HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: Peter_Stockhausen@mindlink.bc.ca (Peter Stockhausen)
Subject: Re: Fischer-Polgar Match
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 21:42:43 GMT

> Paul Epstein writes:
>
> Msg-ID: <1992Nov3.213819.29847@math.utexas.edu>
> Posted: Tue, 3 Nov 1992 21:38:19
>
> Org.  : University of Texas at Austin Mathematics
>
> wchen@beirut.berkeley.edu (William Chen) writes:
>
> >My prediction?  Judit wins 12-0.  Fischer IS going to give knight odds,
> >isn't he?  <smileys where appropriate>
>
> >Bill
>
> Fischer apparently once said that he could give any woman knight odds and
> still win.
>
>

He did say this, but almost 20 years ago. Nobody took him up on it
so I guess that he was right, at the time. I do not think that any
such offer can be expected today.
Anyhow, on even terms, Fischer should beat Judith by 8:4 or 7:5.
Peter
--

----------------------------------------------------------------
   Peter_Stockhausen@mindlink.bc.ca         Vancouver, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------


Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: janeric@control.lth.se (Jan Eric Larsson)
Subject: What is the current state of Othello game-playing?
Organization: Dept. Automatic Control, Lund Inst. of Technology, Sweden
Distribution: rec
Date: 9 Nov 92 16:13:52



Hi!

I am wondering about the current state of Othello game research. A
group at the Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden, has talked about
some plans for building an Othello machine, and they have asked me for
game-playing advice. I know a bit about chess, but I'm not all that
updated on Othello. We would be very grateful if someone could help us
come in contact with people who could answer some of the following
questions:

*  What are the best Othello programs nowadays? Is BILL (Mahajan, et
   el.), still representative of what can be achieved? What is the
   current strength of BILL, on the best hardware?

*  Are there any Othello machines out there?

*  Are there any good results in parallel Othello implementations?

References, e-mail addresses, everything is welcome!


Jan Eric Larsson                  JanEric@Control.LTH.Se      +46 46 108795
Department of Automatic Control
Lund Institute of Technology     "We watched the thermocouples dance to the
Box 118, S-221 00 LUND, Sweden    spirited tunes of a high frequency band."


Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: schmidt@uxmail.ust.hk (DR. ROY SCHMIDT)
Subject: Re: Davis-Fedorowicz, U.S. Open, Round 1, Atlanta, 1980
Organization: Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 03:48:07 GMT

In article <1992Nov9.035843.1@hmcvax.claremont.edu> abriggs@hmcvax.claremont.edu writes:
>In article <1992Nov8.220421.27440@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU>, qazqaz@Muir.Stanford.EDU (Mike Perkins) writes:
>> 
>> Recently someone posted this game which reached this position after 23.Bf6!:
>> 
>>  -----------------------
>> |          q* r* b* k*   |8     The game continued 23. ... Bc5+ 24.Kf1 Bf2
>> |    b*          p* p* p*|7     25.Bf7+ Kf8 26.Qh7 gf 27.Bg6  1 - 0
>> |    p*       p* B       |6
>> |          p*       P  B |5     I don't see what would happen after 
>> |       p*       P     Q |4     23. ... gf6
>> |    P     P           R |3
>> |          r*          P |2     I looked and looked and don't see the catch.
>> |       R           K    |1     Can anyone help me?
>>  ------------------------
>>   a  b  c  d  e  f  g  h
>> 
>> mike perkins
>
>Unless I'm mistaken..   23 ... f6  24 BxQ and that's pretty much it for black.

You are mistaken.  After 23. ... gf, the Bishop is gone, can't take the
Queen.  

But, after 23. ... gf, White would play Bxf7+ and mate quickly follows.
A very nice game.


-- 
Roy Schmidt        schmidt@usthk.ust.hk        schmidt@uxmail.ust.hk
Business Information Systems Dept, School of Business and Management
         The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
                Clearwater Bay,  Sai Kung,  HONG KONG
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: Bruce_Harper@mindlink.bc.ca (Bruce Harper)
Subject: Re: David Bronstein visits the US - questions
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 23:50:46 GMT

Ask Grandmaster Bronstein who he thinks was the strongest player never to win
the world championship (you know my opinion).
From: ekw@world.std.com (Elliott C Winslow)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: cowboy crushes scratchy on ics
Summary: XTRACT!
Date: 12 Nov 92 23:12:06 GMT
Organization: The World Public Access UNIX, Brookline, MA

