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I did not know about this. So why not ask him to do this in public? Why not arrange an official 10-game match between Mr. Ivanov and Houdini? He could hardly refuse, because if he can actually beat Houdini with an overwelming score, this is a clear indication that he is NOT cheating (any cheating would only produce a 5-5 score or a close match).
Look at Mathieu Cloutier: dissing Mozart, dissing Reshevesky, calling their prodigic talents "a myth", and with no backing evidence, a la Felix Dumont. He simply WON'T believe anything but what he believes now. The cult of chess creates... cultists.
Please, don't make me say things I haven't said.
Both Mozart and Reshevsky were extremely talented individuals. But both of them also had to work thousands of hours before producing brillancies.
It is widely recognized that there is no such thing as god given talent. There's some predispositions of course (height for basketball is an example), but you also need opportunities and hard work.
Reshevsky had the opportunity to hone his skills at a young age. So did Mozart. And they both worked very hard at it and became masters. They were not born masters.
Don't get ahead of yourself with this Ivanov story, you will be disappointed.
So it comes down to this: to prove cheating, you MUST prove some means of communication.
What about a Raspberry Pi hidden somewhere in his clothes or shoes? This computer weights a whole 45g and is 8.5cm x 5.4cm. It requires only 1.5W of power so a single iPhone battery (another small component) could power that for more than 4 hours.
But no, it's probably impossible to think of that, I'm so close minded after all...
Why not arrange an official 10-game match between Mr. Ivanov and Houdini? He could hardly refuse, because if he can actually beat Houdini with an overwelming score, this is a clear indication that he is NOT cheating (any cheating would only produce a 5-5 score or a close match).
Do you remember an Ukrainian magician who beat Rybka in 2011(?) LOL That was an official match with a "independent" observers, public,etc too.
Anyway, B.Ivanov was asked to come to a meeting arranged by the Bulgarian Federation and to show his abilities during the test. The outcome is known - no show.
Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Borislav Ivanov and Rapid Chess
Of course a Pi could be hidden somewhere within his shoe or other clothing, but the key unanswered problem is the method of communication.
I saw a photo the other day about a guy who imbedded a receiver in the front lobe of his ear (by imbedded I mean surgically but without a surgeon, if you know what I mean). [ Edit: found the link - http://boingboing.net/2013/06/24/imp...headphone.html ]
That takes care of the reception side, but in the case of cheating in a chess game, the opponent's move has to be input somehow by someone - the 'answer' is another matter altogether.
Perhaps his setup is somewhat susceptible to disruption - moving around might cause some tenuous connections (wired or otherwise) to become loose or flakey. That is what I thought about when it was pointed out that often he sits continuously at the board (most players get up to stretch or refocus their eyes or whatever, from time to time).
As others have pointed out, there was NOT a thorough search of his clothes or his person, so there are many possibilities that have not been ruled out. I have a hard time believing it was pure intensive study of (say) Houdini. Note I did not say that was impossible in the abstract, just that it isn't high on my list of guesses.
Last edited by Kerry Liles; Thursday, 27th June, 2013, 01:39 PM.
Reason: added a link to my recollection
Come on, Tom, you're better than that. The only thing I'm speculating a defense lawyer would argue right now is that Ivanov has found himself specially gifted to learn to play like Houdini in all situations by means of immersion training against Houdini. I'm speculating that because that is what Ivanov himself is claiming in so many words.
The whole telepathy / alien technology / time travel bit is what you are left with if (1) no RF emissions can be detected during Ivanov's matches, plus no physical signalling, and (2) we simply deny that Ivanov could be a learning genius. If you have other more plausible explanations that don't involve either RF communication nor physical signalling, please indulge us.
So it comes down to this: to prove cheating, you MUST prove some means of communication.
Otherwise it's telepathy or aliens or time travel or learning genius. I know which of those 4 I'd pick as most likely and believable.
No, that's not what we are left with. There have been loads of people caught cheating. The ones I caught online in my job with World Chess Network were often cheating with absolutely no reward other than online rating points. It is naive to think that people won't cheat when there is something at stake and since their incentive to cheat is greater than the incentive to catch them, some will probably remain uncaught for quite some time.
This malarkey about Ivanov being some incredible individual with a unique gift is ridiculous. He can't "play like Houdini" because he lacks the ability to calculate like Houdini. If he, you, me or anyone attempted to emulate this style of play based on "patterns" we would make loads of really bad moves since we could never calculate the consequences of them accurately. It's no coincidence that guys like Georgiev, Rombaldini and Kovalyov think he's cheating since they are the sorts of people who have spent the most time at the chessboard actually playing.
