I and many others have long questioned whether the "Easy," "Medium," and "Hard" engines available to play in live chess are really engines after all, but only now is there undeniable proof that at least one such player is being controlled by a human.
Tonight, after a losing streak of 11 games against the "Hard" computer, I was beginning to have hope in one game, a Caro-Kann as black. When my opponent began to move its king back and forth, I proudly offered a draw, but it refused - thrice - and just continued to shuffle its pieces around, while I moved a rook back and forth. This went on for several minutes. See the game to observe how the "computer" chose to deal me the fatal sucker punch just as it KNEW that my focus had been destroyed by the pointless maneuvers:
www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1241758521
This is clearly the work of human being with an acute ability to exploit his/her opponent's psychology. While at the end of the match I snuck in 1 win to compensate for my 16 losses, I demand, on behalf of the chess.com community, that each of the computers be subjected to a Turing test so the truth may come out once and for all.
That's pretty funny.
It is possible that it was programmed to play what it judged to be sub-optimal moves to avoid a draw after 49 moves had passed without a pawn move or capture. That's why it had to try 71 h3 (since the last pawn move was 21..a4).
The question is- how could you keep playing that game? Nothing was happening. At what point would you have considered trying something?
I and many others have long questioned whether the "Easy," "Medium," and "Hard" engines available to play in live chess are really engines after all, but only now is there undeniable proof that at least one such player is being controlled by a human.
Tonight, after a losing streak of 11 games against the "Hard" computer, I was beginning to have hope in one game, a Caro-Kann as black. When my opponent began to move its king back and forth, I proudly offered a draw, but it refused - thrice - and just continued to shuffle its pieces around, while I moved a rook back and forth. This went on for several minutes. See the game to observe how the "computer" chose to deal me the fatal sucker punch just as it KNEW that my focus had been destroyed by the pointless maneuvers:
www.chess.com/livechess/game?id=1241758521
This is clearly the work of human being with an acute ability to exploit his/her opponent's psychology. While at the end of the match I snuck in 1 win to compensate for my 16 losses, I demand, on behalf of the chess.com community, that each of the computers be subjected to a Turing test so the truth may come out once and for all.