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Chess Dispute: Kasparov vs. the World vs. MSN
from the who-made-what-move-when dept.
The following is by Richard Bean, Queensland, Australia.
Starting June 19, 1999, an experiment in playing chess over the Internet was held at the Microsoft Network's Gaming Zone. The world's highest rated player, de jure world champion Gary Kasparov, was to play a game versus "The World" at a rate of one move every 24 hours. After Kasparov decided on his move, he would send it to four expert teenage analysts who would suggest moves for "The World" with analysis. Internet users were to vote for whichever move they preferred, with the move receiving the highest number of votes being played. Voting was by use of Microsoft Zone software or, later, simply authenticated by entering a valid email address.
In the course of the game, it became obvious that the effort being put in by one analyst, US Women's Champion Irina Krush, far exceeded that being put in by the other 3 analysts (French Grandmaster Etienne Bacrot, US International Master Florin Felecan, and the German Elisabeth Paehtz). The quality of her work and the number of lines analyzed by her dwarfed anything the other analysts provided. She was aided by several grandmasters, the St Petersburg Grandmaster Chess School, and most of all by the World Team Strategy Bulletin Board. She became the unofficial team leader, and of the first 57 moves, her recommendation was played 53 times by "The World" (the exceptions were moves 3, 6, 51 and 52).
At move 51, the play had been virtually forced since move 40, and the World Team Strategy BBS had determined that the best move was 51... Kb1-a1; this move was recommended by Irina and endorsed by the GM Chess School. However, 51... b7-b5, the recommendation of Elisabeth Paehtz, was played. A BBS member, Jose Unodos, claimed to have "stuffed the vote" simply by entering multiple different email addresses and voting repeatedly for the same move. To test whether this worked, another BBS member, Martin Sims, stuffed the vote about 250 times on move 53 for a move that no-one else would play - 53... Qd1-e2, giving the Black Queen away for nothing with check, which would never be played by a sane player. This move made it into the top five votes (search for d1-e2), proving that vote-stuffing was possible by another method - creating multiple Zone IDs while still using the same IP address. Previous Microsoft denials that vote-stuffing was possible became a change in policy - non-Windows users could not vote, as at the beginning of the game.
On move 58, due to a problem with delayed e-mail, Irina Krush did not receive Kasparov's move until after 1am EST, when she had gone to bed. Due to school tests the next day she could not post her analysis until later. Microsoft was warned that her move recommendation would be delayed. It had been determined beyond doubt on the Strategy BBS that 58...Qf3-e4 lost and 58...Qf3-f5 was forced to retain drawing chances. (The endgame was too complicated to say for certain what the correct result should be - 6-piece endgame tablebases would determine it for certain but would require vast amounts of computer time & memory to generate.) Paehtz & Bacrot, who did not follow the BBS, recommended Qf3-e4, Felecan recommended Qf3-f5, and Krush's move recommendation was never posted. (Krush's recommendations were almost unanimously followed up to this point, even in the case of the other 3 analysts recommending one move and Krush recommending another. Hence, had her analysis been posted, Qf3-f5 would have been played, as it would have been a 2-2 split with Irina explicitly stating that Qf3-e4 was a losing move.)
E-mail posted by Smartchess, Irina's corporate sponsor, demonstrated that her recommendation had been sent at 12:20pm PST. The submission was repeated at 5:10pm PST. The voting page at the Zone claimed throughout the voting period that "Irina's move recommendation will appear here shortly." Irina continued to post to the Microsoft BBS, demonstrating that any network problem was not at Smartchess's end. After voting began, Microsoft corrected a mis-spelling of Kasparov's name on the Zone webpage without updating Irina's analysis.
On previous moves, a similar message had appeared for other analysts' delayed recommendations, with the analysis being posted later. On move 58, with Irina's analysis not posted, the moderator, Grandmaster Daniel King, calling 58...Qf3-e4 a "sensible option", and the analysts 2-1 in favour of the losing move Qf3-e4, it won the vote and was played.
Outrage ensued on the BBS, and in the live chat with Danny King, Microsoft representatives attempted to smooth over the furore. Acknowledging that Krush's move recommendation was sent at 12:20pm PST, Microsoft spokesman Eddie Ranchigoda, Marketing Manager for the MSN Gaming Zone, stated that it was "not received by MS e-mail till after 4:00 PT [after which] we generally do not have resources to update the site unless an emergency occurs." (Apparently, even though voting was a 24-hour international affair, no-one at Microsoft realised the importance of Irina's contribution or worked after 4pm.) Another spokesman, "Ben", implicity acknowledged that vote-stuffing was possible, stating that Microsoft "generally [relied] on the honor of the World Team members to keep the game on track" (without explaining how Kasparov could have been prevented from stuffing the vote with a second-best move himself).
