Slashdot Mirror

An anonymous reader quotes a report from New Scientist: A female shark separated from her long-term mate has developed the ability to have babies on her own. Leonie the zebra shark (Stegostoma fasciatum) met her male partner at an aquarium in Townsville, Australia, in 1999. They had more than two dozen offspring together before he was moved to another tank in 2012. From then on, Leonie did not have any male contact. But in early 2016, she had three baby sharks. Intrigued, Christine Dudgeon at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, and her colleagues began fishing for answers. One possibility was that Leonie had been storing sperm from her ex and using it to fertilize her eggs. But genetic testing showed that the babies only carried DNA from their mum, indicating they had been conceived via asexual reproduction. Some vertebrate species have the ability to reproduce asexually even though they normally reproduce sexually. These include certain sharks, turkeys, Komodo dragons, snakes and rays. However, most reports have been in females who have never had male partners. In sharks, asexual reproduction can occur when a female's egg is fertilized by an adjacent cell known as a polar body, Dudgeon says. This also contains the female's genetic material, leading to "extreme inbreeding", she says. "It's not a strategy for surviving many generations because it reduces genetic diversity and adaptability." Nevertheless, it may be necessary at times when males are scarce. "It might be a holding-on mechanism," Dudgeon says. "Mum's genes get passed down from female to female until there are males available to mate with." It's possible that the switch from sexual to asexual reproduction is not that unusual; we just haven't known to look for it, Dudgeon says.

FhnuZoag writes "Nature is reporting that Buddhist monks, highly trained in meditation, were better able to maintain focus in a set of computer generated illusions designed to confuse the brain. The particular illusions involved showing different images to each eye, and maintaining a state of motion-induced blindness. This may be scientific proof of the efficacy of meditative study. The full, original article may be downloaded here. (500 KB PDF)"

psy writes "physorg has a story on a new spam firewall developed at The University of Queensland. The new technology is the only true spam firewall in existence, according to co-developer Matthew Sullivan. "Existing anti-spam software filters out spam whereas ours puts up a firewall, stopping all email traffic and only allowing real mail through," said Mr Sullivan. "In addition, our technology is accurate and fast. We recently completed a successful trial of a key layer of the spam firewall and it processed the emails at 90 messages per second, misclassifying only one out of 25,000 emails." "It turned out that the software was even better than us, picking up spam we'd incorrectly classified as legitimate emails."

Bifurcati asks: "I'm a grad student at the University of Queensland, Australia. I am frequently required to submit forms (e.g., annual reports) which are sent as Word or RTF documents and must be filled in electronically. However, these are almost impossible to use under Linux (e.g., StarOffice) because the tables and formatting are just too complicated and get mangled. Even Word for Mac sometimes has problems. Can anyone suggest a better, cross-platform format? Could PDF files with forms do this? What are the costs & learning curve? User friendliness is vital for both admin and student. Alternatively, can anyone suggest ways they could make their Word files more compatible across platforms?"

Bifurcati asks: "I'm a grad student at the University of Queensland, Australia. I am frequently required to submit forms (e.g., annual reports) which are sent as Word or RTF documents and must be filled in electronically. However, these are almost impossible to use under Linux (e.g., StarOffice) because the tables and formatting are just too complicated and get mangled. Even Word for Mac sometimes has problems. Can anyone suggest a better, cross-platform format? Could PDF files with forms do this? What are the costs & learning curve? User friendliness is vital for both admin and student. Alternatively, can anyone suggest ways they could make their Word files more compatible across platforms?"

Bifurcati asks: "I'm a grad student at the University of Queensland, Australia. I am frequently required to submit forms (e.g., annual reports) which are sent as Word or RTF documents and must be filled in electronically. However, these are almost impossible to use under Linux (e.g., StarOffice) because the tables and formatting are just too complicated and get mangled. Even Word for Mac sometimes has problems. Can anyone suggest a better, cross-platform format? Could PDF files with forms do this? What are the costs & learning curve? User friendliness is vital for both admin and student. Alternatively, can anyone suggest ways they could make their Word files more compatible across platforms?"

