Chess Buzz for July 4, 1997

This Week's Topic: What's Fair in Chess?

"When Justice needs a place to hide, She plays chess."
French proverb

This week in the buzz: What's Fair in Chess? Oh, we all know chessplayers are calm, unemotional, logical, dispassionate, right? (Stop laughing!) It just so happens that this week was a big week for discussion of what's really fair in chess. What should computers do, or not do? How should we all adjust to play on the Internet? Nobody had a lot of answers--or maybe it's fairer to say everyone had a lot of answers, but not too many people agreed! The buzz this week looks at some of the hot topics in the World Chess Community on "playing fair".

A World Champion speaks: If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em!

Some of the hottest buzz came from an interview with Garry Kasparov, recently defeated by Deep Blue in their man/machine rematch. Kasparov reportedly suggested that Grandmasters be allowed to consult laptop computers during major international events. He said this would elevate the level of play and give the fans a better quality of match to watch.

All of this came about in part because of an awareness that what computer players do just isn't the same as the human beings. In human chess, we distinguish very sharply between correspondence chess rules, where humans are allowed to move the pieces, consult reference books, and make notes, and "over the board play", where everything is supposed to rely on an all too frequently faulty memory. Computers, simply because of the way they're built, play much more like human correspondence players--they consult their own references during the event. Apparently prior to the Deep Blue match Kasparov had requested match conditions that would have also have allowed him to consult opening databases and endgame tables during the event. IBM turned him down, for understandable reasons--it would have diluted the impact of the event they were sponsoring. But from a strict fairness issue, it's a good question: do we level the playing field for humans by allowing them to use something more than just memory?

Kasparov's suggestion is being treated very seriously by a number of players. Many have suggested that while humans still compete in the Olympics' 100 meter races, the equivalent of totally unassisted play, we also like to watch the Indy 500 races, a combination of human and machine.

We're not quite ready for the Borg, but the question of how and when it's fair for humans to consult computers, either when playing against computers or when playing against each other, was a hot topic this week. Experimental HIRN matches in which a team of two computers and one human play, have indicated that two 2400 computers plus one 2200 human may equal a 2600 "cyborg" team. But the consequences for serious match play are still untested. Would the GM be reduced to being just an operator? Would promising juniors get classes in speed typing instead of Rook and Pawn endgames? Would it be better or worse for chess? And, of course--would it be fair?

In search of your perfect game? For more information on playing correspondence chess, either by surface or e-mail, see our correspondence chess forum.

Adjusting to the Internet

The Internet brings new convenience--and new frustration--to playing chess. One popular chess server recently instituted a new rule: ultrafast games would be automatically lost if a player disconnected during a game. The fact is, disconnections do happen, in ways that would never occur in over the board play. Through no fault of your own, you can lose a connection and need to sign back on. Automatic adjournments have been the norm at most servers, and work well for games of 10, 15 minutes or more. But after all, when a game is based on a time control of only a second or two per move, it was just too unfair if a player could disconnect, take 30 or 40 seconds to study the position, then sign back on and play off an automatic adjournment. Sounds fair, right?

Unfortunately, the new rule was instituted during a week when the Internet decided to play tricks on a large group of people going through a popular router path, and many were disconnected. Frequently. With the consequent loss of any ultrafast games.

Just what is "fair" under these circumstances? The old rule led to the guilty taking advantage of those following the rules. The new rule punishes the innocent. It's a tricky situation. As more and more play happens over the Internet, we're going to run into more situations like this, where over-the-board and correspondence rules just don't quite stretch to fit the situation. Turn up your logic circuits--we may need those laptops just to come up with the right rules to play!

The Name Game

Finally--was it fair to confuse your poor hardworking Chess Life Online reporters by having one family with two great players on a USCF Top 50 list?

Well, that's the buzz for this week.

Have a hot story for us? A trend you want us to look into? An item only chessplayers can appreciate? Write webmaster@uschess.org

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