Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Mar 6, 2016 10:02 PM UTC:
As I alluded to much earlier in this thread, the problem with computers
being good (let alone dominant) at chess (or its variants) is at least
twofold in my eyes, and that would be irrespective of whether comparing
human and computer play is like comparing apples and oranges:
1) Computers being dominant at chess, for example, hurts the estimation of
chess and chess players in the eyes of the public, which can only be
educated so much (if they buy it) that it is a case of 'apples and
oranges';
2) Far more importantly, perhaps, is that cheating in chess (for instance)
by means of computer assistance can become rife, if not yet in over-the
board events, then it certainly already has in the play of internet chess,
for example. I don't think I need list the ways this can be seriously
harmful to the game, such as for its esteem by the public. That's even if
tournament directors can do a relatively good job of catching cheaters. The
danger of even purely partner-assisted cheating in the card game of Bridge
may be one of the reasons why there is little in the way of cash prizes
offered in that game's competitions, except in high level play, such as
world championship play, where even just recently there was another case of
cheating, I seem to recall.
Perhaps playing a variant that uses Betza's "Many rules in one game", as linked to much earlier by George, would be the way that's best suited to get around the problem of neural net programming techniques (apparently about to slay the human dominance of Go) or the coming age of quantum computing power on top of that. However, I'm not at all sure of how often games are played that use "Many Rules", or how popular such games could possibly become. So far I haven't noticed any examples as played on Game Courier, for instance, so I'm wondering a little how easy it is to make a Game Courier preset for such, or even enjoy playing such.
