For the European Go Congress computer Go tournaments, I required
programs to be actually present. This was a debatable decision, but is
not what I propose to discuss now. I did allow people to send in their
programs; I think this was a mistake, and the purpose of this email is
to explain why.
I encouraged programmers to be present in person to run their programs.
Those who could not be present in person, I encouraged to appoint
operators for their programs. To those who could neither be present,
nor find someone in Leksand to operate it for them, I promised to find a
volunteer from among the operators already present, to operate it for
them. I anticipated, correctly, that it would be easy for me to find
such people.
Four people sent in their programs, as zip files in emails to my gmail
address which I could use in Leksand. On the day before the tournaments
I installed and tested these programs on the machines in the playing
room; and on the day of the tournaments I persuaded volunteers (Esa
Seuranen and Gunnar Farnebäck) to operate them.
All of this went smoothly, and there was no problem with any of it, so
far as I am aware.
However, something easily could have gone wrong.
Not all the programs sent as enclosures arrived at the first
attempt: gmail seems to reject some types of enclosure.
The unzipping was not all trivial, and I was hampered by being
unable to read Swedish, which the operating system of all the computers
was using.
Not all the programs ran first time, and I had to make changes to
batch files.
Not all the configuration files were correctly set for the
tournaments.
I was, perhaps, lucky in having two very competent programmers
available as volunteer operators. In fact they had to do little more
than click on batch files, but things might have been different.
So, all the tasks I undertook were easy, and I performed them right.
But there was a significant risk of something going wrong. If I had been
less competent, or had left less time for preparation, we might now have
an entrant complaining "Nick, it's entirely you fault my program didn't
get to play. All you had to do was edit the batch file to refer to the
correct drive letter for where you chose to install the program. Surely
you could have managed that? You even did it right for one of the other
programs".
I don't mind the work, though it took far longer than I had expected.
What I want to avoid is the responsibility. If someone messes up the
settings of his own program (as happens often enough in the monthly KGS
events) it is unfortunate, but he has only himself to blame. If he
appoints an operator who messes up, that is also unfortunate, but it is
still no concern of the organisers. But if the tournament organiser
agrees to help, and then fails to do it right, he has to accept the
blame for running an unfair tournament. I would advise all tournament
organisers to avoid any risk of this.
Nick
That all sounds a bit serious, so here's an irrelevant anecdote to
lighten the tone.
When I first came across microcomputers, in 1981, there was a chess
program that ran on them. It played so badly that even I could beat it;
so I looked for other challenges, such as to stalemate it. I was
surprised by its behaviour when stalemated, which I assume was caused by
its being programmed to make the best move it could manage, where being
legal was an overriding, but not essential, feature of "best move".
When it was stalemated, it couldn't find a legal move, so it would make
the best illegal move it could find. This was typically to pick up my
queen, change its colour, and capture my rook with it.
--
Nick Wedd [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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