Bifurcati asks: "I'm a grad student at the University of Queensland, Australia. I am frequently required to submit forms (e.g., annual reports) which are sent as Word or RTF documents and must be filled in electronically. However, these are almost impossible to use under Linux (e.g., StarOffice) because the tables and formatting are just too complicated and get mangled. Even Word for Mac sometimes has problems. Can anyone suggest a better, cross-platform format? Could PDF files with forms do this? What are the costs & learning curve? User friendliness is vital for both admin and student. Alternatively, can anyone suggest ways they could make their Word files more compatible across platforms?"

Doc Ruby writes "LinuxJournal has an intro to uCLinux by David McCullough, one of the project developers. Specific techniques are discussed for Linux programming on this version, that runs on devices without the MMU that the Linux VM usually requires. Developers can make Linux apps run on uCLinux devices, including PDAs like a Palm IIIx, routers, DVD players, and even a FPGA."

Bifurcati asks: "I recently bought a Bluetooth enabled Powerbook G4 laptop, which comes with a trackpad. I often give Powerpoint presentations, so I'm interested in getting a wireless controller, to flip back and forward through slides without touching the laptop. Google turns up many options, e.g., Honeywell's, Beamplus and this doohickey. Another option is a combined mouse-controller, throwing an external mouse into the bargain. There are wireless mice (e.g., Logitech's) which need a USB plug-in, but are short range. Or there are Bluetooth mice, like the X-Wing, which are neat and have a 10m range, but seem to be a pain with battery life/charging. Another option is Logitech's Bluetooth Presenter, which is a mouse, PP controller and laserpointer in one (but costs $200!). So many choices! So I'm turning to good old Slashdot. All of you presenters out there, do have favourite remote control devices? What are your experiences with using them? What type of connectivity is the best (wireless, Bluetooth, something else?!) And what about devices that double as an external mouse, or even as a controller for movies, iTunes, etc?"

Sporkinum writes "University of Queensland Laser Diagnostics Dept has a page where they put the Enterprise through the gauntlet in a mach 5 wind tunnel. It did surprisingly well."

Sporkinum writes "University of Queensland Laser Diagnostics Dept has a page where they put the Enterprise through the gauntlet in a mach 5 wind tunnel. It did surprisingly well."

ColdChrist writes "The University of Queensland has a page about a 72-year-old experiment on the fluidity of pitch. There's a webcam where you can try to become the first person ever to see a drop of the pitch fall; eight drops have fallen since 1930 and the ninth is now forming. The experiment 'demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid - even brittle - and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer', but it does flow, as the pictures demonstrate." I know this is going to bring up glass comparisons, so we'll head those off: glass is not a fluid.

An anonymous reader writes: "ABC news is reporting that analysis of the flight data from the recent HyShot scramjet test (covered by Slashdot previously) suggests that the test was successful and that the engine achieved combustion in flight after reaching Mach 7.6. The University of Queensland is also reporting the news."

glengyron writes "Australia's ABC reports today that a University of Queensland team have successfully tested a supersonic scramjet (air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet engine). Read more here or here. Great to see after previous problems. Does the future of air travel still include those breakfast egg-roll things?"

glengyron writes "Australia's ABC reports today that a University of Queensland team have successfully tested a supersonic scramjet (air-breathing supersonic combustion ramjet engine). Read more here or here. Great to see after previous problems. Does the future of air travel still include those breakfast egg-roll things?"

Slashback tonight with a followup on the Australian scramjet test, comparing audio formats with numbers (not just complaining about them), and questionably reasonable ways to sneak abuse-begging Internet laws in "for the children," (or plaintiffs, as the case may be). Read on.

Everything that rises must come down under. spam-it-to-me-baby writes: "The Australian trial of a scramjet engine has fizzed. 'The experiment at the Department of Defence's Woomera Prohibited Area, 500 kilometres north of Adelaide, was not successful because the [United States-supplied] rocket experienced flight anomalies prior to the scramjet experiment,' an analysis of what went wrong says. Not to worry, another test is tentatively scheduled for next week, assuming researchers can work out what went wrong with this one on the way up."

