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Bobby Fischer Online?
talilee writes "This story from AP (but I found it at SFGate.com) suggests that Bobby Fischer is playing online chess anonymously against champion level players. I'm glad to see that he has an opportunity to express his genius without having to deal with the overwhelming attention (and without exposing his, um, "eccentricities".)" The BBC has a slightly more informative story.
Regarding the rumor that Bobby is playing chess online, I've heard it before and I think it has been going around for a while. Could be true, but really total speculation.
of course there probably isn't any way to prove that this was actually Fischer, but I for one belive Short, the man who claims to have played him, for one reason: whatever happpened during these game, he seems absolutely moved, as though the moves themselves had a power and grandeur that transcenced the game. I guess it could be fake, but he sounds like these games wanted to make him cry.
I wonder though if he wouldn't post the move lists the for games. that would tell us something.
sean
Maybe it's an American Fischer fan who learned all the "Fisher-related facts." The only evidence against that is just the quality of play.
Still--can we rule out it was a very powerful experimental chess computer or a very talented and reclusive chess star? Maybe Kramnik or Kasparov has an odd sense of humor and was making all the moves while his American buddy was doing all the typing.
Unless it's one of the current greats incognito, this story is interesting even if the opponent really isn't Fischer. It sounds like there's someone out there with an incredible chess talent!
Any chess experts want to comment on this unconventional play?
This should give you some background info on Fischer and his "eccentricities."
--
The real Raunchola isn't cool enough to have any imposters
I find it hard to understand how someone who has been interested in chess for the length of time you claim to have been, can be ignorant of Bobby Fischer, one of the greatest players of all time.
Bobby was the youngest International Grandmaster ever. He won 8 US Chess Championships, and won basically every game he played between 1962 and 1972.
Unfortunately, he has become a reclusive paranoid schizophrenic who rants about how the Jews and Russians are out to get him (it should be noted that Bobby is half-Jewish).
By the way, in the future, perhaps you should try Google for queries like this.
If you have a problem with my views, REPLY, don't moderate!
Just b/c his typing, his use of language, knowledge, etc reminds you of someone that does NOT mean it is.
From bbc :
Despite his misgivings, Short eventually arranged to play the unknown opponent, and in October last year lost the first of their four confrontations 8-0.
Now, my question is, how many people in the world can beat Short 8-0, and who can they be?
Intellect isn't everything.
I know very little about Bobby Fischer so I'm speaking in general, not about him in particular.
Intellect can do a lot, but there are other skills that one needs to be successful, especially in the public eye. These are things like stage presence, speaking ability, charisma, style, bearing and common sense, which are only tangentially connected to intelligence. A smart person might be able to develop them faster than your average Joe. On the other hand intelligence might hinder their development, especially if that person is arrogant because of their intelligence.
To take a high profile example, by all accounts Al Gore is a pretty learned guy, but he still hasn't figured out what he wants his appearance to be, and the last election suggests that he has had only mediocre success connecting with the public. The stereotypical closed-in scientist (and I've known a few) can be far worse.
Bobby Fischer is, at least to my limited knowledge, something of a one trick wonder. He is exceptionally good at chess, but clearly doesn't want to be a public figure, and perhaps he wouldn't be very good at it?
The thing I wonder most about is what kind of a life is he living now? Chess isn't easy to make a profession of and it must be nearly impossible if you don't want people to know who you are. So does he program computers by day and trounce chess masters at night, or what?
My name is also Bobby and I'm pleased to hear that Mr. Fischer might be having some fun. For my part I've grown to realize the value of that other skill set, and I'm ever so slowly trying to cultivate it.
Hmmm.
"Rook to rook eight and here's a picture of a goat"
Or
"knight to queens-bish three and here's some ascii art of two people having sex"
And never let AC's play as white - "hah hah! First move!"
Short's full story was posted on usenet. A bit more information than in either of the press stories.
For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled - R Feynman
I know what you mean.. I was playing Bridge Builder online against someone who was making IMPOSSIBLE structures, yet he won time and time again. Later I found it to be I. M. Pei. Who knew?
A winner is you!
