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Ideas for future of chess variants[Subject Thread] [Add Response]
Kevin Pacey wrote on Sun, Jan 20, 2019 07:52 PM UTC:

@ Aurelian:

Regarding online cheating via computer assistance, the better chess servers try to detect that for chess, but it's like an arms race in that there are a lot of chess engines out there, old and new. So, even a serious online chess competition may be an expensive proposition. Arimaa (a heavily licensed game) has it's own approved website, which runs its own world championship. Not sure how anti-computer cheating works for that, but since a couple of years ago the best computer program is now also the world's best player. For a CVs website to hold a very serious multiple CVs event online, maybe (or maybe not?) trying to prevent computer cheating is even more of a nightmare for potential organizers. Note that it seems that it's easier to take anti-computer cheating measures for offline chess events than for online ones, but then there are still costs involved in running such events.

Cyborg (Man+Machine) competitions could avoid that trouble, but for CV players I'm not sure there could be a level playing field from the point of view of who has access to the best software and hardware, alone (at least if a competition is to be online). There's also that there might be less interest in CVs cyborg competitions, as, at the least, in the case of CVs, we haven't even yet established who the best human CVs players are, if that's close to possible.

One irony here is that long ago I read a very old book (Computers, Chess and Long-Range Planning), on creating a strong chess program, by world chess champion M. Botvinnik, who opined that once there was such an engine, man would have acquired a tireless helper. He may not have cared about the slight loss of dignity for the world's best human chess players in the future, but it also seems he didn't forsee the ease with which people nowadays can obtain computers and engines, allowing for the possibility of somewhat frequent computer assisted cheating, that today causes so many headaches and concerns.