nxb5 move and we never looked back after that, winning easily.
Robert Hyatt
: Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
:>All the games.
:>
:>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
: It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray Blitz
: in such a circumstance.
: If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I think.
: Chris Whittington
Nothing 'stopped'. Our scheduled machine time ended at a pre-announced time
and the rules had already been set to require adjudication based on best play
at that point. Neither program 'hung'. We had to stop at a fixed time limit
as that machine sold for roughly $30,000,000 and getting dedicated time on it
was difficult. And time was also 'sold' to corporations as well and we couldn't
overrun our scheduled window.
Robert Hyatt
: Chris Whittington wrote in message
: <921166830.28866.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
:>
:>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
:>>All the games.
:>>
:>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
:>
:>It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray
: Blitz
:>in such a circumstance.
:>
:>If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I
: think.
:>
: Sorry, I forgot to say ....
: I think there are clear rules on such situations. If your program fails for
: some reason or another, you get a certain time-out period to fix it. I'm not
: sure but I think there is a limit on the number of times this can happen,
: maybe three, before they say, enough is enough.
: If you can't fix it, then you default the game to a loss.
: Adjudicating such a situation seems strange.
: How did Cray Blitz 'stop running' ?
We had scheduled time, and the 'schedule' was approved by the TD before the
tournament started. Rules have always allowed this if you look at the old
WCCC/ACMCC rules.
you can stop the clock for two times _only_ if the problem is communication
related. Otherwise, with hardware/software problems, you can fix whatever is
wrong, but your clock keeps running.
bruce moreland
wrote:
>I have posted this article, along with the response from Robert Hyatt,
>on my web site at:
>
>http://www.anusha.com/awit-rex.htm
>
>In addition, that excellent tome: "Computer Chess Compendium" by
>David Levy, pages 401-407, gives all the games from Koln.
>
>However, I still need the Cray Blitz games in computer format because
>I am too lazy to go out and buy the book and then enter the games
>(which is another reasion why I have waited 13 years to tell this
>story.)
If you are going to accuse somebody of something like this, don't you
think that you owe the people you accuse the consideration to at least
document what you accuse them of?
How would you like it if someone said to you in front of thousands of
people, "You cheated ten years ago, but I'm too lazy to spend five
minutes providing the documentation"?
bruce
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c8ved$fe3$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
This would appear contrary to Fifth World CC Championship Rules.
Rule 11 states:
"A computing system can request that its own program be changed (ie a new
module inserted) if the way in which the request will be made by the
computer is submitted in writing to the TD before the first round begins.
The TD has the right not to accept the procedure if it is felt that there is
any human decision-making involved."
Chris Whittington
pulgao
>Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
>found such a solution.
Hyatt has already said that the basis for adjudication was best play,
not what the adjudicators thought the program was capable of.
-- Steve Lopez
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Hangar/5176/index.html
http://clubs.yahoo.com/clubs/chesskamikazes
Robert Hyatt
: online by the way (another irregularity) but was in Minneapolis
: Minnesota, had run out of computer time and could not continue the
: game.
Not being directly connected was unusual, but not non-existant. In
every world championship event I attended we had such cases. The
Kaissa team used voice to their machine in Moscow. The Chaos team
used voice as they ran on machines with no modem access (at Amdahl
headquarters).
Harry went to the tournament. I operated Cray Blitz from here at UAB.
We were running on a 'prototype' machine (serial number 1 of the 8
cpu YMP) and it was very 'flakey' along with the operating system.
Harry didn't feel comfortable running the machine as he didn't know
how to handle 'unicos' from an operator's perspective. So he talked
to me via a terminal, I talked to the Cray via a second terminal, and
we 'relayed' the moves, taking a significant performance hit in the
process as all the communication overhead was on 'our clock'. In 1986
there was nothing unusual about this sort of machine access at all.
We occasionally played using a cray with no modem access (in the 1984
match with Levy harry sat at the cray console and relayed moves by voice
to London since there was no external access to that particular machine
that was in a 'secure' computer facility.)
: However, this had not been announced in advance of the game.
Sorry, it _had_ been announced at the beginning of the game. It was
also announced _at the player's meeting_ as well. If you ask anyone
that ever played a game vs Cray Blitz, you will discover that we _always_
had a 'pumpkin' time. We could sometimes beg/borrow/steal time and go
over in really unclear positions that the TD didn't want to adjudicate,
but for 95% of the games, when the clock struck X, the machine was rebooted
with no warning and turned over to the 'next customer'.
: On the board, Cray Blitz was in an endgame where it seemed to have a
: slight advantage but could not find a win, and computers were
: notoriously weak in the endgame.
It was more than a slight advantage. It had already given up a pawn, and
had a PV showing that it was seeing the exact same 'march' as that found
by Mike Valvo. He used our output during the adjudication process, in
fact. Our eval was +1.3, which was more than 'slight' in an endgame
with no major pieces left.
: I feel that Cray Blitz should have been forfeited. Instead, Hort and
: Valvo spent two hours analyzing the position, and with great
: difficulty found a 30 move sequence which led to a win for Cray Blitz.
Your 'feelings' don't matter. There were rules in place specifically for
those of us running on mainframe computers that had to be scheduled in
advance. _you_ might not have known about the scheduled time limit, but
Mike and our opponents certainly did, because we had notified them of the
limits _before_ the tournament field was even chosen. I see no reason
to even suggest 'forfeit' when there is a known time limit before the
game. This rule was set up specifically because of all the 'mainframe'
machines back in those days. The chess 4.x guys always used CDC machines
and had the same problem. As did Chaos and the majority of the others,
since micro computers were not exactly 'rampant' in 1986.
: Without this "victory" Cray Blitz would have finished down in almost
: the middle of the field and would not have won the world championship.
and with pockets, a frog carries a gun and doesn't have to worry about
snakes in the pond. But everything was done _exactly_ "by the book". I'd
be happy to post a copy of the 'adjudication' statement in the rules if you'd
like.
: But that was not the only irregularity. There were more.
: Sam Sloan
Robert Hyatt
:>All the games.
:>
:>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
: I think I may have the listings of the games in this tournament.
: Which game are you after ?
: 1. Cray Blitz - Awit 1-0
: 2. Bobby - Cray Blitz 1-0
: 3. Cray Blitz - Bebe 1-0
: 4. Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz 0-1 adjudicated
: 5. Cray Blitz - Hitech 1-0
: I guess it must be game 4 ? Final position was 8 / 2p6 / 2B2k2 / p4bp1 / 3P4
: / 6K1 / 1P6 / 8 black to move, White just played Kg3. Do you need the
: game as well ?
: I found some comments and rules from the time in various icca journals:
: "The positional play of Cray Blitz clearly was the weakness of this
: tactically very strong program. It was also rather fortunate that the game
: versus Schach 2.7 had to be adjudicated ..." Helmut Horacek
I don't think it was really 'fortunate' here. It had already seen the
winning plan and started on it, because it was two pawns up and had to
toss one to avoid a repetition trying to hold it, if my memory serves
me correctly.
