John McCarthy advocated a level playing-field like one-design sailboat races for AI competitions. having competed in some of those (sailboat races, that is), i can attest that even in one-design formulas, the field is not entirely level, as flukey winds and the occasional freighter going through the field can cause upsets of all kinds.
if you want a truly level playing field, you would have to insist on same programming language as well as same flops and bytes. And same internet connection speed and and and as a human player, i do not find it to be unfair that more often than not my opponents have greater Go processor power than me, whether because they are basically smarter or have had more/better training/teachers or whatever. one of the nice things about Go, which it shares with golf but with no other competitive recreations that i can think of offhand, is that differences in playing strengths can be compensated for by handicapping so that both sides can enjoy pitting themselves against the golf course rather than the other player per se. i used to enjoy playing tennis with a fellow much stronger than me, by introducing a form of handicapping; for every match won, the winner would have to start with one point fewer. He would start a game at -40, thus needing to win 8 points to get to deuce to my 4. my recommendation would be to not try to make rules, which would only open a Pandora's box of argumentation - and competitively-minded people are the most argumentative of all ! - but instead to introduce handicaps based on current kgs ratings. the issue of drugs in athletics was once discussed by the panellists of "Mock The Week"; Frankie Boyle suggested that there could be two kinds of Olympics, one without any rules at all (like the "America's Cup" races have settled on) so we could all enjoy seeing the spectacle of someone with giraffe-leg extensions run the 100 metres in 0.3 seconds instead of 9 and a bit (i've made up the scene as i can't remember exactly the hilarious scenario Frankie used to illustrate his great idea). i think it rather boils down to whether you see computer Go tournaments as "mine's bigger than yours" facedowns of the programs, or of the programmers.
_______________________________________________ Computer-go mailing list Computer-go@computer-go.org http://computer-go.org/mailman/listinfo/computer-go