I would have expected better from chess players than some sort of "magical thinking".
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
The young Mozart was very poor at actual composition. His father was arranging Mozart's early pieces, actually. He became good in his late teens early 20s, after hours and hours of practice. Bad exemple, IMO. Mozart had to learn how to do the hard work, he did not became good by this elusive concept of 'immersion'. That's a myth.
Mozart's abilities had nothing to do with immersion. But hey, congratulations, you've just graduated from the Felix Dumont Immersion Course in Disinformation. Excellent technique: just post garbage and don't bother with any backing evidence. And then call everything else that contradicts your beliefs "a myth".
You'll find some way to diss her abilities. Elsewhere in this thread, I see you diss Reshevsky. "He played thousands of games... that's training." Yeah, training for the MASTERS HE WAS BEATING AT AGE 8... in 1919.
Chess calculation requires so much work to get the right answer that I don't think we'll ever see somebody learn to emulate chess engines simply by 'immersion'. A chess engine does not pop moves out of thin air, it calculates a ton of variations and select what looks to be the best move at a certain depth. Humans do the same thing, with much slower calculation and much higher selectivity.
Ivanov is clearly not doing any of this, especially in his rapid games where he pops computer moves at a constant rate. There's nothing to prove or disprove here. The simple explanation is that he's getting some outside help and that's what we should try to prove (or disprove) first.
In science, you always look for the simplest explanation first and if it doesn't work, then you look at more elaborate possibilities.
It seems you believe humans and computers 'think' the same, using the same methods. Although humans certainly can do calculations, the brain is much, much more versatile than that. The human brain is the best instrument known for pattern-matching and for neural network feedback learning techniques. AI programmers have tried to emulate in sofware the brain's neural network capabilities, and so far have failed miserably.
Imagine, for example, writing a computer program that starts with zero knowledge about chess, and then gains its chess knowledge from external data it receives. That's what your brain did. If reincarnation and pre-knowledge are to be discarded, there were no pre-existing data structures in your brain at birth to represent chess concepts. You had to learn them. To do that, you had to learn about space and time, you had to learn language, you had to learn visual pattern matching to recognize the pieces -- all of this with no foreknowledge. No one loaded your brain with chess software. The learning that goes on during human childhood is so amazing as to be beyond belief, once you understand how impossible it is to program that into any known computer.
I agree with you that we should try and prove / disprove Ivanov getting outside help first and foremost. Suspending him from tournament play is the totally wrong approach. RF communication is easy to prove or disprove. Once it's disproved, and physical signalling also disproved, what are you left with? I've already spelled it out for you.
I also agree with you that Ivanov is not doing "any of this". He is not doing a Min-Max Algorithm with Alpha Beta pruning. He is not doing an Evaluate() function as a computer understands it (count material, count available moves, etc.) on thousands or even hundreds or even dozens of positions. No human is doing that! Ivanov may not even be doing anything that can be explained in any written language. It's like trying to explain the color red to a person born blind. S/he's never seen a strawberry or a traffic light or anything red, ever. There's no language to intrinsically explain red. "It's an electromagnetic wave with wavelength somewhere between 620–740 nanometres." Meaningless. It doesn't enable you to visualize red.
You can visualize red because you've seen it. If I describe a simple chess position to you, you could probably visualize that too. If it's simple enough, you might even correctly visualize all attacks and counterattacks.
Now, what if I ask you to visualize what move Houdini would make in that same position? Let's assume it's a quiet position with plenty of move options for White, none of which lead to any obvious problems. You'd either guess or say you don't know for sure. But you are just like the person born blind who cannot visualize red. Even if you've played Houdini several games, you can still only speculate, and maybe 50% or more of the time you'd guess wrong.
But just because you can't "visualize Houdini's move" doesn't mean everyone can't. Ivanov may be specially gifted like Mozart, or he may simply have learned via intensive training against Houdini, or it could be a combination of the two. But if we totally eliminate cheating as a possibility, we have to accept that Ivanov can "visualize Houdini's move". In any chess situation. He may be totally unique in the entire world for that ability. That's still more probable than he's using telepathy with someone outside the playing site who has Houdini running.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
What about a Raspberry Pi hidden somewhere in his clothes or shoes? This computer weights a whole 45g and is 8.5cm x 5.4cm. It requires only 1.5W of power so a single iPhone battery (another small component) could power that for more than 4 hours.