: This rule on timeouts was in place for 1995 Cologne:
: "A team may request the TD to stop its clock at most twice during the course
: of the game because of tech difficuties. The clock must be restarted each
: time after at most 15 minutes. If the team can clearly establish thta irts
: problems are not in its own computing system but in the telephone network or
: in the comms facilities provided, the TD can permit additional timeouts."
We didn't have any 'technical difficulties' of any kind during the
tournament. We only had an absolute deadline where we lost the machine
each night. The original rules for years had said that a game had to go
for 5 hours total, to get thru the first and second time controls. We
asked for 6 hours and Cray agreed to that (barely). But we didn't always
get to play 6 hours because generally each round started somewhat late for
various reasons not in our control.
: Ref: Awit game, the following new rule change appeared for the ACM in 1986,
: Or perhaps not.
Depends. There have been other cases. I was playing Stanback in a very
difficult rook and pawns vs rook and pawns with us having an extra pawn.
But the position was _difficult_. John's program crashed. His clock was
already 'low'. We could have let it run and won easily, but I elected to
stop his clock (I told Mike and he allowed it since I was the opponent and
had no problem with doing so) so that he could fix the problem, as I wanted
to know whether our cute 'longest-draw' algorithm would work and CB would
find the way to win this. It worked, and we won. But we could have easily
drawn. But I was more interested in how the program would win/lose/draw
than I was in winning on a flag falling. And neither of us went out and
told the world about this, because I thought it was the right thing to do,
John appreciated the chance to let the programs finish the game themselves,
and after it was over we shook hands and got ready for the next round.
Lots of us follow such a code of sportsmanship. Which is what makes this
"sam sloan accusation of cheating" so utterly rediculous. I've gone to
more computer chess tournaments than I can count, and don't even remember
meeting him. So I doubt he would be aware of all the 'good things' that
have happened in the past. And only wants to point out a distorted view of
what he considers to be 'bad things.'
bruce moreland
wrote:
>All the games.
>
>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
I'll do some of your research for you.
Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz
ICCAJ June 86 p 107
8/2p5/2B2k2/p4bp1/3P4/6K1/1P6/8 b - 1 47
Clearly a game that should have been played out if possible.
bruce
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c8vm2$fe3$3...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>: <921166830.28866.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
>:>
>:>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>:>>
>:>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>:>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>:>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>:>It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray
>: Blitz
>:>in such a circumstance.
>:>
>:>If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I
>: think.
>:>
>
>: Sorry, I forgot to say ....
>
>: I think there are clear rules on such situations. If your program fails
for
>: some reason or another, you get a certain time-out period to fix it. I'm
not
>: sure but I think there is a limit on the number of times this can happen,
>: maybe three, before they say, enough is enough.
>
>: If you can't fix it, then you default the game to a loss.
>
>: Adjudicating such a situation seems strange.
>
>: How did Cray Blitz 'stop running' ?
>
>We had scheduled time, and the 'schedule' was approved by the TD before the
>tournament started. Rules have always allowed this if you look at the old
>WCCC/ACMCC rules.
>
>you can stop the clock for two times _only_ if the problem is communication
>related. Otherwise, with hardware/software problems, you can fix whatever
is
>wrong, but your clock keeps running.
I had a hardware/software problem in Comp Chess Olympiad 1991 (organisers
Levy and van den Herik, TD van den Herik). I was not allowed to fix it.
Fixing it required a reboot and restart, no more. In fact I recollect being
forced to play on with the chess engine having a different position to that
on the board. It was forbidden to correct it. My program lost after it was
unable to enter an opponent move when the legal move generator then didn't
produce a move to match.
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: as follows:
: Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
: found such a solution.
Why in the world would you make such a statement? Why don't you take
that ending position and feed it to a program to see what happens.
The win is not impossible to find at all.
: Now, if you will look at the game Cray Blitz lost in round two to
: Bobby, you will see how weak that program really was.
It was very weak. It only won the 1983 wccc, the 1984 acm event
by beating the three programs that finished 2,3,4 in that event, and
so forth. The problem with CB in the Bobby Game was well-documented
after I found the reason. CB in round 1/2 and CB in rounds 3/4/5 were
not the same program... period... IE compare how it outplayed HiTech
in round 5, when HiTech seems to be 'your favorite'. It didn't look
so weak there, IMHO.
: Sam Sloan
:
But back to the main event. You said 'cheating'. You have shown "zero"
cheating so far, just personal bias. Do you have something solid to present,
or just more "they shouldn't have won, they should have won, it was rigged,
it was unfair, etc..."???
Robert Hyatt
: This would appear contrary to Fifth World CC Championship Rules.
: Rule 11 states:
: "A computing system can request that its own program be changed (ie a new
: module inserted) if the way in which the request will be made by the
: computer is submitted in writing to the TD before the first round begins.
: The TD has the right not to accept the procedure if it is felt that there is
: any human decision-making involved."
: Chris Whittington
What in the world are you talking about? That rule was added because of
the Mephisto and Fidelity stand-alone boxes that would ask the operator
to 'please insert module xxx' in the slot now. The only rules for programs
was that parameters could not be changed _during_ a game. And something
tells me you know that pretty well.
Another of those silly "let's try to tweak Bob" remarks? It begins to
sound silly after a while...
Robert Hyatt
: Chris Whittington wrote in message
: btw some more stats:
: Chris Whittington
Perhaps you should try this position first? You might discover
something 'interesting' about Bh7. Hint: try a commercial program
here. :)
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c8tvf$es5$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
:>In rec.games.chess.computer Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
: wrote:
:>
:>: Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7f098...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
:>:>I have posted this article, along with the response from Robert Hyatt,
:>:>on my web site at:
:>:>
:>:>http://www.anusha.com/awit-rex.htm
:>:>
:>:>In addition, that excellent tome: "Computer Chess Compendium" by
:>:>David Levy, pages 401-407, gives all the games from Koln.
:>:>
:>:>However, I still need the Cray Blitz games in computer format because
:>:>I am too lazy to go out and buy the book and then enter the games
:>:>(which is another reasion why I have waited 13 years to tell this
:>:>story.)
:>:>
:>:>Sam Sloan
:>
:>: I got all the games here. I'm fairly lazy too, but I'll type them in if
: you
:>: have good reason.
:>
:>: What's the good reason ?
:>
:>: Chris Whittington
:>
:>:>
:>
:>These used to be on the pitt ftp site. They had a directory that had
:>a single file with all the games from most of the ACM events and (I think)
:>all the WCCC tournaments (one file for each tournament if my previous
: sentence
:>wasn't too clear.)
:>
:>I don't have the games here, nor any of the old logfiles, due to that being
:>a long time and many machines ago. I do have the console printout for all
:>5 rounds of the 1986 WCCC game, which captured everything Cray Blitz
: printed,
:>so I can give analysis, scores, depths and variations for any move.
