Asri-unix.134 net.games utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!menlo70!sri-unix!mclure Fri Nov 20 16:06:46 1981 more on chess tournament Here's some additional information about the tournament. When questioned, Ken Thompson felt that there would be a mechanical world champion in about 20-30 years. Most of the other programmers were a bit more optimistic. The programmers were also asked how their personal ratings compared to their programs'. Thompson is about a 1100-1300 player (about a full 1000 points below his program!). One other programmer, Claude Jarry from Montreal, barely knew how to move the pieces, but his program was one of the better ones. At least two of the programs, BELLE and CRAY BLITZ (running on a CRAY-1) were playing at master level (barely). I don't think the other top finished, NUCHESS (rewrite of Chess 4.x in Fortran) had been rated in human tournaments. There was considerable doubt at the beginning of the 4th round as to whether BELLE would win the tournament. It had a score of 2.5 while its 4th round competitor, CRAY BLITZ, had a perfect score of 3.0. So it really depended on the game between them. If BELLE won, and NUCHESS had won, BELLE would have tied for first place with NUCHESS. As it was, NUCHESS only drew (or lost), I forget, and BELLE managed to squeak by CRAY BLITZ after sacrificing two pawns in its opening book. The tournament director, international master Mike Valvo, for a considerable period of the game, felt that BELLE would lose, but at the last moment, it pulled some sneaky tactics out, and tied up CRAY BLITZ's bishop and rook on the back rank, so it was essentially playing with two extra pieces; CRAY BLITZ's loss deprived it of first place, and BELLE successfully defended its title. ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.