In article <BxM4Fn.GnD@news.orst.edu>
linb@ucs.orst.edu (Benjamin Lin) writes:
> In article <CUBAN.92Nov12091222@w20-575-31.mit.edu>
> cuban@athena.mit.edu (Federico A Garcia) writes:
>> How did you manage to get an automail/mail listing of that game on
>> ICS?  Neither of the two commands has worked in weeks.  Is this going
>> to be fixed any time soon?
> Nope, I couldn't use automail/mail either :-(
> I just copied the moves from the screen.  That is why the game I posted
> was incomplete...
Just to note one of the nic things about the GIICS program (from 1.51 on),
there is a utility provided, xtract, *with* source, that will extract the
games from the file giics.log. (which contains all sessions appended, so i
hope youze guys are remembering to kill it off every now and then! :-)

It chokes ever so easily, and dumps the games out in the dreaded computer
algebraic notation, but hey!  It works.  It was "the tool for the job"
appearing miraculously in the midst of my grousing about the end of
automail.

Hats off to Tony, the guys @valkyries.andrew.cmu.edu, and of course Michael
Moore, who got us started on this weird trip...

[and nash@nisus and anyone else I'm forgetting...]


--elliott
  Elliott Winslow IM
  ekw@world.std.com
  Assistant Editor
  Chess Life USCF
From: fsmgs@camelot.acf-lab.alaska.edu (Michael Schmahl [Black-Robe Mage])
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: ICS Ratings -- Average Ratings -- Provisional Ratings
Date: 12 Nov 92 21:17:36 GMT
Article-I.D.: raven.1992Nov12.211736.28120
Organization: University of Alaska Computer Network

E. Mark Ping writes
> In article <9211092219.aa02409@Bonnie.ics.uci.edu> jriechel@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU  
writes:
> }
> }Why not start newcomers ratings to zero, and reset all currently rated
> }players, also, to a rating of zero?  If your rating was ever exactly
> }zero, then the system could be programmed to display =PAR= instead of 0.
> }
> }With this system, there would be no pretension to approximating the USCF
> }and FIDE systems.  Of course, it would still use Elo's equations, but it
> }would LOOK DIFFERENT.  Which is usually enough to convince people it's
> }unique.
> }
> }James Riechel
> 
> This has the same problem as the current system.  All of the ratings will
> gravitate towards 0 instead of 1000 or 1500, but the problem remains:  in
> the current system, the differences between rated players is decreasing as
> everyone moves toward the averages.  This problem would probably be solved
> by having the provisional player's score not affect the opponents rating
> until around 5-10 games are played.  That's not perfect either, but there
> are no tournaments on the ICS (except for blitz), so there's no easy way to
> use the provisional player's post-tournament rating to calculate into the
> other players rating.
> 
> ------------
> E. Mark Ping
> emarkp@soda.Berkeley.EDU
> 
>   "Stand aside, I take large steps."  --Michael Dorn
>   "Say, that's a nice bike."          --Cyberdyne Systems T-1000
>   "Pituita es."                       --Unknown Latin Scholar

Perhaps some other form of normalization is desirable.  Say under the assumption  
that the distibution of ratings is apporximately normal, take the average of  
everyone's ratings, subtract that from the ratings, divide by the standard  
deviation, multiply by the desired standard deviation (probably about 300) and add  
the desired average.  The effect will be that people will still have the same  
distribution and be in the same place relative to the population, but you can get  
better approximations and don't have to worry about rating degradation.

--
The secretary says he's on another line.  
Can I hold for a long, long time?   -TMBG
Michael Schmahl a.k.a. Black-Robe Mage
Date: Tuesday, 3 Nov 1992 12:01:16 EST
From: <RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu>
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: Once rated, always rated?

you haven't played in ten years? what you do is wait ten more years,
then play a match for five million bucks.


Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: nickh@CS.CMU.EDU (Nick Haines)
Subject: Re: Computer WM?
Originator: nickh@VOILA.VENARI.CS.CMU.EDU
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University
Date: Thu, 5 Nov 1992 16:46:15 GMT

In article <Bx9227.A6G.1@cs.cmu.edu> pjj+@cs.cmu.edu (Peter Jansen) writes:

   The 7th World Computer-Chess Championship will be held in
   Madrid (Spain), November 23-27, 1992.