:>
:>In the case of the HiTech game, the 'main point of contention' was move
:>29 for white, Bb5. We liked this move from 18 seconds on, with a score
:>of +.175 at depth=9 (last iteration). The PV expected Qe6 as the reply.
:>HiTech played Nxb5 after about 6 minutes of thinking, and our score jumped
:>to +.344 (A very high positional score for Cray Blitz of that time frame).
:>By move 35, HiTech had folded its tent and left, with CB having a score
:>of over +1.1. By move 50 the score was +5.5 and at move 60 it
:>announced a mate in 8.
: Two points.
: 1. You said I was in your killfile, after I got angry with you for your
: accusation, whcih you subsequently had to withdraw, that two posted
: CSTal-Crafty games were 'fiction'. When they weren't.
: 2. There's a photograph in the icca journal of Berliner (from HiTech)
: announcing an 'astonishing' mate in 8 with GM Hort. Was this the 'mate in 8'
: to which you refer ? Because a casual reader of your text above might assume
: that it was Cray Blitz that was announcing mate in 8.
I have no idea about what 'mate in 8' they are talking about. In my
text above it _was_ cray blitz that announced the mate. HiTech resigned.
Except for one move, our score was never < 0, so there were no mates in 8
seen in our game except for the one at the end.
Robert Hyatt
:>
: 1985 Cologne rule:
: "A team may request the TD to stop its clock at most twice during the course
: of the game because of tech difficuties. The clock must be restarted each
: time after at most 15 minutes. If the team can clearly establish that its
: problems are not in its own computing system but in the telephone network or
: in the comms facilities provided, the TD can permit additional timeouts."
: Since the Cray Blitz team apparently couldn't get any more moves from the
: Cray - they weren't allowed more machine time, then the decision to
: adjudicate the game, rather than forfeit it to Schach 2.7 seems unusual, to
: say the least. It wasn't the phone line. It wasn't the comms. It was the
: computer system.
: Cray Blitz shoudl have lost by forfeit, and Hitech should have been World
: Champion. Q.E.D.
: So why wasn't it ?
: Chris Whittington
Because that was contrary to the published rules.
If you would only read my previous note. IF the programming team had a
hardware schedule that limited the duration of a game to some fixed ending
time, this was _always_ honored at these tournaments, with the rule requiring
that the time limit had to be announced before the start of any round where
there was such a limit. At _every_ event we played at, we always announced
our machine time schedule at the players meeting, and then reminded our
opponent before the start of each game that we had a time limit that we could
not go past.
The compute didn't go down. We ran into the end of our scheduled machine
time. It was common. It was covered in the players meeting at every event
that we, chess 4.x, chaos, kaissa and most anyone else using a dedicated
mainframe computer, participated in.
If you look at the JICCA vol 9 number 2 issue, page 120, rule 8, this is
where this 'time limit' was handled. We were required to play at least
5 hours. We always added an extra hour to cover cases where one side or
the other takes the short 20 minute time outs for technical difficulties.
The mate in 8 had nothing to do with Cray Blitz. It was hitech in another
game. (I have the ICCA issue here).
B76215
>Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
>was a programmer,
Sam, you can do everything, can't you? ;-)
Regards.
Chris Whittington
bruce moreland wrote in message <36f40ba1....@news.seanet.com>...
>>
>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>
>
>
>
>8/2p5/2B2k2/p4bp1/3P4/6K1/1P6/8 b - 1 47
>
>Clearly a game that should have been played out if possible.
Probably.
But what struck me, re-reading those icca journals from the time, was just
how much nonsense they were talking. There were professors, esteemed
societies, leanred academic journals, through editorial and announcement,
putting it out that in 1985, Cray Blitz (inter alia) was playing at a near
GM level.
Unbelievable nonsense.
And then Hyatt tells us how difficult it was to get time on this $30,000,000
beast, so valued and important was it.
Why was Cray supporting these people ? What were they promising ?
Chris Whittington
>
>bruce
>
Mark Young
Cheating in a computer chess event!! This is an old story, but always
interesting........ I see that you used Bob Hyatt's words on your site, and
saying Cray Blitz should not have won this event. You know Bob will SUE you
for this. :):)
Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7bb20...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
>Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
>
>I competed in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship in Cologne,
>Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
>was a programmer, Don did almost all of the programming, whereas I put
>in the chess, deciding that our program would play the Latvian Gambit,
>for example.
>
>There were several scandals in that event and rampant cheating. I have
>always wanted to write this story, but have been reluctant to do so,
>for fear of damaging the reputation of computer chess in general and
>of hurting the efforts of the many hard working, dedicated and honest
>computer chess programmers.
>
>Now, however, with these events far in the past of 13 years ago, plus
>the strongest programs are now stronger than all but the top
>grandmasters, I feel that it is time to tell the story of what really
>happened at that 1986 event.
>
>In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
>Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
>e-mail them to me?
>
>Let me just summarize by saying that Cray Blitz did not deserve to win
>that tournament. The winner should have been the Hi Tech program of
>Hans Berliner.
>
>My own program finished near the bottom in 22nd place. However,
>although it did not really matter since we would have been near the
>bottom anyway, we too were the victims of cheating. In fact, I found
>this so upsetting that I dropped out of computer chess altogether. I
>never chess programmed again. My partner, Don Dailey, however, went on
>to become one of the top programmers in the field.
>
>One of the games where we were cheated was against Awit, a Canadian
>program. Our program, Rex, was almost the only program in the
>tournament which had an actual chess board on display. Thus, anybody
>could look at our computer and see the actual position. Most other
>programs reported moves in machine gibberish, which only the
>programmer understood for sure, and this opened the door to much of
>the cheating.
>
>Our game against AWIT pitted two of the weakest programs in the
>tournament against each other. In this game, both programs brought out
>queens early, grabbed pawns, and neglected development. By move 16,
>the game appeared to be headed for a draw, because both sides had
>kings exposed to queen checks.
>
>International Master Michael Valvo and Grandmaster Hort were the MCs
>for the event which was held in the middle of a computer trade show.
>Valvo, announcing, came over to our demonstration board and, looking
>at the position, said to me privately, "Both of you guys are crazy."
>
>Then, to the public, Valvo, said "This game seems headed for a draw.
>There is going to be an endless series of queen checks. There is no
>way for either side to escape."
>
>Then, Valvo paused for a few moments and said, "There is only one move
>to keep this game going, and that is for white to play Na3."
>
>Suddenly, only about 30 seconds after Valvo uttered these words, my
>opponent's computer, which was online at Calgary, Alberta, Canada,
>crashed! My human opponent stopped the clock and said that it would
>take a half hour before his computer in Canada could start up again.
>This was allowed by the arbiter, Valvo. Then, my human opponent, Tony
>Marsland, proceeded to set up the board by hand and finally started
>the clock again. Amazingly, his program played 17. Na3 almost
>instantly!
