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Chess Dispute: Kasparov vs. the World vs. MSN
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.)
There was definitely cheating going on. I saw the world kicking Kasparov under the table.
Only Windows users can vote for moves? Isn't this giving an unfair advantage to Kasparov? ;-)
insignificant sig
Hmmm,
I'd be very careful of accusing anyone of cheating. I think that this is a simple cock-up, probably bought about by a simple "Not My Problem" attitude somewhere along the chain...
Would this have been posted had been any other company than Microsoft running the show? I wonder...
----- Documentation is worth it just to be able to answer all your mail with 'RTFM' - Alan Cox.
This from the company that makes NT?
It looks like they didn't even require a unique IP address! Cheatproof, eh?
Yet another attempt to enhance the Microsoft reputation gone horribly, horribly awry when the true quaility of their products and thought processes comes through.
I wonder if there's a grandmaster out there who would agree to a chess tourney set up by a open-source community? I'm no chess freak, but something similar in concept to the Microsoft idea, but with a superior backend (think IP uniquing, online expert recommendations, online what-if scenarios).
Does anyone have the bandwidth and the know-how to succeed where Microsoft has failed?
-- IANAEG - I am not an elder god.
It's a shame that in order to get MSN to admit to problems, an interesting experiment had to be ruined by forcing selection of second-best and irrational moves
Neither Kasparov nor the World can claim true victory. And MSN isn't a winner either. Rematch? I'm sure the world wants it.
Forrest J. Cavalier III, Mib Software Voice 570-992-8824
The Reuse RocKeT: Efficient awareness for software reuse
Free WWW site lists over 6000 of the most popular open source libraries, functions, and applications.
...and here's MS's first PR disaster of the week.
Boilerplate denials and coverage in the technical press will follow later in the day. The mainstream press will pick it up later in the week.
Business as usual.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
it's not just my copy of the Exchange IMS MTA that quietly hides email for a few hours.
I do not want to sound conspiratorial (if thats possible), or off-topic, but didn't Bill Gates claim in his BBC interview that MS, and more specifically himself could not change or alter content. He claimed that MS just provides the tools, it does not tell people how/when to use them. But it seems to me MS dictated exactly as they saw fit, and even excluded certain types of users (non-Windows) from participating in this World chess match, either through neglect or by choice. In a world that becomes more and more dominated by a single company (MSN, Windows, Web-TV, hotmail, etc.) I have become concerned how the content and delivery of information are controlled in the future.
I'd like to see slashdot set up a gaming interface, perhaps Kasparov Vs. Slashdot (and we won't stuff votes!). Now, if we can't get Kasparov, let's start a Slashdot Vs. Slashdot game. One white team, one black team. Each turn wll be majority vote. Since slashdot accounts are limited to email addresses, vote stuffing would significantly be reduced.
As for vote stuffing, reminds me of the time that Steps didn't win at some Brit music award thingy, of course they were miffed, the night before they had been ahead in the poll. But suddenly, a large number of votes came in for the hitherto-unrenowned Belle and Sebastian (Edinburgh popgroup). Apparently 12% of the votes had been from Cambridge and Edinburgh Universities in the last day. This is an example where all the e-mails were genuine, all the people voting were different, yet the poll was rigged. (Spam works).
In another example, the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (a while back) noticed a huge number of votes coming in for a very unlikely candidate, Justin Fashanu, and disqualified him from the competition. But this was only because he stuck out like a sore thumb. If it had been a more likely candidate, chances are they might have got through this net.
Got to come up with some other way of validating e-mail polls. Phone polls used to work quite well because people only have a few phone numbers and each call would run up a nice little bill, enough discouragement, and a lot of effort just for little impact. But here, with dynamic IP addresses, millions of potential e-mail addresses per person, and at little cost to the end user, how do you guard against it?!