But no, it's probably impossible to think of that, I'm so close minded after all...
Mathieu
Did you think you were going to shock me with that? Like I never heard of it or something?
So, Raspberry Pi.... Requires USB keyboard and mouse for input. Or an audio mic... I wonder if Ivanov was speaking his opponent's moves right after they made them. Dead giveaway. Some kind of pinhole camera perhaps? So let's see... we got a wired video feed, has to be fairly high resolution, into a device with 512 Mb of ram and the equivalent of a 300 MHz Pentium 2 processor (ouch!). From an SD card, we got some kind of software running that turns that video into a chess position. Room for error: 0. Opponent makes a move, software translates that video into a chess move. Room for error: 0. Oh, and then we got... well gee, we got Houdini 3 running on an ARM 6, receiving that chess move, and outputting a response. All this in less than 10 seconds. Oh, did I say "outputting"? Yeah, outputting... well, there's an audio out. Does Houdini engine speak its moves? Gee, I wonder... add voice processing to all that's going on.
And Kenneth Regan runs his tests on much faster hardware with much more RAM, and voila, every single move matches.
Everything runs without a hitch, AND you got a wired camera input, and a wired audio output, and nothing gets found. They took off his shirt, still didn't find anything.
You know what, Mathieu will take telepathy, Alex.
Raspberry Pi... all over your face.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
No, that's not what we are left with. There have been loads of people caught cheating. The ones I caught online in my job with World Chess Network were often cheating with absolutely no reward other than online rating points. It is naive to think that people won't cheat when there is something at stake and since their incentive to cheat is greater than the incentive to catch them, some will probably remain uncaught for quite some time.
This malarkey about Ivanov being some incredible individual with a unique gift is ridiculous. He can't "play like Houdini" because he lacks the ability to calculate like Houdini. If he, you, me or anyone attempted to emulate this style of play based on "patterns" we would make loads of really bad moves since we could never calculate the consequences of them accurately. It's no coincidence that guys like Georgiev, Rombaldini and Kovalyov think he's cheating since they are the sorts of people who have spent the most time at the chessboard actually playing.
I would have expected better from chess players than some sort of "magical thinking".
WHAT ELSE ARE WE LEFT WITH, TOM? I asked you to indulge us, and you produce... blank.
That was a nice little diversion about the motivation that drives cheating. But I'm not denying any cheating. I'm not even denying that Ivanov could possibly be cheating. He could, I agree. But don't start talking about online cheating, what we are talking about here is public, OTB cheating, and that requires a communication method.
Do you deny the existence of genius in the human population? Indeed, throughout human history? Do you join Mathieu Cloutier in digging the hole that will bury you? He's got Raspberry Pi all over his face in his desperate, reaching attempts to avoid the possibility of "god given talent" (his words).
Tell me, Tom, how is it that there are people to whom you can give 2 numbers -- any numbers, any size, random numbers off the top of your head such as 1,568,445,233 and 779,780,203 - and ask them to multiply them and give you the answer. And they can do it IMMEDIATELY. No hemming and hawing, no time delay to calculate, just IMMEDIATELY. And they get it right EACH AND EVERY TIME.
HOW ARE YOU GOING TO EXPLAIN THAT, TOM? CHEATING?
And there are probably dozens, if not hundreds, of these people on record:
"Tammet is calculating 377 multiplied by 795. Actually, he isn't "calculating": there is nothing conscious about what he is doing. He arrives at the answer instantly."
"Tammet is a "savant", an individual with an astonishing, extraordinary mental ability. An estimated 10% of the autistic population - and an estimated 1% of the non-autistic population - have savant abilities, but no one knows exactly why."
NOTE: when I make a claim that might be arguable, I back it up with something. Unlike you and Mathieu, who just spew it out your ass and wonder why it smells like shit!
You and Mathieu have nothing. Your conclusions and opinions are junk, totally refuted by the evidence. Both "magical thinking" and "given talent" (by God or otherwise) are evident all around you, you're both just blind to it.
I'm done with both of you. Come back when you can say you've learned something.
Hey Mathieu: maybe Tammet and others like him spent "thousands of hours" practicing multiplication! Or maybe his father taught it to him! ROFLMAO
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Borislav Ivanov and Rapid Chess
You remind me of the people who are totally convinced that people like Sylvia Browne are psychic. No matter how many times individuals of their ilk are found to be frauds, the next one comes along and they still believe it. Ivanov doesn't want to be tested, just like Sylvia Browne won't undergo the Randi Foundation tests. Why? The obvious answer is that they are frauds.
