janeric@regler.UUCP (Jan Eric Larsson) (07/06/85)
Do computers cheat at chess? This discussion has been around many times. The argument is that chess programs use internal representation of the chess board, i.e. another board and/or an opening book. A human player is allowed to bring neither an extra board or an openings book. Therefore chess programs is cheating and should not be allowed in human competition. This is all very confused. The argument can be met at two different levels. First, human players think of the board position or different aspects of it, and they usually also have learnt a few opening variations from a book. The same thing should be alright for a chess program. Isn't it quite obvious that memory, even say a disk, is an internal part of the computer system? I think that one should compare a human player with the entire system, not only with the cpu, disk or (let's say) the housing. In this way, the analogy argument does not say that computers cheat at chess. But of course there is a good formulation of the argument. I think it could be simply "Chess programs are not (even comparable to) humans, so they should not be allowed in human competition". This is both simple and, I think, valid. The solution to the whole problem is to have different classes, human, computer and open to all. Jan Eric Larsson Department of Automatic Control Lund Institute of Technology Lund, (Close to Copenhagen), Sweden Path: !seismo!mcvax!enea!alibaba!regler!janeric By the way: An opening book doesn't usually give a program very much in playing strength. Most tests actually points in the opposite direction if anywhere at all. The main use of the book in a program is to make its play more interesting to humans. I would be very sorry if opening books in chess programs were skipped.
zben@umd5.UUCP (07/09/85)
Well, the Sargon ][ I have on my Apple ][+ cheats. It sometimes takes
en-passent pawn moves when there are no pawns to capture! Even though
it won't let YOU make en-passent moves. First time this happened I got
so p*ssed I promoted eight pawns to queens and ran its king all around
the board torturing it until I could come up with a nice symmetrical
mate with queens all around the king...
It's a pretty punk program - /usr/games/chess is MUCH smarter and faster...
--
Ben Cranston ...{seismo!umcp-cs,ihnp4!rlgvax}!cvl!umd5!zben zben@umd2.ARPArick@uwmacc.UUCP (the absurdist) (07/13/85)
Keywords:
[ bug to KR8 -- Splat! ]
Ah, yes ... cheating. The original version of Sargon for the
Radio Shack TRS-80 Model I would cheat, also.
Once I had it in check, and it ignored this.
The next move, I took its King ... drawing Sargon's attention
to the fact that it had lost.
It made ANOTHER move, and redrew the board showing my
King as being its color, while a King of my color was nowhere
to be found.
I never got to find out what it would have done when I
took the second King, since it crashed a move later.
It wasn't my computer, so I never got the chance
to play it again and try and duplicate the bug.
--
"Grovel, you commoners!" -- Harry Flashman, V.C.
Rick Keir -- MicroComputer Information Center, MACC
1210 West Dayton St/U Wisconsin Madison/Mad WI 53706
{allegra, ihnp4, seismo}!uwvax!uwmacc!rick