As a protest against what was seen as Microsoft incompetence and/or malevolence, and in an attempt to leave a lasting memorial of move 58 events, BBS members rallied together to vote for 59... Qe1, another move which gave the queen away for free with check. This won the vote with 66.27% of the votes. Despite this being a legal move with many members having voted for it exactly once, Microsoft "disqualified" the move by deleting all votes for it, due to alleged vote-stuffing, without explaining how it had been detected at that point and not before. The final tally of the modified vote-count added to 100.07%.
The event showed that World Team discussion on the BBS, led by Irina Krush, and assisted by computers could provide a series of moves equal in quality to Kasparov's. However, due to the fact that an e-mail was delayed on Microsoft servers, and despite an advance warning that an analyst's move recommendation would be delayed, a losing move was played at move 58 due to Microsoft's failure to post Krush's analysis. On the next move, BBS users were deprived of their opportunity to protest the handling of move 58 due to the disqualification of votes for a perfectly legal move. International Master Ken Regan, an associate professor of Computer Science at Buffalo, among others, called for a Microsoft explanation of this failure in electronic democracy, which had not been delivered as of this writing.
A newbot shows no major newspapers have yet covered the story; however, other accounts can be found at a Norwegian net newspaper and a German chess newsletter.
(Note: The MSNBC BBS articles have a 48-hour expiry time and hence copies have been provided rather than the original links. The expiry time, as well as the 55-character column width making URLs difficult to include in text, was introduced as the game dragged on longer than expected.)
Cheating (Score:3)
Match fixing. (Score:4)
cheating? (Score:3)
I'd be very careful of accusing anyone of cheating. I think that this is a simple cock-up, probably bought about by a simple "Not My Problem" attitude somewhere along the chain...
Would this have been posted had been any other company than Microsoft running the show? I wonder...
No winners... (Score:3)
It's a shame that in order to get MSN to admit to problems, an interesting experiment had to be ruined by forcing selection of second-best and irrational moves
Neither Kasparov nor the World can claim true victory. And MSN isn't a winner either. Rematch? I'm sure the world wants it.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse RocKeT [mibsoftware.com]: Efficient awareness for software reuse
Free WWW site lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.
Monday morning, 6am PDT... (Score:3)
Boilerplate denials and coverage in the technical press will follow later in the day. The mainstream press will pick it up later in the week.
Business as usual.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Interesting parallel with BBC Gates Interview. (Score:5)
Kasparov Vs. Slashdot Vs. Slashdot (Score:4)
E-mail rigging (Score:4)
As for vote stuffing, reminds me of the time that Steps didn't win at some Brit music award thingy, of course they were miffed, the night before they had been ahead in the poll. But suddenly, a large number of votes came in for the hitherto-unrenowned Belle and Sebastian (Edinburgh popgroup). Apparently 12% of the votes had been from Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities in the last day. This is an example where all the e-mails were genuine, all the people voting were different, yet the poll was rigged. (Spam works).
In another example, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (a while back) noticed a huge number of votes coming in for a very unlikely candidate, Justin Fashanu, and disqualified him from the competition. But this was only because he stuck out like a sore thumb. If it had been a more likely candidate, chances are they might have got through this net.
Got to come up with some other way of validating e-mail polls. Phone polls used to work quite well because people only have a few phone numbers and each call would run up a nice little bill, enough discouragement, and a lot of effort just for little impact. But here, with dynamic IP addresses, millions of potential e-mail addresses per person, and at little cost to the end user, how do you guard against it?!
Re:Match fixing. (Score:4)
Laugh it up, while you can. But someday it's going to be a game of Solitaire -- and then the Windows users will kick everyone else's asses.
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This is PR not electronic democracy (Score:5)
People seem to want it both ways. First, this is a great test of "collective thinking" against the world champion, and then second, they get upset because the Krush/Kasparov duel got interrupted for technical reasons and they were forced to think for themselves.
And the suggestion that Kasparov might cheat is ludicrous.
As a separate aside, on the topic of whether this game "proves" that Krush and several grandmasters and lots of computer time can produce moves at Kasparov's level, I'll quote analyst commentary from move 3 about Kasparov's choice of move:
So, yes, Krush and "The World" can rival Kasparov... as long as he isn't trying his hardest.
-XDG
Re:on a chess related note (Score:5)
Chess has a point rating system determined by sancitoned tournament play. The higher ranked your opponent the more points you can gain from beating them. If I remember correctly Grandmaster is 100 thousand points. I might be very very wrong about that, but it's what I remember.
http://www.igl.net/echess/
uses a simpler Ladder system of ranking whereby you start out unranked, then play up the ladder by defeating opponents above you. This is the simplest form of ranking system.
http://www.chess.net
may have more info on ranking systems somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
http://www.ishipress.com/chess.htm
Has a LOT of Chess info, including info on previous grandmasters and world champs.
http://www.worldfide.com/
Is the website for one of the major world chess organizations.
http://www.ishipress.com/ratingre.htm
Has information about the current rating system and its problems.