Kasparov "Gazza" alias "Animal" has long been identified as the top GM in the post 80's era. HE has in the past also been involved in several controversial wins/draws... the most famous when he cheated against women Super GM Judit Polgar a couple of years ago and forced a draw. His skills in chess politicking as is his natural brilliance in the game have allowed him to remain at the helm for so long.This is clearly evident by his avoiding of world championship matches against the 2nd & 3rd best players in the world for the past couple of years.Even this year he postponed his match against the Speed king Vishy Anand. I would not see this opportunity of squirming a win with the help of MS support beneath him.
In the name of fairness, Kasparov should offer a draw. Obviously, what is transpiring is an insult to the noble game to which he has devoted his life.
This would be a great opportunity for a Linux-related company (VALinux, RedHat, etc.) to approach Kasparov and try to persuade him to give this a second chance, with a more thought-out voting system, and an open adjudication process. It would be a heck of a PR coup for Linux, and a case study in debunking Microsoft's "Linux Myths".
People seem to want it both ways. First, this is a great test of "collective thinking" against the world champion, and then second, they get upset because the Krush/Kasparov duel got interrupted for technical reasons and they were forced to think for themselves.
And the suggestion that Kasparov might cheat is ludicrous.
As a separate aside, on the topic of whether this game "proves" that Krush and several grandmasters and lots of computer time can produce moves at Kasparov's level, I'll quote analyst commentary from move 3 about Kasparov's choice of move:
So, yes, Krush and "The World" can rival Kasparov... as long as he isn't trying his hardest.
-XDG
How exactly does one become a grand master in chess? Do you have to win a certain # of matches against highly ranked opponents? Is there a chess board somewhere that deems one a 'grand master'?
Chess has a point rating system determined by sancitoned tournament play. The higher ranked your opponent the more points you can gain from beating them. If I remember correctly Grandmaster is 100 thousand points. I might be very very wrong about that, but it's what I remember.
http://www.igl.net/echess/
uses a simpler Ladder system of ranking whereby you start out unranked, then play up the ladder by defeating opponents above you. This is the simplest form of ranking system.
http://www.chess.net
may have more info on ranking systems somewhere, but I couldn't find it.
http://www.ishipress.com/chess.htm
Has a LOT of Chess info, including info on previous grandmasters and world champs.
http://www.worldfide.com/
Is the website for one of the major world chess organizations.
http://www.ishipress.com/ratingre.htm
Has information about the current rating system and its problems.
I hope this helps, if you need more info on anything e-mail me or ask me here.
Kintanon
Check out JoshJitsu.info for Brazilian Ji
If I were sexist, or elitist, I'd also eliminate the top woman chess player.
Of course, MSNBC couldn't possibly be doing any of these things. They're -far- too mature and sensible. Honest!
IMHO, this shows how emotional corruption is just as insidious and destructive as any other kind. Banning views contrary to their own is no way to run an open tournament. If that's how they want to play, why aren't they just entering their own moves? It would be more honest of them to do so!
As far as ballot-stuffing is concerned, they are =QUITE= capable of preventing that. They have NO excuse, whatsoever. Even using cookies would limit it, though if they wanted to be a bit more thorough, they could be issuing browser-side certificates. A simple check for IP address, cookie and/or certificate, and rate of vote entry would effectively block most trivial forms of ballot stuffing.
But, no! MSNBC insists that people play fair, unless they don't like the move, in which case it's cheating, and they'll insert their own preference instead.
Sorry, but cheating by admins is just as unacceptable, in MY book, as cheating by anyone else. There can be NO exceptions.
As for "but... but... our mail server didn't get the message!" - Quit the whining! First off, I don't believe that, in the least. MSNBC's mail system is perfectly adequate for the job, and mail queues are typically set to 30 minutes, not 3 hours. Secondly, if MSNBC's mail servers AREN'T capable of handling the load, it's their responsibility to upgrade them, and ensure that their systems can support their users, NOT the job of the users to compensate for the failings of MSNBC.