[etc]

Note that the latest issue of the CACM has complete games, some with
commentary, from the recent ACM computer chess championship.

Nick Haines nickh@cmu.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: Peter_Stockhausen@mindlink.bc.ca (Peter Stockhausen)
Subject: Re: 22d Annual ACM International Chess Championship
Organization: MIND LINK! - British Columbia, Canada
Date: Tue, 10 Nov 1992 17:07:40 GMT

> Jerry Bryan writes:
>
> Msg-ID: <92314.105625BRYAN@wvnvm.wvnet.edu>
> Posted: Monday, 9 Nov 1992 10:56
>
> My November Communications of the ACM just came.  There is an
> article entitled The 22d Annual ACM International Computer Chess
> Championship.  The authors are Danny Kopec, Monty Newborn, and Mike Valvo.
>
> The tournament was won by Deep Thought II.  I found the most interesting
> game to be one between MEPHISTO and LACHEX.  MEPHISTO won by under-
> promoting a pawn.  I quote from the article.
>
>   MEPHISTO must have used one of its nine lives in its game with
>   LACHEX.  LACHEX was never programmed for under-promotion and
>   got hit with a knight promotion accompanied by a double check.
>   Bert Wendroff never programmed under-promotion because "... it
>   never came up."  Last night he left before the game was over and
>   was greeted with a phone call:  "It came up."
>
> I would be happy to post some of the games from the article if anybody
> is interested.

Games are always much appreciated.
peter

--

----------------------------------------------------------------
   Peter_Stockhausen@mindlink.bc.ca         Vancouver, Canada
----------------------------------------------------------------


Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: scarfman@wam.umd.edu (Jonathan Smith)
Subject: ICS help
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 14:39:33 GMT

I tried to reach the elm ICS but am having problems.. could someone send the current address?!

-------------------------------------------------------------
From Jonathan H. Smith       || Cognito Ergo Calvino & Hobbes
Of the University of Maryland||------------------------------ 
in College Park		     ||  
			     || Now Residing in England
"What color is your scarf?"  || At the University of Bristol
-------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: baljeual@uther.calvin.edu (Alan Baljeu)
Subject: Re: Why I Hate the ICS rating system.
Organization: Calvin College
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 17:41:31 GMT

sloan@cis.uab.edu (Kenneth Sloan) writes:

>What are the *goals* of the ICS system?  Is the intent to match USCF
>ratings?  Player-by-player (for those with ratings in each system)?
>Statistically? How detailed?  Mean and std dev?

If you ask me, I think a good goal is to have a player of constant strength
have a constant rating.  Then a person can tell if (s)he is improving,
staying the same, or going senile.  Other than that, it doesn't really matter
to me.
From: furong@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (sun furong)
Subject: help on chose a book
Summary: need a book for beginer
Keywords: book
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 21:20:26 GMT

My son is 8 years old he is intrested in play chess. I am not a player,
I will appreciate anybody can introduce a good beginer book which is 
suitable for 8 years old.

Thanks in advance.
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: uzun@crash.cts.com (Roger Uzun)
Subject: Gnufour on ICS
Organization: CTS Network Services (crash, ctsnet), El Cajon, CA
Date: 10 Nov 92 16:03:02 PST

I made the mistake of playing my first 8-9 games or so on ICS
as Blitz against gnufour, before I could really read the ascii board,
and did not know how to balance time properly, or use the refresh command.
Needless to say I lost all games on time, and have been somewhat intimidated
by Gnufour since then.  The other day I played it again, and was winning
convincingly when I was inadvertently logged off the ICS.  No big
deal, it was an unreg match anyway.
I played gnufour last night and had a most unusual game, it had me
in what was a forced mate situation, it could have mated me in
5-6 moves (10 min Blitz Game).  I offered it a piece to get
out of mate, and the program took it!  I then battled back,
and gnufour subsequently went into brain lock, and I won on time.

Are computer programs really this dumb, or is gnufour just lame?
It makes me wonder how the darn program (gnufour) gets me in
trouble so often, I am like 2-8 against it, and should have
lost last night.
Would a better program like MChess give up a mating combo for a pawn?