Let's say you claimed to be Steve Wozniak. There are questions I could ask you -- about the design of the Apple II, about the members of the Homebrew Computer Club, about the Bay Area of the mid-70s -- that in and of themselves would not establish whether or not you really were The Woz, but could rule you out. For instance, if I created a ficticious member of the HCC and started asking you about him, if you went on about this guy's eccentricities you would obviously be a poser.
Answer enough of these questions and you might not establish yourself to be Woz, but if you don't rule yourself out and show consistency both with your story and with the world as we know it, you COULD be Woz.
In this particular story there is another, unique dimension to it -- the chess play. If you study the styles of the past masters enough, you might be able to look at a game and get a good idea of which players might have played it. For instance, it's been many years but I believe Fischer was partial to the Sicilian Defense. If Short's opponent used the Sicilian, and in particular lines that Fischer was known to favor, that would be yet another indication that he was indeed playing Bobby Fischer.
The only credible alternative explanation I can come up with at the moment is that Short was playing a grandmaster-level player intimately familiar with Fischer's style -- someone perhaps like Larry Evans, who helped Fischer analyze positions during breaks in play. Few people would be able to pull something like that off, though.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Bobby Fischer is an interesting case study in differences among these. I suspect he was a smart guy, but could he really find the String Theory equations in physics, write the next Hamlet, or solve P == NP? The inverse is an interesting question, too: could Richard Feynman have beaten Bobby Fischer if he had dedicated his life to chess in the same way Fischer did? Doubtful IMHO, due to the thing Fischer had that Feynman ostensibly did not have: a remarkable aptitude for chess.
There's also an interesting analogy in sports. The strongest, fastest player does not necessarily lead to the best player. To be the best, you have to have some natural talent, i.e. aptitude.
Effectiveness, i.e. being really good at something, requires both intelligence and aptitude. Intelligence, of which I'm sure Fischer had his share, helps get you to a certain level, just as being fast and strong helps in sports, but to be truly great requires aptitude, which is altogether different.
By the same token, being really good at something like chess does not necessarily mean you're particularly intelligent. Maybe, but not necessarily.
I wanted to test my antagonist further so I thought of a number of tricky questions as we gossiped. For example, I asked him: "Do you know Armando Acevedo?" Senor Acevedo is an obscure Mexican player, not remotely of Grandmaster strength.
My opponent's reply came instantly, if cryptically: "Siegen 1970". Now if you look in the tournament book of the Siegen Chess Olympiad of 1970 you will find that Bobby Fischer played a certain Armando Acevedo in a preliminary round. He was obviously trying to tell me something.
Typing "Fischer Armando Acevedo" into Google turns up a reference to the 1970 Siegen match on the 3rd link. (The 2nd link is a consequence of Short's article.) It's in Spanish, but the exact phase "Siegen, 1970 appears explicity next to the first occurrance of "Fischer". See for yourself. The point is that one need not have access to a thirty year old tournament book, as Short suggests, to quickly generate the reply that he received. Thus this particular piece of evidence is a lot weaker than it appears.
You're kidding right? This player beat Short a lot worse than Short has been beaten anyone in the world including Garry Kasparov. The likelihood that there is someone out there able to defeat the best players in the world who happens to be so good he plays up to 8 bad moves at the beginning of the game and still defeats them who has never revealed himself is so unlikely as to be absurd.Maybe you'd feel better if you saw exactly what Short had to say about the incident.
This is from Thomas Pynchon, when CNN tracked him down and filmed him--and maybe, sort of, in a way, "threatened" to show the film.
And this from a reporter who previously stalked him:
http://www.cnn.com/US/9706/05/pynchon/
Just because someone's not in the news, doesn't mean he or she is a shut-in. Of course, this may be different for Bobby Fischer, but it's a perspective we need to keep.
Linux kernel hacker says anonymous 8" disk drive driver author was Bill Gates
... who wished to preserve his anonymity." The intermediary gave Cox a special code word and arranged a time for a future drive submission.
... but on the off-chance of meeting the Loch Ness monster of world computer domination, I agreed," Cox wrote.