That I cannot say how the guy is cheating doesn't mean he isn't cheating. I don't know how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty "disappear" and "reappear" but that doesn't mean it was more than a fantastic bit of subterfuge.
On the one hand we have GMs who actually played the guy saying he is cheating backed up by statistical arguments. On the other we have magical thinking from the likes of you.
Last edited by Tom O'Donnell; Thursday, 27th June, 2013, 11:35 PM.
"Tom is a well known racist, and like most of them he won't admit it, possibly even to himself." - Ed Seedhouse, October 4, 2020.
The only "test" they had in store for him was a polygraph. Probably rigged against him. If the government called you in for a polygraph and said if you failed you would be branded a terrorist, what exactly would your reaction be?
That I cannot say how the guy is cheating doesn't mean he isn't cheating.
And I am not saying he isn't cheating. I present "magical thinking" (immersion learning) as a possibility. You reject even the possibility, even though there is evidence of "magical thinking" all around you.
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Borislav Ivanov and Rapid Chess
It seems that your open mind works only one way...
-There's very little information to transfer. Video input and audio output would be simple with miniaturized devices. He could have two Pis, one to manage the communication and one to calculate moves.
-The Raspberry Pi can be overclocked
-With Houdini, the evaluation often stabilizes very rapidly, hence the match with lower hardware. And it's strong enough on a Pi to beat any human anyway!
Not saying he did it that way, he probably didn't. Just saying it's a possibility. We don't have to prove communication to prove that he cheated. Be a little creative, like you usually are!
Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Re: Re : Borislav Ivanov and Rapid Chess
Paul,
These savants who can calculate simple mathematical operations very rapidly have the processing power of a 1955 mainframe computer. Basically thousands of times slower than a modern day calculator. Nothing beyond what is physiologically possible.
In 1955, computers could barely play chess. That gives you an idea of the amount of calculation required to play chess. It is thousands and thousands and thousands times more than what is required to do multiplications.
These savants who can calculate simple mathematical operations very rapidly have the processing power of a 1955 mainframe computer. Basically thousands of times slower than a modern day calculator. Nothing beyond what is physiologically possible.
In 1955, computers could barely play chess. That gives you an idea of the amount of calculation required to play chess. It is thousands and thousands and thousands times more than what is required to do multiplications.
The thing you keep ignoring, Mathieu, is that the brain is not at all like a computer. The only thing that is really comparable is that they both use electricity. But the brain is by no means moving bits and bytes around and storing them in registers or memory locations. In fact, no one can say what the brain is doing exactly, but it involves (as I've already explained to you) neural network feedback techniques. There are organic wires connecting the billions of neurons of the brain, and the brain is capable of rewiring itself in response to data: disconnecting some neurons and adding new connections. This is the essence of learning, that a computer has no equivalent to (although some poor attempts made to software-emulate this).
So in no way is a savant calculating a "routine" calculation doing what a 1955 mainframe CPU would be doing. To believe that it is is simply the height of foolishness, and any hardware or software engineer will tell you the same.
An Intel or AMD CPU design engineer, if you paid him or her enough money, could sit down with you and explain step by step exactly what is going on inside even today's most complex CPUs for a given calculation. Even if multithreading and pipelining is going on and there are multiple cores sharing memory and data busses, it's all still rational and explainable. The state of all registers and shared memory locations used in the calculation can be given for any clock cycle.
Try getting any molecular biologist to do the same for the human brain doing a calculation.
It's totally beyond our comprehension. Even the simple act of storing a memory is a complete mystery, although there are theories.
Even the complexity of a single-celled amoeba is beyond our grasp. There are things going on even there we don't know or understand.
You are such an utter and complete fool to be making the statements you are making. Are you in grade school or something? I feel you are a child, although you lack a child's open mind and capacity for learning. It is equally mysterious how a mind can be so rigid and closed as how a mind can be open and adaptable.
But one thing time has proven: adaptable minds survive most change, rigid minds survive almost no change at all.
Your kind of simpleton thinking and unwavering confidence that you have it right are a dangerous combination. If I were working with Canadian security agencies, I'd be tagging you as someone to keep an eye on. Well, maybe not right now, seeing as you're still in grade school...
Only the rushing is heard...
Onward flies the bird.
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