-Roger
--------------------------------------------------------------
bix: ruzun
NET: uzun@crash.cts.com
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: augsburg@rtsg.mot.com (Leonard Augsburger)
Subject: Re: Fischer-Polgar Match
Organization: Motorola Inc., Cellular Infrastructure Group
Date: Fri, 6 Nov 1992 16:22:32 GMT

In article <1992Nov3.223149.12390@CSD-NewsHost.Stanford.EDU> rivin@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (Igor Rivin) writes:
>
>To be fair to Fischer, this was not a statement about women in
>general, but about the strength of female chess players in 1965, I
>think. Of course, the strongest woman then (Gaprindashvili) was weak
>GM strength, so the knight odds were pretty dubious even then.
>

Depends on the format.  In a blitz match, I say he could have
beaten any woman in the world in 1965 with Knight odds.  In
a two sided blindfold blitz match, no question he would have 
won (he was able to beat an IM in blitz blindfold).  In a slow
game though, forget it.  I don't think any given GM could beat
any other given GM given Knight odds.
From: kinne@oswego.Oswego.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Chinese Chess Rules...
Date: 5 Nov 92 23:09:46 GMT
Reply-To: kinne@oswego.Oswego.EDU ()
Distribution: usa
Organization: Instructional Computing Center, SUNY at Oswego, Oswego, NY
Originator: kinne@penelope.oswego.edu

Good Morning, Folks:

	If there is a more appropriate group to put this request into,
I'm sorry, however...

	Does anyone know where I could find, on the Net or another
Public source, a copy of the rules for Chinese Chess?  Email would
be appreciated by an eternally grateful poster...!

	(I figured we all needed something else to talk about
until the Fisher-Polger match 8-)  8-)  )

				Doc Kinne
				kinnerc@snymorva.BITNET
From: elkies@ramanujan.harvard.edu (Noam Elkies)
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: *SPOILER* Re: mate in five
Date: 10 Nov 92 16:37:48 GMT
Organization: Harvard Math Department

In article <1992Nov9.185744.4313@cbnewsh.cb.att.com>
gls@windmill.ATT.COM (Consensual Hallucination) writes:

"Those problems Harri sent me turned out to be by Kurt Richter.  Here's
"another one; it's a mate in five.
"
"		   ::    ::    ::    :: 
"		+K    +S    -P    ::    
"		   :: -K :: +S ::    :: 
"		::    ::    +P    ::    
"		   ::    ::    ::    :: 
"		::    ::    ::    ::    
"		   +P    ::    ::    :: 
"		::    ::    ::    ::    

1.b4 Kd7 2.b5 Kc8 3.b6 Kd7 4.b7 Kc6 5.b8N#!

"Remember to write your solution in Smythescript,

Not.

--Noam D. Elkies (elkies@zariski.harvard.edu)
  Dept. of Mathematics, Harvard University
Organization: Carnegie Mellon, Pittsburgh, PA
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Date: Thu, 12 Nov 1992 05:50:30 -0500 
From: John Anthony Chanak <jc79@ANDREW.CMU.EDU>
Subject: ICS abusers, was: Re: Gnufour on ICS
	<1992Nov12.072749.15591@hasler.ascom.ch>

Excerpts from netnews.rec.games.chess: 12-Nov-92 Re: Gnufour on ICS Mike
McGann %7817@hasler (814)
[part of article deleted]

> On the ICS we find that when we put something new in we get a surge of
> wins then after a few days 
> the players seem to adjust to the new play and the wins decrease. Maybe
> we should put in a
> comtinuously variable player. Also we suffer a lot from disconnect when
> losing. It seems
> lines drop with the score.

This last sentence is exactly what we plan to try stop with the
following new "rules" on ICS.  Below is an excerpt obtained from "help
abuse" while on Valkyries ICS:
*************
Abuse:

One particular form of server abuse happens when a person who is losing
a match logs out to avoid the loss in ratings points.  Should we discover
anyone doing this, they will be added to a list of users known as "abusers."
The people in this list will automatically resign their game if the connection
is lost.  We realize that people often get disconnected legitimately.  For
this reason, we must receive confirmable reports of a user doing this before
they are added to the "abusers" list.  If a person reconnects and finishes
their game, it is considered normal operation and they will definately NOT be
added to the list.

All players can see who is currently on the abusers list by typing
"help abusers"  Anyone that is "ADMIN" (shown when doing a "who") can add or 
remove people from this list.  After some amount of time, we may remove people
from the list if we deem they have learned not to behave in such an
unsportsmanlike manner.  Please note that this list only has any bearing on
registered games.
****************
This includes games against gnufour or any other chess computer.  If you
do not want to play a computer, do "help computers" to see which players
are computers, and don't play them!  Note that we can look at saved
games on disk to easily determine if the game was lost and disonnect
probable.  If Mike (or anyone else) reports users that disconnect during
a lost registered match, I am more than willing to use them as permanent
testing grounds for the abusers list.  I will *not* add people who have
done this before the abusers list came into being.