Sunday, September 9, 2001
Breaking News Sections
(09-09) 11:06 PDT LONDON (AP) --
A British Linux kernel hacker is convinced that Bill Gates, one of computing's most legendary and elusive figures, is programming again -- anonymously for little-used Linux drivers.
"I am 99 percent sure that I am getting driver submissions from the computing legend," Alan Cox told The Sunday Telegraph. "It's tremendously exciting."
Gates, an American, fascinated the world by winning an epic battle against a Californian, Steve Jobs, in the desktop PC market in 1982. Then he disappeared, only to re-emerge from the Death Star in 1992 for a controversial rematch against Netscape in the Browser Market.
Gates won, and then disappeared again after U.S. authorities accused him of violating sanctions imposed against monopolies by playing the match.
He has remained out of the public eye and his whereabouts are unknown, although the Telegraph said he is believed to be living in cyberspace a la The Lawn Mower Man or Tron. Cox said he does not know where Gates is.
Cox, who unsuccessfully challenged Linus Torvalds for world Linux core kernel functionality control in 1993 in the Klingon ritual of Mauk-to 'Vor, said rumors began circulating last year that the American champion was anonymously authoring Linux drivers in quick, three-line snippets of badly-written Visual Basic code on "alt.binaries.BSOD.screenshots". Cox said he was skeptical, even after his friend, Brazilian Kernel developer Rik Van Riel, claimed to have run a Bill Gates-authored Linux driver.
"I could not help but burst into laughter, much as I would have done had my friend claimed to have seen the Loch Ness monster," Cox wrote in an article for the Sunday newspaper.
A few weeks later, Cox said, he was approached by someone who identified himself as an intermediary for "a very strong Visual Basic programmer
"I thought that this 'intermediary' was almost certainly a fraud or a time-waster
When the prearranged time came, Cox was requested by the anonymous player to sign into "alt.binaries.BSOD.screenshots" anonymously instead of as himself. That way no one would know Cox was submitting, and his drivers would not be put under public scrutiny, as they normally are.
Cox ran eight three-line Linux drivers for little-used peripherals in VB. Cox's machine was crashed.
"I never confronted my submitter with the question, 'Am I using VB code authored by Bill Gates,' " Cox conceded. But during subsequent driver usage, Cox said he noticed comments in the VB code, and the comments all seemed like they could only come from one man.
"He was obviously very familiar in a gossipy way with the major figures in the desktop PC world of the 1980s -- Gate's period of greatest activity," wrote Cox. "He was polite, he was funny, and clearly a Taelon, to judge from his spelling and pattern of conversation."
Cox is convinced that the author of the 8" disk drive Linux driver was the legendary Gates, and he said that he will always treasure the drivers he ran.
"To me, they are what an undiscovered Milli Vanilli symphony would be to a music lover," Cox wrote.
"alt.binaries.BSOD.screenshots", based in Redmond, did not immediately respond to a post seeking comment on Cox's piece Sunday.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
> Fringe murmurs hit the major media this weekend when Nigel Short declared that he believes he has been playing Bobby Fischer online. (Another report of the report here from AP.) Rumors of Fischer playing internet chess have been going around for months now and have caused a furor amongst the usual fans and foes. Most of these stories go as follows: 1) Mr. X insists that both players log on as guests and all communication is handled by way of an intermediary. 2) Mr. X plays crazy openings, often moving his king back and forth to intentionally waste time. 3) Despite this, Mr. X destroys top GMs in these blitz games, making virtually no errors. 4) The games are never published, Mr. X never says he is Fischer or makes comments suggesting he is. 5) Mr. X occasionally answers trivia questions about Fischer's life.
You don't need to be Johnny Cochran to know the difference between concrete and circumstantial evidence, and what we have above is a wheelbarrow full of the latter. Nigel Short, speaking in the Sunday Telegraph Review article that is also devoid of substantiation, says that he is "99 per cent sure" he has "been playing against the chess legend." This is based on four sets of games, none of which are given or commented on, other than to say that Short lost the first set 8-0. (The article also says Short went 6-6 in a blitz match with Kasparov in 1995. From the context of Short's actual words these were apparently casual games.) The Telegraph doesn't call the evidence circumstantial, it calls it "overwhelming." Johnny Cochran would be proud.
