Who would cheat at chess?

Three leading French chess players have been found guilty of cheating in last year’s world championship, using a mobile phone messaging system. The article is from the Vancouver Sun. This is even worse than those scaliwags who cheat at sports by taking stearoids. Is winning really that important? I guess part of the problem is that there are computer programs that play chess very very well.

I haven’t played a game of chess in years. I much prefer the game of Go. So far, I believe Go programs don’t play at expert levels. I don’t know how actively programers are working on this problem.  This from the article I linked to:

...probably because of their use of patterns, go programs often play good shape without understanding the meaning of the moves. This is basically syntax without semantics; and it results in programs that make huge blunders that seem quite at odds with their overall level of play.

My guess is that it won’t be possible to “patch over” these blunders; in my estimation they reflect a fundamental shortcoming of existing programs. Specifically, I think that no program will reach the “true” 1-dan level without a creditable life & death analysis module. Of course, programmers will develop these, eventually, but I’m inclined to classify this as a major hurdle rather than something that can be overcome by incremental improvements (though I don’t want to make too much of the semantics).

Here’s another article for reference. Aside from being a game better suited to humans than machines, I think Go is also plenty more interesting. Many years ago, my friend Vox and I played chess, and then chess and Go and finally, we abandoned chess and devoted our playing time to Go. That was back in the 80s and we’ve been battling it out over the board regularly since then, having played thousands of games. Eventually, we might even get good at it.  If Vox is available this evening, my plan is to kick his sorry butt. The only problem of course is that he has similar plans, and he’s a sly fox, that Vox, with plenty of tough moves up his sleeve.