Zarkov at 'Championnat de Paris'
Alain Le Borgne
as an onlooker, I saw with much interest that the chess program Zarkov
was participating in the A. Open tournament (for players with a french Elo
rating between 1700 and 2200), running on an Epson PC AX 3-25.
But to my great surprise, there was no operator, no chessboard and no
chess clock near the computer ! Zarkov's human opponent had to enter his moves
all by himself, and to rely on the computer's clock. Needless to say, such
playing conditions are not acceptable, because :
- The player loses time, and the official clocks are not used. The problem
with using the computer's clocks becomes most acute if the player is in Zeitnot
-Using Zarkov's screen display is not the same thing as looking at a real
chess board (and this has nothing to do with the quality of the display). Some
players had probably never used a computer keyboard in their life: no wonder
they could not concentrate efficiently and blundered pieces away!
-Nobody seemed to know how to operate Zarkov correctly in case a problem
would happen. (in fact a problem actually happened, but the game was already
over decided the arbiters! (a win for Zarkov on the chessboard, but neither
clock was running. the player is supposed to have caused this because he had
a lost game. all this does not seem very correct to me))
-Players who encountered Zarkov were very much upset by the playing
conditions, and even if they complained about it it was too late:the organizers
(the kind of people who tell you to mind your own business when you ask them
an embarassing question) said they had to refuse playing against the computer
before round one. This is really stupid, because at that time the organizers
did not boast about the scandalous playing conditions they were preparing for
the players who would accept playing against the computer! It is also the duty
of the organizers and of the arbiters (most of them disapproved of Zarkov's
participating under these conditions) to see to it that the players have the be
st playing conditions.
-Nothing prevents the players from cheating: even though the computer is
placed near the arbiters, they were either hostile to the computer or
indifferent, and did not seem to care much about what was going on there.
I could not get any reliable information on the reasons for all this, but it
seems that the man who had Zarkov participate in this tournament is a french
chess player, who has done a lot for the promotion of Chess Base in France.
I have heard, and this is also only second hand information, that the
organizers had set the registration fee for computers as high as 20000FF
(between $3000 and $4000)! I hope nobody has paid it.
Does anyone have any information on this sad story?
I believe J. Stanback will agree with us on the following points:
-Such playing conditions are not acceptable in a serious tournament.
-This tournament will not prove anything as to Zarkov's strength (and
this is something we sincerely regret)
-The person(s) responsible for this is playing a dirty trick on chess
programmers: Chess computers were already not too popular with chess players!
By the way, the Championnat de Paris is nevertheless an excellent tournament,
taking place from the 4th of may to the 13th, and in its "tournoi principal"
there are
such players as K. Spraggett, Dorfmann, Psakhis, Vaiser, Rashkovski, Lobron, a
few other strong IGMs, and Alexei Shirov, who has just won the soviet Zonal
tournament (and quite easily! He is only 17!), and also Gata Kamsky.
It's just too bad Joel Lautier could (?) not come.
Marc-Francois Baudot
Jean-Christophe Weill (J...@cnam.cnam.fr)
John Stanback
and certainly agree that it was ridiculous that the tournament
director allowed those playing conditions. I have no idea why
Zarkov was entered but I doubt that the person responsible would
have paid much money to do so.
It's a shame that this incident happened and I hope that it does
not hasten further banning of computers in tournament play. I
believe that in the US the author of a chess program must give
permission before a program can compete. This seems to me to be a
good rule.
John Stanback