> mike

-John


Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: chachere@cui.unige.ch (CHACHERE Lawrence)
Subject: Re: USCF Ratings Committee
Organization: University of Geneva, Switzerland
Distribution: usa
Date: Mon, 9 Nov 1992 13:43:53 GMT


Since you asked, I will let you know just what I think of that
USCF rating committee - basically it is about as incompetent as
most other USCF committees.  About every six months or so, I get
a letter from USCF (despite the fact that I let my membership 
expire over a year ago, in order to protest the poor administration)
stating that they have adjusted my rating on
the basis of movement of my FIDE rating, from events outside the
US.  Not that it concerns me very much, since having a FIDE rating
kind of makes a USCF rating insignificant; but this whole policy
of adjustment is totally mathematically unsound, because the two
scales are completely independent.  Besides the fact, that my personal
tournament results outside the US are none of the USCF's business.
If the USCF is worried about USCF ratings seeming relatively inflated
compared to FIDE ratings, maybe they should just face up to the fact
that ALL US ratings are inflated, and they should subtract about 100
rating points globally, from all members.  The United States is probably
the easiest place in the world to become a "chess master"; that title
used to mean something over there when it wasn't a dime a dozen, and I
am not talking about raw numbers, but also in terms of the overall
percentage of members.

Speaking of the good old USCF, I heard a while back that Max Dlugy
was threatening to resign because the fascist USCF policy board
members were persisting to ban the democratic policy of allowing ALL
USCF members to vote.  Why is some GM unqualified to decide on issues
and for elected officers, in contrast to a few power-hungry inactive 
class B-C chess politicians who are allowed to vote?  
All I can say is the USCF is probably the ONLY thing I will not have
missed by the time I am ready to return to the US.


Lawrence Chachere
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
From: phr@telebit.com (Paul Rubin)
Subject: Re: Questions about Fischer
Organization: Telebit Corporation; Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Date: 8 Nov 92 20:52:36

    >1) Did B. Fischer kept onplaying exhibition games after he quit the world
    >   title?

    No.  He hasn't played any public matches between '72 and '92.  Rumor mill
    has it that private games were played on the condition of non-disclosure.

Not quite right.  He played two exhibitation games against the
patzer-strength chess computer MacHack VI in 1975 or 1976.
These are in the Wade+O'Connell collection and in various
computer chess anthologies, etc.
From: dweddin@uoft02.utoledo.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: POLISH OPENING...P-QN4
Date: 7 Nov 92 14:37:46 EST
Organization: University of Toledo, Computer Services

hey all,

i'm going to start expanding my opening repetoire a bit
by branching into the Polish Opening.

1. P-QN4    or   1. b4 (for you algebraic folks)

does anybody know of any *GOOD* books on the subject? pleas
include the title, author, publisher and date (or any info that
you have on the subject).


thanks!

don wedding
From: RVESTERM@vma.cc.nd.edu
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: Re: Fischer-Polgar Match
Date: 8 Nov 92 17:11:44 GMT
 <1992Nov6.171031.22537@osf.org> <1992Nov6.192347.15798@midway.uchicago.edu>
 <1992Nov7.141358.11024@uoft02.utoledo.edu>

"to improve beyond this point would require total love and commitment.
i just don't sense that she has that."
                                          -some guy posting about
                                           judit polgar

i'm curious... how do you think you would "sense" it if she DID have
"total love and commitment"?

bob vesterman.
From: jriechel@Bonnie.ICS.UCI.EDU
Newsgroups: rec.games.chess
Subject: ICS Ratings -- Average Ratings -- Provisional Ratings
Date: 10 Nov 92 06:19:31 GMT
Article-I.D.: Bonnie.9211092219.aa02409


Why not start newcomers ratings to zero, and reset all currently rated
players, also, to a rating of zero?  If your rating was ever exactly
zero, then the system could be programmed to display =PAR= instead of 0.

With this system, there would be no pretension to approximating the USCF
and FIDE systems.  Of course, it would still use Elo's equations, but it
would LOOK DIFFERENT.  Which is usually enough to convince people it's
unique.

James Riechel