>
>His program, AWIT, was a selective search program, which meant that
>his program did not analyze every possible move but only selected the
>top six candidate moves and analyzed those. With a variety of queen
>checks available, it is almost guaranteed that 17. Na3 would not be
>one of the top six candidate moves, especially since his program had
>been neglecting development up until that time.
>
>Later in the game, Marsland had to stop and start his computer again.
>This time, he said that when he set up the computer before it played
>17. Na3, he had forgotten to tell it that it could still legally
>castle, and as a result his computer was not castling. Therefore, with
>the permission of Valvo and over my objection, since I could easily
>see what Marsland was doing, he restarted his computer and set up the
>board a second time.
>
>As it turned out, my program finished 22nd and his program finished
>21st. Had this game been a draw, as it otherwise probably would have
>been, our positions might have been reversed. As I said before, this
>was of no great moment. However, what was of great moment was how the
>1986 World Computer Chess Championship was decided by cheating on the
>top boards, which I will explain when I get the games.
>
>Here is our game against AWIT.
>
>Sam Sloan
>
>[Event "World Computer Chess Championship"]
>[Site "Kohn, Germany"]
>[Date "1986.??.??"]
>[Round "4"]
>[White "Awit "]
>[Black "Rex"]
>[Result "1-0"]
>[ECO "A01"]
>
>1. b3 e5 2. Bb2 Nc6 3. e3 d5 4. Bb5 Qg5 5. Nf3
>Qxg2 6. Rg1 Qh3 7. Bxe5 Bg4 8. Rg3 Bxf3 9. Qxf3
>Qh6 10. Qxd5 Nge7 11. Bxc6+ bxc6 12. Qf3 Nd5 13. Qg4
>Qxh2 14. Bxg7 Bxg7 15. Qxg7 Ke7 16. Qe5+ Kd7 17. Na3
>Ne7 18. Qd4+ Ke6 19. Qe4+ Kd7 20. Rg7 Qh5 21. Nc4
>Ke8 22. Ne5 f5 23. Qg2 Qh6 24. Nxc6 Nxc6 25. Rxc7
>Kf8 26. Rxc6 Qg7 27. Rf6+ Qxf6 28. Qxa8+ Kf7 29. Qxa7+
>Kf8 30. d4 Ke8 31. Ke2 Kf8 32. c4 h6 33. a4
>Rg8 34. a5 Rg7 35. Qc5+ Re7 36. a6 f4 37. a7
>f3+ 38. Kf1 Kg8 39. a8=Q+ Kh7 40. Qh5 Rf7 41. Ra6
>Kg7 42. Rxf6 Rxf6 43. Qe5 h5 44. Qxf3 1-0
>
>
>
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c91ov$fna$4...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>: wrote:
>:>
I'm not surprised. You weren't doing any check extensions. The description
of your program was piece-square tables and a capture search only.
So mates were only found in the brute part.
So how was it right that anybody claimed you were at near GM level ?
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c926v$fna$5...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>: <921170150.492.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
>:>
>:>Chris Whittington wrote in message
>:><921169466.147.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
>:>>
>:>>>All the games.
>:>>>
>:>>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
>:>>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
>:>>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
>:>>
Right. The rules say after five hours the TD can adjudicate.
Actually the specfic published rule changed from the 1985 rules to 1986
rules, the following term being added:
"Every effort by the TD will be made to avoid adjudication".
What caused the specific change ? Was yours the only adjudicated game of the
tourney in 1985 ?
Chris Whittington
>
>The mate in 8 had nothing to do with Cray Blitz. It was hitech in another
>game. (I have the ICCA issue here).
>
>
>
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c92pp$fna$7...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...>: This would appear contrary to Fifth World CC Championship Rules.
>
>: Rule 11 states:
>
>: "A computing system can request that its own program be changed (ie a new
>: module inserted) if the way in which the request will be made by the
>: computer is submitted in writing to the TD before the first round begins.
>: The TD has the right not to accept the procedure if it is felt that there
is
>: any human decision-making involved."
>
>: Chris Whittington
>
>
>
>the Mephisto and Fidelity stand-alone boxes that would ask the operator
>to 'please insert module xxx' in the slot now. The only rules for programs
>was that parameters could not be changed _during_ a game. And something
>tells me you know that pretty well.
>
>Another of those silly "let's try to tweak Bob" remarks? It begins to
>sound silly after a while...
>
No. Just curious :)
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c92g5$fna$6...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>In rec.games.chess.computer Sam Sloan <sl...@ishipress.com> wrote:
>: Chris Whittington has provided one of the questionable games, which is
>: as follows:
>
>
>: Black, Cray Blitz, had a pawn more, but it is almost impossible to win
>: this position, even for a strong human, much less for a computer.
>
>: As I recall, the winning method found by Hort and Valvo involved
>: bringing the king all the way around with Ke7, Kd8, Kc8, Kb8, Ka7,
>: Kb6, Ka5 (after the pawn has moved), trading pawns and then bringing
>: the king around behind White.
>
>: Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
>: found such a solution.
>
>Why in the world would you make such a statement? Why don't you take
>that ending position and feed it to a program to see what happens.
>The win is not impossible to find at all.
>
>: Now, if you will look at the game Cray Blitz lost in round two to
>: Bobby, you will see how weak that program really was.
>
>It was very weak. It only won the 1983 wccc, the 1984 acm event
>by beating the three programs that finished 2,3,4 in that event, and
>so forth.
And Cray was informed that it was at near GM level :)))))))))))))))
Chris Whittington
>The problem with CB in the Bobby Game was well-documented
>after I found the reason. CB in round 1/2 and CB in rounds 3/4/5 were
>not the same program... period... IE compare how it outplayed HiTech
>in round 5, when HiTech seems to be 'your favorite'. It didn't look
>so weak there, IMHO.
>
>
>: Sam Sloan
>:
>
>But back to the main event. You said 'cheating'. You have shown "zero"
>cheating so far, just personal bias. Do you have something solid to
present,
>or just more "they shouldn't have won, they should have won, it was rigged,
>it was unfair, etc..."???
>
bruce moreland
<ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>A curious letter, entitled "Sportmanship" from Jonathon Schaeffer:
>
>"In the final round of the WC, Sun Pheonix was playing Bobby. After 39 moves
>Sun Pheonix was about to win a piece and a rook and, of course the game. In
>making its 40th move Pheonix crashed and several attempts to revive it
>failed. Bobby's progrmamers, Krass and Schrufer, asked the TD, Valvo, to
>resign on behalf of Bobby. If Pheonix were unable to complete the game it
>would have lost. Bobby's prgrammers felt that Pheonix had played a good game
>and deserved to win.
>
>That we were having hardware problems that might cost us the game, they felt
>was irrelevant to the real issue involved, playing chess. So they resigned.
>it turned out that we were eventuallty able to restart Pheonix (using one of
>its 20 computers) and make the 40th move.
>
>My point in writing this letter is to praise the sportsmanship of Kraas and
>Schrufer. All the often it is easy to place winnign above all else. no
>matter how that end is acheived. perhaps there is a lesson in this example
>that we can all learn from."
