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On the machines issue. Yeah, you can play against Zillions any time you want, but let's face it, Zillions may be a better-than-nothing opponent, but it's not a very good opponent. If someone had an engine that was both good and flexible, I wouldn't object to playing it. <p> But on a practical note, there's the Turing issue: how do you know whether your opponent is a machine or not? Playing a novice human can be just as dull as playing an uninspired program; and Fritz will kick your flesh-and-blood skills just as soundly as any grandmaster. And over email, you have no clue whether the 'person' who's sending you the next move is doing so from their own thought, from the machine's generation, or from some combination of the two. <p> Since there's no way to enforce the rule, why make it a rule at all? All the rule will mean is that some less-than-honest humans might go around feeling vaguely guilty that they fed a chess position into the machine for help, and some programmer will have to enter their engine under human guise to see how it performs against human beings. Why bother with the pretense at all? Let humans honestly be humans, and let machines honestly be machines. <p> Of course, some people object to playing versus machines, and since this is a matter of recreation, such prejudices may as well be humored. Why not allow machines to enter, declared as machines, and allow contestants who don't want to play them be excluded from all pairings involving a machine.