Not to be confused with this previous scramjet test, also unsuccessful.

Ah, much better, I thought you were being unreasonable there for a minute. After Jamie drew attention to it in a Slashdot piece on Saturday, SafeSurf changed their legislative proposal. In Jamie's words, "Woo!"

That's not all he said, of course: "Please note that, now, they ONLY want to fine you thousands of dollars for failing to label anything you write that is harmful to an 8-year-old. What a relief! "The penalty for a first offense of failing to label or mislabeling material harmful to minors shall be limited to a fine of under five thousand dollars."

Bennett Haselton passed on this commentary as well:

"If you go to http://www.safesurf.com/online.htm in Netscape and "View Document Info", it shows it was last modified on October 29, 2001. (This function doesn't work in IE.)

The original OCPA is [at google]. SafeSurf apparently removed this paragraph from section 6:

Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents shall be given presumption in all cases and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.

and replaced it with:

Publishers may be sued in civil court by any parent who feels their children were harmed by the data negligently published. The parents/plantiffs shall be given presumption, if the case involves graphic images, and do not have to prove that the content actually produced harm to their child, only that the material was severe enough to reasonably be considered to have needed a rating label to protect children.

and then added three new paragraphs listing more exemptions from this rule."

Can you hear that pea through the mattresses? For the audio objectivists, a good update to CmdrTaco's recent MP3 v. Ogg Vorbis inquiry: E1ven writes: "Everyone is always arguing about whether Vorbis sounds better than MP3, or vice versa. Here is your chance to see who is right! ff123 is doing a set of Blind Listening tests and could use your help. The more ears the better!"

CaptainAlbert writes: "The University of Queensland, Australia is reporting the (possible) success of their "HyShot" scramjet test. The BBC have got this covered too. Apparently, they're now poring over the data loggers, trying to figure out if it actually flew under its own power." We had a story about these guys a while back.

Dspiral writes "At the Canadian publication, The Globe and Mail, they write about the scramjet. A jet engine, with theoretical speeds over 8000 Kph, and pollution free!" Zero pollution because its fuel is hydrogen (a scramjet takes its oxygen from the air). The HyShot homepage is amazing; the beast has been built on a shoestring, barely over a million dollars Australian, and my favorite part is their planned test: "...shooting an engine into the atmosphere on a rocket, and hoping it will ignite as it plunges back down to Earth. Mr. Paull's speed objective is Mach 7.6, and the engine should ignite 23-35 kilometres off the ground."

kris writes "The existence of nano-sized organisms has been proposed for a number of years by geologists who refer to a range of mineralised structures in rocks as the fossil remnants of nanobacteria. Bacteria range in size from 150nm (Mycoplasmas)-50m in diameter while the proposed nanobacteria are an order of magnitude smaller with diameters reported to range from 20nm-150nm. How small can life be? See for yourself at the Nanoworld Image gallery. Can we build computers from microbes and nanobes? Or has this already happened in precambrian times? "

kris writes "The existence of nano-sized organisms has been proposed for a number of years by geologists who refer to a range of mineralised structures in rocks as the fossil remnants of nanobacteria. Bacteria range in size from 150nm (Mycoplasmas)-50m in diameter while the proposed nanobacteria are an order of magnitude smaller with diameters reported to range from 20nm-150nm. How small can life be? See for yourself at the Nanoworld Image gallery. Can we build computers from microbes and nanobes? Or has this already happened in precambrian times? "

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)

Richard Bean wrote this piece about a chess match on MSN's Gaming Zone between ultragrandmaster Gary Kasparov and the entire rest of the world, with "the world's" moves being decided by online vote. But something went wrong after move #50, by move #58 MSN changed the rules so that only Windows users could vote on moves, and murmured complaints from disgruntled participants and observers about unfair move-selections and ballot-box stuffing (which MSN had originally claimed was impossible) rose to an online roar. Click below to read the full story.

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.)