They should have treated it like a flag-fall if Phoenix couldn't
restart.
This situation happens commonly, I have seen it in person. The one
guy is losing, but is not willing to resign, as evidenced by the fact
that he just made a move. The other guy crashes, can't restart, but
is not willing to admit that the position is apparently too difficult
for his program and resign.
The tournament director is called, and for some reason it is
considered logical to put moral pressure on the guy who is worse, but
whose program is still playing chess, to admit the bizarre notion that
he is losing or at least drawing the game, despite the fact that his
opponent's program can not only not execute the mate, it can't produce
a legal move.
I don't think there should be a choice, I think there should be a
clear rule in these cases and it should be followed, over the
objection of both players if necessary.
It is most logical to flag the guy who can't continue.
bruce
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c8vm2$fe3$3...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
:>In rec.games.chess.computer Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
: wrote:
:>
:>: Chris Whittington wrote in message
:>: <921166830.28866.0...@news.demon.co.uk>...
:>:>
:>:>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
:>:>>All the games.
:>:>>
:>:>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>:>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>:>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
:>:>
:>:>It is unlikely they'ld do anything other than make it 0-1 against Cray
:>: Blitz
:>:>in such a circumstance.
:>:>
:>:>If you can't get a move from your program, you lose. That's normal. I
:>: think.
:>:>
:>
:>: Sorry, I forgot to say ....
:>
:>: I think there are clear rules on such situations. If your program fails
: for
:>: some reason or another, you get a certain time-out period to fix it. I'm
: not
:>: sure but I think there is a limit on the number of times this can happen,
:>: maybe three, before they say, enough is enough.
:>
:>: If you can't fix it, then you default the game to a loss.
:>
:>: Adjudicating such a situation seems strange.
:>
:>: How did Cray Blitz 'stop running' ?
:>
:>We had scheduled time, and the 'schedule' was approved by the TD before the
:>tournament started. Rules have always allowed this if you look at the old
:>WCCC/ACMCC rules.
:>
:>you can stop the clock for two times _only_ if the problem is communication
:>related. Otherwise, with hardware/software problems, you can fix whatever
: is
:>wrong, but your clock keeps running.
: I had a hardware/software problem in Comp Chess Olympiad 1991 (organisers
: Levy and van den Herik, TD van den Herik). I was not allowed to fix it.
: Fixing it required a reboot and restart, no more. In fact I recollect being
: forced to play on with the chess engine having a different position to that
: on the board. It was forbidden to correct it. My program lost after it was
: unable to enter an opponent move when the legal move generator then didn't
: produce a move to match.
: Chris Whittington
Sounds like a correct decision. Because you couldn't 'change the program'
during a game. If it had a bug, fixing it would 'change it' and that wasn't
allowed. But if the hardware crashed, we were always given time to reboot.
Because most of us (back then) ran on experimental hardware, and the ACM/WCCC
events were about computer chess programs, not about hardware reliability.
However, you could lose on time. Hsu lost round one in Cape May to Mchess
Pro, because an electrical storm knocked out power at the Watson research
center, and while the computers came back up, the telephones didn't so they
couldn't connect and continue.
We were never allowed to 'restart' a program on a whim. Only if we could
show that the computer had crashed could we restart. Otherwise the clock
ticked and the flag fell.
But that wasn't our circumstance in round 4/cologne at all. Totally
unrelated. We told our opponent that the game stops at (xxx) (9am CDT
was our time limit, not sure what that is in Cologne local time). And
at 9am CDT, we lost the machine, period.
Robert Hyatt
: sl...@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan) was alleged to have uttered:
:>Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
:>found such a solution.
: Hyatt has already said that the basis for adjudication was best play,
: not what the adjudicators thought the program was capable of.
Rule 8. The TD has the right to adjudicate a game after five hours of
total clock time. The adjudication will be made on the premise that
perfect chess will be played by both sides from the final position.
Every effort will be made by the TD to avoid adjudication.
(JICCA Vol 9, No. 2, page 120)
Robert Hyatt
: On Thu, 11 Mar 1999 15:23:26 GMT, sl...@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan)
: wrote:
:>All the games.
:>
:>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
: I'll do some of your research for you.
: Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz
: ICCAJ June 86 p 107
: 8/2p5/2B2k2/p4bp1/3P4/6K1/1P6/8 b - 1 47
: Clearly a game that should have been played out if possible.
: bruce
without a doubt. However, when you ask a company to provide you
with a dedicated computer that sells for $30,000,000.00, and they
ask "how long each day?" You learn to give a reasonable value or
else get a quick "Not possible". In our case, in those days the
games were required to go for five hours total time, at least.
We always asked for six hours to cover late starts, etc. But when
the 'time' hit the magic hour, we lost the machine _right then_. IE
in the 1983 event, LucasFilm was using that same computer (at Cray)
for graphics rendering in some new digital special effects they were
doing in a movie. They were _paying_ for their computer time at a
impressive rate per cpu hour. Obviously when it came to 'playing
chess or making millions' chess took a 'back seat'. :)
And as I said, in the 70's/80's this was normal and not an exception.
The CDC machine used by the chess 4.x guys had the same sort of scheduling
limit, as did the Amdahls used by Chaos, the cray used by Cube, the cray
used by Lachex, the suns used by sun phoenix. Almost all programs (back
then) used remote machines that had scheduling issues. Cologne worked out
quite well for us as the tournament start time in Cologne turned into a 3am
start time here, and getting computer time at 3am is a _lot_ easier than
getting it at 1pm. However, 3am runs to 9am for 6 hours, and by 9am
everybody at cray was awake, at work, and wanting access to the machine
we were using. Going beyond that was impossible. Had we requested it,
we probably wouldn't have been in cologne at all. They were most gracious
to give us what they did, when you consider the value of the time they
made available for 'playing a game'.
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c92t1$fna$8...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>In rec.games.chess.computer pulgao <baays...@intrepid.net> wrote:
>: sl...@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan) was alleged to have uttered:
>
>
>:>Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
>:>found such a solution.
>
>: Hyatt has already said that the basis for adjudication was best play,
>: not what the adjudicators thought the program was capable of.
>
>Rule 8. The TD has the right to adjudicate a game after five hours of
>total clock time. The adjudication will be made on the premise that
>perfect chess will be played by both sides from the final position.
>Every effort will be made by the TD to avoid adjudication.
>
>(JICCA Vol 9, No. 2, page 120)
Not quite. The line "Every effort will be made by the TD to avoid
adjudication" was added after the 1985 tournament. On epresumes there was a
reason for that.
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: I'm not surprised. You weren't doing any check extensions. The description
: of your program was piece-square tables and a capture search only.
What? We did check extensions. one reply extension, recapture extension,
some threat extensions, but no singular extensions. We had _no_ piece square
tables of any kind in Cray Blitz, sorry. So you are grossly wrong.
: So mates were only found in the brute part.