Short was also impressed by Mr. X replying "Siegen 1970" when the Englishman asked him if he knew Armando Acevedo. Well, I not only know of him, but I met the simpatico Mexican master in the flesh 10 years ago. But that's another story. Acevedo lost to Fischer in the 1970 Siegen Olympiad. That many a Fischer fan and anyone with a database would also know this seems to have been overlooked in this latest continuation of the rampant desire to believe Fischer is not only alive and well, but just biding his time before coming back to take his rightful crown at the age of 58. (It is not as if the person playing these games, Fischer or not, would be unaware of the intense speculation that has been ongoing in the chess community. Fischer was the only Grandmaster the Mexican faced, at least as far as his published games are concerned.) Who is qualified to ask Fischer a question that only Fischer would know? Not many people, and probably not Nigel Short. (Here's one for Bobby: Buenos Aires, 1996. What did you say Mickey Kantor was too busy doing to protect your rights? The rude comment the interpreter wouldn't translate, but you caught her and repeated it several times? But most people at that press conference would know this one...)
Personally I have no problem at all believing Fischer plays online anonymously. Despite the obvious decline in his mental health, he was still very animated by chess when I met him in 1996. I do not doubt that if he played into shape he would be a tough opponent for the top 10 today and more than a match for Armando Acevedo. But acting as though he would be an invincible demigod after 30 years of almost complete removal from competitive chess is silly. He played a few dozen games against Spassky in 1992 and the rare flashes of brilliance only glimmered brighter due to the thick layers of rust on his game. His knowledge and insight helped Peter Leko several years ago when the two would meet in Hungary, this we know. We cannot imagine a Fischer who has left chess behind.
As I said above, if you have good arguments you don't need junk. A master playing with strong computer assistance would have little trouble demolishing a top GM in blitz, we know this from experience. Even in rapid games humans make too many mistakes to compete successfully against CPU power on a consistent basis. I'm quite willing to believe that Bobby Fischer is "out there" and playing blitz online, but it will take published games, and more than just a few, to make this into anything more than a rumor.
OK, I have been competing in chess for most of my life, so I am a pretty decent player (not a GM or anything). Most of the comments here have clearly been by patzers. Here comes my take on the whole thing.
I played through the alleged Fisher-games against the IMs (unfortunately Short's games are nowhere to be found), I also read the full Google Groups article that someone posted.
The opening moves that "Fischer" used are not a "secret weapon" that he has been working on all these years. They are simply designed to give the opponent an advantage. They are also absurd enough to give quite the psychological advantage if your oponent does not exploit them. Psychology is important in chess. More than most players realize. If you get your ass kicked from some unknown guy who plays such an opening, you are going to be unsure of yourself and play much, much weaker than when you are on a streak. (see for example Kasparov vs Deep Blue)
A computers are notoriously good at shorter timelimits (programmers reading this ought to understand why throwing more time at an exponential problem leads to marginal increase in playing strength). This could very well be some bored IM or something, that is playing some weird moves in the opening and then uses the computer to defend super-humanly, confusing the opponent and finally winning simply because there are so much messy tactics on the board (which a computer will always like).
Fortunately there are good statistical tests, used for checking for people cheating with computers. These are based on the fact that most programs make the same moves in the same position. If Short were to show his games, they could be analyzed by the standard ICC-algorithm.
The knowledge that "Fischer" showed in the chat between the games could have been generated with fast google-searches, as has been previously stated.
However... The games against the IMs are pretty damn impressive. And 8-0 against Short?! A guy manually operating a computer would most likely be too slow to manage that. The improbable thing about this story is not that Fischer plays chess on the internet (why would he not?). The improbable thing is that he would still be that good. I know that he is an american legend, but is it humanly possible? Short gives it a 99% probability because his ego is involved, because he really wants it to be true and because he probably is not aware of how easy it is to use the internet to get information fast (such as the 1970-thing). I just don't know what to think. I think that my final verdict is that Short probably did play Fischer, but that the excitement and psychology of the strange openings made him play less well than he normally would. I cannot believe that Fischer would still be the best chess-player in the world.
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati