IWB wrote:Hello
Vasik Rajlich wrote:
The programmer may be just as hard to contact during a live event as during an online event.
Requiring an operator at the playing site is nothing more than a hoop to jump through. It deters some participants (and yes, that could include some cheaters).
Vas
I was an operator in the past by myself but I have to agree that on a major event like a WC the programers availibility is a must! That doesnt mean that he has to make every move, but he/she has to be physicaly available in the tournament hall!
I also have to agree with what you have written more on top, the two major things are many participants and internet coverage of any game!
I just dont want a WC happen on the internet as it makes it even
easier to cheat!
It just crossed my mind that the next WC for humans can be played on an internet chess server ... I believe no one of the human players would agree!
Have a nice sunday
Ingo
Let me posit the exact counter position to your message.
You as an operator see the situation at the playing hall with its conditions but you lightly ignore the overall aspects.
If we see computerchess as a sport for the whole world then it's aöready a sort of violation against fairness if participants from South, North America or Canada or take also Australia and New Zealand, have no chance at all to be in your hall due to the high costs.
The whole event for years now already has the content of a biased organisation with its center in Europe and the choice of exotic sites for the organisers from GB, The Netherlands and Germany mainly.
Nobody ever cared. Where was your olympic spirit? What you confound is that this is about a computerchess event with machines who still are made so that the help of operators is necessary but which shouldnt be the case. The presence of operators and programmers is unneccessary if it's really about the created machines and their performance, otherwise it already becomes a form of *possible* influencing by the human hands.
If now through the internet technology something more with fairness and justice is feasable then this should be done.
It's really sounding with unintentional irony if now former operators come and want to warn before the many possibilities of cheating when formerly the whole event was factually a cheat against the many computerchess talents who had no chance to participate, but this never was of any concern for you.
What will you more expect to see of an unfair influence through seemingly sober decisions than the case with Shredder vs Jonny blundering no matter for what reasons, the programmer of the normally winning program is in a solidarity conflict with his German buddy whose forfait he doesnt accept and the arbiter then orders the continuation of a normally lost game that then ended in a win and later Shredder won the whole event! We have here the example of a clear case of false decisions on the basis of understandable and typical human interrelations in small in-groups, I am trying to avoid the ugly term that is normally used for such incredible failures. And these can only happen because the deciding people are so much educated and experienced. That allows them to manipulate so that the attending guys dont even feel what was wrong.
That would be impossible to do on the internet with clear rules and possibly an arbiter who has no close relations with any of the participants. Who is simply out of reach for begged or indirectly awaited and hoped unallowed help.
But the scandal number one is the extreme desinterest of the organisers and attending VIP that they, if, like in this case, they are focussed on the literally attending folks and NOT someone outside the playing site. Hence it's absolutely of secondary interest for such people, how the notes, the evidence for the games in the event, become known in the public. Normally they would think that the games could also be published in the journal of ICGA which comes out every three months.
As if the championship were a sort of Antarctic expedition whose media coverage would also take some 6 months at least to cut the last pictures for the documentation. This is of course ridiculous in times of a possible direct transmission of the moves worldwide.
The many violations against the academic spirit are so numerous that there is nothing left of something superior but the whole idea of a competition is spoiled by the attending board with their extra rights of VIP to travel at interesting places under the complete ignorance for the interests of spectators worldwide to see the games. Never again than in Paris 1998 this sort of ideosyncrasy had manifested itself better. The organisers had found a place in the famous bourse in Paris and allegedly [sic!] they couldnt get any internet connection there...
I dont ask you in personal but all who ever attended such biased events of the ICCA, where were you to create a reform or if necessary a revolution at the moment on the spot? Didnt you realise the hoax of such events in modern times with the technology available?
It's high time to change the whole mode into a fair competition for all possible talents around the globe to attend. The whole question of cheating is secondary because the test results for all entities are daily updated.
The special events like a Wch are in all sports the main fun besides ranking lists. Exactly because there is always the chance for surprising results. But this is for the fun of the players and their fans worldwide and NOT primarily for the fun of the organisers or VIP.