We did checks in the qsearch. We did non-capture checks in the
q-search. We even did some non-capture king threatening moves in
the q-search. You know, there is a _lot_ you don't know. you might
try asking, rather than guessing. It is _much_ more accurate. There
are lots of details about Cray Blitz floating around. The book Computers
chess and cognition gives a pretty good description in fact. And it
discusses our search extensions, the selective things we did right before
the quiescience search, etc...
Cray Blitz was quite capable of finding mates in 8. If found the one
vs Hitech, remember. It found the mate in 10 by Bronstein (advances in
computer chess 4) in a second or so. Your 'impression' is nowhere close
to reality.
: So how was it right that anybody claimed you were at near GM level ?
No idea. ACM advertisements have claimed this for years. I disputed it
for years. I still do, you might notice. :)
: Chris Whittington
flum
think that you owe the people you accuse the consideration to at least
document what you accuse them of?
<<<
More than that, other than the mention of an operator who liked to press
a key on occasion, I fail to see where any of what has been written in this
thread comprises "cheating" in the first place (Forget Na3; there simply is
no evidence whatsoever that anyone cheated on that move). At worst, it
looks like there were irregularites in enforcement of the rules, and the
adjudication mentioned was the product of the adjudicators, not of any
cheating by any of the operators. It seems to me that the responsibility
for any injustices that may have occurred belongs to the event organizers
and adjudicators rather than the entrants themselves.
To Sloan: You brought up this issue. The responsibility for presenting
evidence for your accusation was yours alone, and it was highly improper
and irresponsible for you to go fishing in public fora for support instead
of first making private inquiries, gather the evidence, and present it --
along with an explicit interpretation -- with the accusation in the same
post. The result of your actual method is a lot of heat and no light.
To Whittington: Your conflict of interest is well known: you feel that
the availability of a free, strong chess engine is directly cutting into
your profits. I know how you feel: I'm only about 2000 USCF, and Crafty
-- for free -- fills all my computer chess "desires" completely. I don't
need to spend $300, more or less, on a commercial engine not only whose
superiority, from my lowly perspective, is imperceptible to me, but also
which lacks the source code, so that I might read it, learn something from
it, and perhaps improve my own programming skills.
You complain because the only discussions on RGCC are computer issues
rather than chess issues, yet you yourself have made no effort, at least in
the 3 months I have been following this forum, to initiate any discussion
in the chess area yourself. One conclusion I could easily draw is that you
are sitting back, waiting for others to feed you new ideas without your
revealing your own precious secrets in return.
Moreover, it is plain that you regard most of the readers here as
stupid, and the tone of many of your posts reflects that. I assure you
that not only is this not the case, but your constant insistence on this
sometimes makes it look like the reverse is true.
Chris Whittington
flum wrote in message <01be6bf4$10a825c0$e53929cf@apsaiu2>...
>>>> If you are going to accuse somebody of something like this, don't you
>think that you owe the people you accuse the consideration to at least
>document what you accuse them of?
><<<
>
> More than that, other than the mention of an operator who liked to press
>a key on occasion, I fail to see where any of what has been written in this
>thread comprises "cheating" in the first place (Forget Na3; there simply is
>no evidence whatsoever that anyone cheated on that move). At worst, it
>looks like there were irregularites in enforcement of the rules, and the
>adjudication mentioned was the product of the adjudicators, not of any
>cheating by any of the operators. It seems to me that the responsibility
>for any injustices that may have occurred belongs to the event organizers
>and adjudicators rather than the entrants themselves.
>
>
> To Sloan: You brought up this issue. The responsibility for presenting
>evidence for your accusation was yours alone, and it was highly improper
>and irresponsible for you to go fishing in public fora for support instead
>of first making private inquiries, gather the evidence, and present it --
>along with an explicit interpretation -- with the accusation in the same
>post. The result of your actual method is a lot of heat and no light.
>
> To Whittington: Your conflict of interest is well known: you feel that
>the availability of a free, strong chess engine is directly cutting into
>your profits.
You can say to a black that he can't have a job because he is black. Nothing
he can do about that, he is black.
Or a jew, that he should go to a ghetto, because he is a jew. Nothing he can
say, he is a jew.
I've read people in these situations,a nd what thye have to say. They all
say there's nothing they can say, if that's what the person think, they can
do nothing about it.
If you think, because I sell my program, that I argue with Hyatt for
financial reasons, there's also nothing I can say to you. You can think
that. I can do nothing about it.
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c92t1$fna$8...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
:>In rec.games.chess.computer pulgao <baays...@intrepid.net> wrote:
:>: sl...@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan) was alleged to have uttered:
:>
:>
:>:>Because of the horizon effect, no computer of that era could have
:>:>found such a solution.
:>
:>: Hyatt has already said that the basis for adjudication was best play,
:>: not what the adjudicators thought the program was capable of.
:>
:>Rule 8. The TD has the right to adjudicate a game after five hours of
:>total clock time. The adjudication will be made on the premise that
:>perfect chess will be played by both sides from the final position.
:>Every effort will be made by the TD to avoid adjudication.
:>
:>(JICCA Vol 9, No. 2, page 120)
: Not quite. The line "Every effort will be made by the TD to avoid
: adjudication" was added after the 1985 tournament. On epresumes there was a
: reason for that.
we are talking about the 1986 tournament in Cologne. These were the published
rules for that tournament. I have most every acm tournament booklet, so I
could track the rule changes if needed. But changes were made _every_ year.
Because at every player's meeting, some exception would come up, and that
discussion would lead to a rule modification. And that modification would
be carried to the next year in the written rules (sometimes to be modified
again, of course..)
But the rules were never very 'constant' because things changed. The
micros caused problems (insert this module), the mainframes caused
problems (scheduling, telecommunication problems, etc). And the rules
were adjusted each year to make the TD's job less arbitrary.
Robert Hyatt
: Probably.
: But what struck me, re-reading those icca journals from the time, was just
: how much nonsense they were talking. There were professors, esteemed
: societies, leanred academic journals, through editorial and announcement,
: putting it out that in 1985, Cray Blitz (inter alia) was playing at a near
: GM level.
: Unbelievable nonsense.
: And then Hyatt tells us how difficult it was to get time on this $30,000,000
: beast, so valued and important was it.
: Why was Cray supporting these people ? What were they promising ?
Cray supported us because of the publicity. Short story:
around 1979 it became obvious that we either had to get a faster computer or
give up ACM chess tournaments, because chess 4.x always showed up on the fastest
CDC machine around and that machine was faster than anything anybody else made
by a wide margin. Except for Cray.
I wrote a letter to cray proposing that they supply machine time for a computer
chess program. I told them I had a program, written in FORTRAN, that would
run on their hardware.
At that time, the president and VP for Marketing took a trip and when they
got on the plane, in the seat pocket they pulled out the "flight magazine"
everyone supplied, and the first story was "CDC wins another chess championship".
They decided they wanted some of that free publicity.
when they returned to Mendota, they found my letter, and the rest was history.