P.S. To whom it may concern - a typo is an emergency, but an entry by the most successful panelist is a mere triviality? You wouldn't be planning on running for Congress, would you?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I was following the game on a day by day basis. Things I learned:
1) Given a good leader, the world put up a damn good fight. I'm not sure how many positions were analized but it was really a good group effort. Even deep blue would have been in trouble.
2) Style is everything. There where several points in the game where the world could play offensively or defensely. For the most part, the world played offensively almost with reckless abandon.
3) MS sucks. They really tryed their hardest to put the world at an disadvantage. Only one of the anylists was allowed to follow the discussion board, and they where not allowed to talk to each other.
4) Trolls suck. The discussion board was full of garbage posts and flamebait - it was a wonder that anything got done. On top of that, any Joe that came along could vote what he liked without even discussing the alternatives.
5) I want a replay. PR stunt or not, most of us in the know learned a ton of stuff from GK. My rateing probally has tripled since the start of the game. The slow pace was nice, kind of like a school class. I'd like to see more games played (or at least followed) this way.
People seem to be saying that this either (1) is gratuitous MS-bashing on /.'s part, or (2) doesn't merit attention because it was just some silly PR move.
- MS-bashing, well, yes. Gratuitous, no. The events of this match gave the lie to many things MS said about it, and many things they say about themselves. Notably, this whole "we just want to enable people to be their best" hogwash. They seek control, as the final death throes of this game demonstrate.
- PR move, yes. So if MS demonstrates the weaknesses of its own model in the course of this PR move, should critics of MS let them spin it all away? I don't think so.
If, say, FIDE had set this up and done these things, it wouldn't have gotten onMS's mishandling indicts their role as a company producing technology to enable this kind of gee-whiz collaboration, and as responsible stewards of this technology. The way in which they screwed up leaves concerns about MS's qualifications in that area. It would have been the same if Sun or IBM or Red Hat had done this. And just as deserving of an article here, IMO.
phil
That's just sick. Of course, beyond that, it's really just another `Microsoft Sucks... Bill Sucks... Plungers Suck' Type of an article. With the exception that now Microsoft has insulted the best chess player in the world of course. To me, that's a little like giving the pope a melvin.
Target Practice
There's a 68.71% chance you're right.
Since the Kasparov v. World game has several fundamental flaws (Windows only voting, insecure balloting, champion directed moves, arbitrary ballot disqualification, etc), this game should be considered moot.
I doubt Kasparov will be lured into another one of these games. Instead, it would be a much more interesting proposition to have a World v. World match to investigate the Many_Minds_Cooperating = Greater_Intelligence proposition.
Suggestions for a World v. World match:
- Give each participant a unique registered voter ID
- Set up a move market exchange instead of pure voting for moves, ala the Foresight Idea Exchange
- Do not allow mixing between sides. Market exchange is split into two seperate exchanges.
- Restrict players to only one side. No spying. (Q: how to implement to eliminate spying and sandbagging? This is a problem analogous to secure credit-card transactions, only worse.)
- Have GrandMasters do a postmortem analysis of the game, but no live analysis of moves.
IV
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
It's interesting to see that Microsoft seems to think it can dominate whatever field they want to and refuses to admit any wrongdoing when things fall down around them. This seems very similar to when Microsoft made vendors pay for Windows whenever they sold a computer (Microsoft thinking they could dominate a field) and then refusing to admit wrongdoing when the DOJ called them on the fact that what they were doing was an illegal business practice. Is Microsoft doomed to repeat history over and over again and how can their general cluelessness help the Open Source community?
when a democratic society has certain necessary features.
The fundamental reason democracy works better than tyranny is that the best solution for any given problem is more likely to come from the minds of 250 million individuals than from one. No matter how smart the tyrant is, the odds are seriously balanced such that someone else in the masses has had an experience or an insight that makes his opinion on the issue at least equally relevant.
