Abstract
While Charles Walker was in Edmonton, we discussed making the Tinsley-Chinook world championship match a reality. Walker, the American Checker Federation (ACF) secretary/treasurer, effectively put me in my place: there was no way that either the ACF or English Draughts Association (EDA) would allow a computer to compete for the world championship. He suggested that maybe we create a new title—the man versus machine championship. This seemed silly to me. The words “world champion” mean just that—the best player in the world. Who cared if it was a man or a machine? You can’t discriminate based on race, religion, or sex. Don’t discriminate based on computational model.
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References
A famous phrase from Sherlock Holmes. Now, wouldn’t he be a great program debugger!
David Lubar, It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature, Addison-Wesley, 1995, p. 53. This is a delightful book of computer “off-the-mark predictions, bad advice, world-class putdowns, and even occasional words of praise from the ‘experts’ in the field.”
In the chess community the word cook has a different meaning. If a flaw is found in a composed problem (such as a position designated as White to play and mate in three moves), then the flaw is called a cook (the position isn’t a mate in three, or it’s not unique). The only explanation I can think of for this name is that the problem’s author’s goose is now cooked.
Derek Oldbury, personal communication, January 20, 1991.
Richard Fortman, “Chinook vs. Lafferty Exhibition Match,” Checkers, May 1991, p. 7.
Checkers, July 1991, p. 6.
E-mail sent on Tuesday May 28, 1991.
E-mail sent on Tuesday May 28, 1991.
ACF Bulletin, June 1991, p. 1.
In 1996, I tried to get a copy of the letter from Charles Walker. Unfortunately, the only copy of it seems to have “disappeared.”
ACF Bulletin, April 1987, p. 1.
ACF Bulletin, June 1991, p. 1.
Charles Walker, personal communication, June 17, 1991.
E-mail sent on July 29, 1991.
In 1993, Caws lost the title to Patricia Breen (Ireland).
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© 1997 Springer Science+Business Media New York
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Schaeffer, J. (1997). Gentlemen, Start Your Engines. In: One Jump Ahead. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2733-3_13
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-2733-3_13
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