It was all about advertising, public relations, and publicity. They got their
name on the front of the Scientific American, in the Wall Street Journal, on
TV, in magazines, you-name-it. And all it cost them was some machine time that
they could write off anyway for advertising.
That's all there was. We promised nothing. They asked for nothing, other than
for us to use the best hardware they had, and to take advantage of it to make
the program as strong as possible. We did.
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c926v$fna$5...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
:>In rec.games.chess.computer Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
: wrote:
:>
:>: Chris Whittington wrote in message
:>: <921170150.492.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
:>:>
:>:>Chris Whittington wrote in message
:>:><921169466.147.0....@news.demon.co.uk>...
:>:>>
:>:>>Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7dfcf...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
:>:>>>All the games.
:>:>>>
:>:>>>The biggest problem came not in the game between Cray Blitz and Hi
:>:>>>Tech but in one of the other games where the Cray Blitz program
:>:>>>stopped running and the game had to be adjudicated by Hort and Valvo.
:>:>>
:>:>>I think I may have the listings of the games in this tournament.
:>:>>
:>:>>Which game are you after ?
:>:>>
:>:>>1. Cray Blitz - Awit 1-0
:>:>>
:>:>>2. Bobby - Cray Blitz 1-0
:>:>>
:>:>>3. Cray Blitz - Bebe 1-0
:>:>>
:>:>>4. Schach 2.7 - Cray Blitz 0-1 adjudicated
:>:>>
:>:>>5. Cray Blitz - Hitech 1-0
:>:>>
:>:>>I guess it must be game 4 ? Final position was 8 / 2p6 / 2B2k2 / p4bp1 /
:>:>3P4
:>:>>/ 6K1 / 1P6 / 8 black to move, White just played Kg3. Do you need
:>:>the
:>:>>game as well ?
:>:>
:>:>Here it is:
:>:>
:>:>
:>:>[Event "WCCC"]
:>:>
:>:>
:>:>Chris Whittington
:>:>
:>:>
:>
:>: 1985 Cologne rule:
:>
:>: "A team may request the TD to stop its clock at most twice during the
: course
:>: of the game because of tech difficuties. The clock must be restarted each
:>: time after at most 15 minutes. If the team can clearly establish that its
:>: problems are not in its own computing system but in the telephone network
: or
:>: in the comms facilities provided, the TD can permit additional timeouts."
:>
:>
:>
:>: Since the Cray Blitz team apparently couldn't get any more moves from the
I don't believe we had any adjudicated games in 1985 for Cray Blitz. They
were all decisive games before our time ran out.
I think what happened was a pretty infamous 'attempt' to force adjudication.
Originally it was possible for someone to say 'ok 5 hours are up, I want an
adjudication" and the TD had no choice. Then we had a case where a player
reached what he considered a won position, but 5 hours had not elapsed. His
program made a move he thought was bad, he refused to play it, and let his
clock run, as he had enough clock time left to run the game to the 5 hour
limit. This caused a lot of discussions, and probably led to that rule
modification.
(no, I don't remember who did that, although someone can probably supply
a name. there was lots of discussion since the program had clearly
displayed the move on the screen, and by the rules, the operator has to
make the move on the board.)
Robert Hyatt
: And Cray was informed that it was at near GM level :)))))))))))))))
nope.
We played a number of games vs strong humans. We knew the program was
playing 2300-2350 chess in 1985, because we had beaten several players
rated 2260-2400 in long tournament games. I have _never_ claimed that a
program of mine plays like a GM. I have been pretty solid in my statement
that I don't think _any_ program plays like a GM yet, excepting for rapid
time controls. I remain pretty consistent here...
Robert Hyatt
: You can say to a black that he can't have a job because he is black. Nothing
: he can do about that, he is black.
: Or a jew, that he should go to a ghetto, because he is a jew. Nothing he can
: say, he is a jew.
: I've read people in these situations,a nd what thye have to say. They all
: say there's nothing they can say, if that's what the person think, they can
: do nothing about it.
: If you think, because I sell my program, that I argue with Hyatt for
: financial reasons, there's also nothing I can say to you. You can think
: that. I can do nothing about it.
: Chris Whittington
I've never personally thought that. In fact, wasn't it _you_ that
somewhere back at least a couple of years mentioned that "Brits sometimes
like to argue, just for the sake of arguing" or something like that? I
had assumed that propensity was at the bottom of some of this. :)
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c975h$hgq$1...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>In rec.games.chess.computer Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
wrote:
>
>: You can say to a black that he can't have a job because he is black.
Nothing
>: he can do about that, he is black.
>
>: Or a jew, that he should go to a ghetto, because he is a jew. Nothing he
can
>: say, he is a jew.
>
>: I've read people in these situations,a nd what thye have to say. They all
>: say there's nothing they can say, if that's what the person think, they
can
>: do nothing about it.
>
>: If you think, because I sell my program, that I argue with Hyatt for
>: financial reasons, there's also nothing I can say to you. You can think
>: that. I can do nothing about it.
>
>: Chris Whittington
>
>
>
>I've never personally thought that. In fact, wasn't it _you_ that
>somewhere back at least a couple of years mentioned that "Brits sometimes
>like to argue, just for the sake of arguing" or something like that? I
>had assumed that propensity was at the bottom of some of this. :)
>
Bob, I love you, really.
Chris Whittington
Chris Whittington
Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c953t$gpc$3...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
>
>nope.
>
>We played a number of games vs strong humans. We knew the program was
>playing 2300-2350 chess in 1985, because we had beaten several players
>rated 2260-2400 in long tournament games. I have _never_ claimed that a
>program of mine plays like a GM. I have been pretty solid in my statement
>that I don't think _any_ program plays like a GM yet, excepting for rapid
>time controls. I remain pretty consistent here...
>
No. It wasn't you claiming it. But you let it go, the claim, I mean. You
were a technician then. You just did the work.
The lies were the claims in the journal. The press releases. The learned
statements. Nobody denied them. They were put out by the top guys. It was
about money. Research money. Money for computer science departments. Money
for other things. Wasn't it, Bob ?
Robert Hyatt
: Robert Hyatt wrote in message <7c953t$gpc$3...@juniper.cis.uab.edu>...
:>In rec.games.chess.computer Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk>
: wrote:
:>
:>: And Cray was informed that it was at near GM level :)))))))))))))))
:>
:>nope.
:>
:>We played a number of games vs strong humans. We knew the program was
:>playing 2300-2350 chess in 1985, because we had beaten several players
:>rated 2260-2400 in long tournament games. I have _never_ claimed that a
:>program of mine plays like a GM. I have been pretty solid in my statement
:>that I don't think _any_ program plays like a GM yet, excepting for rapid
:>time controls. I remain pretty consistent here...
:>
: No. It wasn't you claiming it. But you let it go, the claim, I mean. You
: were a technician then. You just did the work.