I hope this helps, if you need more info on anything e-mail me or ask me here.
Kintanon
A possibility (Score:3)
If I were sexist, or elitist, I'd also eliminate the top woman chess player.
Of course, MSNBC couldn't possibly be doing any of these things. They're -far- too mature and sensible. Honest!
IMHO, this shows how emotional corruption is just as insidious and destructive as any other kind. Banning views contrary to their own is no way to run an open tournament. If that's how they want to play, why aren't they just entering their own moves? It would be more honest of them to do so!
As far as ballot-stuffing is concerned, they are =QUITE= capable of preventing that. They have NO excuse, whatsoever. Even using cookies would limit it, though if they wanted to be a bit more thorough, they could be issuing browser-side certificates. A simple check for IP address, cookie and/or certificate, and rate of vote entry would effectively block most trivial forms of ballot stuffing.
But, no! MSNBC insists that people play fair, unless they don't like the move, in which case it's cheating, and they'll insert their own preference instead.
Sorry, but cheating by admins is just as unacceptable, in MY book, as cheating by anyone else. There can be NO exceptions.
As for "but... but... our mail server didn't get the message!" - Quit the whining! First off, I don't believe that, in the least. MSNBC's mail system is perfectly adequate for the job, and mail queues are typically set to 30 minutes, not 3 hours. Secondly, if MSNBC's mail servers AREN'T capable of handling the load, it's their responsibility to upgrade them, and ensure that their systems can support their users, NOT the job of the users to compensate for the failings of MSNBC.
P.S. To whom it may concern - a typo is an emergency, but an entry by the most successful panelist is a mere triviality? You wouldn't be planning on running for Congress, would you?
An insider notes (Score:3)
1) Given a good leader, the world put up a damn good fight. I'm not sure how many positions were analized but it was really a good group effort. Even deep blue would have been in trouble.
2) Style is everything. There where several points in the game where the world could play offensively or defensely. For the most part, the world played offensively almost with reckless abandon.
3) MS sucks. They really tryed their hardest to put the world at an disadvantage. Only one of the anylists was allowed to follow the discussion board, and they where not allowed to talk to each other.
4) Trolls suck. The discussion board was full of garbage posts and flamebait - it was a wonder that anything got done. On top of that, any Joe that came along could vote what he liked without even discussing the alternatives.
5) I want a replay. PR stunt or not, most of us in the know learned a ton of stuff from GK. My rateing probally has tripled since the start of the game. The slow pace was nice, kind of like a school class. I'd like to see more games played (or at least followed) this way.
via slashdot polls... (Score:3)
- Ke1-f1
- Orange
- Merangue
- Hemos Sucks/Rob Sucks/Kasperov Sucks
Kasparov quote (Score:3)
Then he was beaten by a machine and went down in history for it.
Re:I dont think MS is to blame for this one. (Score:3)
After the first prankster pointed out the problem, the MS team examined their code as came back with a "no way". So a second (external) guy had to verify it. And not only did he do that, but without access to the code he came back with a different way to break it. Two exploits, and the MS team couldn't tell by looking at their own code? Even after having one of the exploits pointed out to them?
And of course when they couldn't deny it anymore they came back with their standard quick fix: turn off features. When will they learn to examine features before they implement them? And simply not implement them if they are inherently insecure?
So this is important with respect to what it tells the world about Micorsoft's corporate culture. And their ability/willingness to learn from similar mistakes in the past.
Or perhaps they merely didn't put their best people on it? But you'd have to wonder about a company that sets up a high-visibility PR stunt and doesn't bother to staff it to succede. Don't they care about anything? If they don't put their top people on their own PR ventures, what kind of people are they going to put on the things I need?
No explanation seems to give them a clean slate. Sure, security is hard and bugs happen, but that's all the more reason to be able to respond promptly and appropriately.
The only reason not to view this as a big pie in MS's face is the fact that it's about the 100th pie this year, and individual pies just don't make much difference anymore.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Re:Kasparov Vs. Slashdot Vs. Slashdot (Score:3)
Your Chess Online: Kasparov vs. Slashdot
Today, we'll be taking suggestions for move 19; as always, the best suggestions (as selected by Slashdot's random moderators) will be submitted to the board.
CmdrTaco: I wish to apologize for the crashing of the server at move 12; thanks to everyone who alerted me to this emergency...
JonKatz: "Slashdot's King Pawn opening at Move 1 was an epiphany of chess awareness for geeks and a singular triumph of the Open Source Software (OSS) movement."
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