However, there are also 249,999,999 people in that mass who don't know the best solution. Therefore the one person who knows must be free to speak his mind, and the others must have the minimum level of intelligence necessary to recognize his contribution. This is critical because the main thing masses are good at is shouting loudly; quality of thought, not quantity, is the key to successful democracy.
Microsoft's online democracy tried to emulate this successful paradigm, and came very close; apparently IK was a pretty good match for GK when assisted by the other panelists, powerful computers, and the lack of time constraints. Unfortunately, the system was flawed in such a way that the voice of reason was not heard from at a critical time... and the match was lost. Democracy qua Microsoft fails miserably.
A better test of democracy qua Democracy as an allegory for our civilization would have been Gary Kasperov vs. the World in a multi-competition consisting of Chess, Backgammon, Parcheesi, and Quake. Possibly with some other skills such as metalworking, water skiing, lion taming or French cooking thrown in. While GK may be the greatest chessmaster in the world, I have a feeling Thresh is a better cook.
Scudder
... and there is no doubt, that one day he will be
where the eye of his telescope has already been
- Qd1-e2
- Ke1-f1
- Orange
- Merangue
- Hemos Sucks/Rob Sucks/Kasperov Sucks
Then he was beaten by a machine and went down in history for it.
In the small, agreed -- BFD. But in the large, it tells the world that the HotMail fiasco changed nothing at Micorsoft.
After the first prankster pointed out the problem, the MS team examined their code as came back with a "no way". So a second (external) guy had to verify it. And not only did he do that, but without access to the code he came back with a different way to break it. Two exploits, and the MS team couldn't tell by looking at their own code? Even after having one of the exploits pointed out to them?
And of course when they couldn't deny it anymore they came back with their standard quick fix: turn off features. When will they learn to examine features before they implement them? And simply not implement them if they are inherently insecure?
So this is important with respect to what it tells the world about Micorsoft's corporate culture. And their ability/willingness to learn from similar mistakes in the past.
Or perhaps they merely didn't put their best people on it? But you'd have to wonder about a company that sets up a high-visibility PR stunt and doesn't bother to staff it to succede. Don't they care about anything? If they don't put their top people on their own PR ventures, what kind of people are they going to put on the things I need?
No explanation seems to give them a clean slate. Sure, security is hard and bugs happen, but that's all the more reason to be able to respond promptly and appropriately.
The only reason not to view this as a big pie in MS's face is the fact that it's about the 100th pie this year, and individual pies just don't make much difference anymore.
--
It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There are two classes of chess titles: those awarded by simple rating, and those awarded by an international executive body.
Rating titles (at least in the US) are as follows:
1200 and below: class E
1200+: class D
1400+: class C
1600+: class B
1800+: class A
2000+: Expert
2200+: Master
2400+: Senior Master (if rating is sustained)
For an international title, such as IM or GM, a you must achieve a "norm" in a tournament. The norm is the number of points you must win based on the relative strength of the other players (IM norms being lower than GM norms). You must achieve three of these norms in a fixed period (two years?) to get your title, which is awarded by an international organization at some future date.
If you post it, they will read.
How about World of Linux vs. World of Windows grudge match? The Mac guys could moderate :)
In this game, vote stuffing became noticeable and
aggravating at a level of 100 per person, since
only few people were dedicated enough to cheat.
Thus, making a vote registration procedure
long (10 minutes, say) would alone cut down on
cheating, especially if you only allow one
vote per IP address, so one couldn't have several
Netscapes open and vote a few times at once. Indeed, you'd need about that long to
make sure a person has a clue before they vote.
This would quickly weed out people who don't care
about the game and would make stuffing hard.
If you cared to promote the game of chess, you
could prearrange with chess clubs around the
country and have them authenticate users in
face to face meetings, providing them with new
members and also increasing security.
Ultimately, it comes down to how much you care.
Neither MS, nor three out four of its analysts
cared one bit, hence the result.