No I didn't 'let it go'. We had lots of 'panel' discussions at the ACM
events. And every year that question came up. And every year my opinion
was "no, computers are not near GM level, with the exception of deep thought
in later years when it was obviously a GM based on its record against GM
: The lies were the claims in the journal. The press releases. The learned
: statements. Nobody denied them. They were put out by the top guys. It was
: about money. Research money. Money for computer science departments. Money
for other things. Wasn't it, Bob ?
no. that 'hyperbole' happened every year. when programs were 1600-1900,
the tournament bulletins said 'at or near master level'. when programs
became obvious masters, it was raised to 'at or near GM', And when one
program (deep thought) really played like a GM, then 'all were at the GM
level'.
This is typical hyperbole... buy the new corvette because it is faster,
more powerful than last year. Same engine of course. Buy a new refrigerator
because this year's model is more energy efficient than last year's. Of
course, the fine print says you can expect to save eleven cents over the course
of a year. But it _is_ better, right? :)
I think most of the hyperbole was a public relations ploy, to get the press
out to the tournaments to see these 'electronic grandmasters'.
But that is just an opinion. I didn't write 'em. I didn't approve 'em.
I just 'noticed' them and 'dismissed' them. :)
IE does Thorsten tend to exaggerate CSTal just a bit? What is that all
about? Why not correct him? Is it about the money? the publicity? etc?
cuts both ways, of course...
Phil Innes
interesting question of cheating and computers in rgcc?
See how polite I am? Otherwise we will *ALL* come over to rgcc and
discuss the Kings' Gambit - for months, (garlic is completely
ineffective on this medium) and the political gentlemen (to a man?) will
then Balkanise the variations and discuss (LOL!) voting, how others
should be speaking of the subject, plus scurilous sociological ideas
from the early '60s, not excluding how additional campaigns should be
funded and who's looking after the till.
Personally I will write wads of things like this:
God moves the player, he in turn the piece.
But what god beyond God begins the round
Of dust and time and sleep and agonies?
Jorge Luis Borges
And only gradually, at great length, moving on to:
The chess pieces were merciless. They held
and absorbed him. There was horror in this,
but in this also was the sole harmony.
Because what else exists in the world besides chess?
Vladimir Nabokov
With thanks to Isvolski. Poincaré, Berchtold, Paschitch and
Maurensig.
Phil (Qlippah Variations)
Philip Cavanagh
>
> Sam Sloan wrote in message <36e7f098...@nntp.mindspring.com>...
> >I have posted this article, along with the response from Robert Hyatt,
> >on my web site at:
> >
> >http://www.anusha.com/awit-rex.htm
> >
> >In addition, that excellent tome: "Computer Chess Compendium" by
> >David Levy, pages 401-407, gives all the games from Koln.
> >
> >However, I still need the Cray Blitz games in computer format because
> >I am too lazy to go out and buy the book and then enter the games
> >(which is another reasion why I have waited 13 years to tell this
> >story.)
> >
> >Sam Sloan
>
> I got all the games here. I'm fairly lazy too, but I'll type them in if you
> have good reason.
>
> What's the good reason ?
I'd love a copy of those games (and I'm sure others too ;)
Peace...
Henri H. Arsenault
Let me give you an example that happened to me (non-computer). Around
1970, I was playing in a tournament and began a my game with an opponent
whose name I have forgotten but who was one of the candidates for the top
prize. International Master Lazlo witt was following our game closely,and
I thought it was because the winner would probably play him in the next
round.
When I began to lose, Witt called the tournament director and pointed out
that we were playing with the colors reversed. We had to restart the game,
and I lost the game (as well as the next one). My opponent played Witt,
and lost, probably too tired to play well in two games in a row.
No one accused Witt of cheating; what he did might be interpreted as some
as mean, but all he did was exploit the rules and our mistake to increase
his chances of winning the next game. But he did not cheat.
The situation is even more complex in computer chess of course, since
machines and humans are involved, and 15 years ago, the rules were in a
constant state of flux to try to take into account existing communications
technology and to attempt to plug holes that kept appearing in the rules.
But to accuse those who exploited the rules as they then existed of
cheating is another matter.
As for Kasparov's accusation that Deep Blue cheated in the game where he
was beaten, without ANY justification whatsoever, it is really sad. Any
superficial analysis of that game with an engine like Fritz shows that
Kasparov made more than one weak move and that he deserved to lose. The
fact that Deep Blue made no mistakes that can be found does not prove that
it cheated.
Henri
Anders Thulin
Chris Whittington <ch...@cpsoft.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Why was Cray supporting these people ? What were they promising ?
Publicity.
Much the same reason as Cray allowed use of computer time to search
for Mersenne primes. Perhaps they still do ...
--
Anders Thulin Anders....@telia.se 013-23 55 32
Telia ProSoft AB, Teknikringen 6, S-583 30 Linkoping, Sweden
Robert Hyatt
: I think people should be careful about the choice of words like "cheating".
: Henri
Actually, it pretty well proves that they didn't. :)
Dullwitted Slug
wrote:
Actually, this was the only post in thiswhole thread that made me
feel like the time spent reading it had been rewarded.
anti...@spam.demon.co.uk
Whittington wrote:
> Cray Blitz Cray XMP Computer Fortran 100 Kbyes 5,000
> move opening library 100,000 nps
And my Fritz (on my humble PC ) is now looking at the position at 500,000
nps :-)
It is a difficult ending to get right, I know some people who would call
it a draw.
--
Adios Amigo
Carl Tillotson
Lancashire Chess Association
homepage: http://www.lancashirechess.demon.co.uk/
Virtual Access 4.50 build 266 (32-bit)
Using Win98
10004...@compuserve.com
sl...@ishipress.com (Sam Sloan) wrote:
> Cheating in the World Computer Chess Championship
>
> I competed in the 1986 World Computer Chess Championship in Cologne,
> Germany, with my partner, Don Dailey, and our program, Rex. Although I
> was a programmer, Don did almost all of the programming, whereas I put
> in the chess, deciding that our program would play the Latvian Gambit,
> for example.
>
> [...]
>
> Now, however, with these events far in the past of 13 years ago, plus
> the strongest programs are now stronger than all but the top
> grandmasters, I feel that it is time to tell the story of what really
> happened at that 1986 event.
>
> In order to do this, I need the games of the top two programs - Cray
> Blitz and Hi Tech. I cannot find them online anywhere. Can anybody
> e-mail them to me?
These games, plus games from some other world computer chess championship
events, are available on my reference page...
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Mark_Weeks/wcc-comp.htm
...The links on that page are to pages dedicated to each event, including the
games. If you just want quick access to the ZIPped PGN files, they are listed
near the bottom of the page...
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/kolia/
...which is a makeshift filelist, i.e. not much more than file names.
The PGN files were collected from various online sources, but have not yet
been verified against an offline source. The HTML crosstables were generated
from the PGN files; some have been checked, some not.
I'm missing game scores from the first 11 WMCCCs. If anyone has them, I'd be
happy to make them generally available as well. The world computer
championships and the people behind them deserve much more than these few
pages, but I had to start somewhere.
Cheers,
Mark Weeks
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