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The Dubious QualifierHow Fritz "earned" the right to play the Million Dollar ChallengeAs Vladimir Kramnik does battle with Fritz in the battle of Bahrain, scheduled for an October 2002 start, many will no doubt be interested in how this match came about, and how the participants were chosen. The Human representative, Kramnik, was automatically invited by virtue of his holding the traditional World Champion title, which he earned by defeating Kasparov in their 2000 match, where I participated as arbiter. As soon as the BGN World Championship match between Kasparov and Kramnik had concluded, Ray Keene asked me to begin working on the Man vs. Machine Million Dollar Challenge (as it was then called, at my suggestion). It wasn’t until the end of March, however, that the organization of the qualification and final match got down to details. The qualifying event turned out to be quite a controversial affair. I felt to withdraw as arbiter for reasons which will be presented in Part One of this document. That did not affect my status as arbiter of the final, and I developed a full set of rules for the match, in cooperation with both Team Fritz and Team Kramnik. That will be covered in Part Two. However, events of September 11, 2001 forced a postponement of the match. During the interval, BGN sold the rights for the match to the Einstein TV group, who hired Malcolm Pein to take on the role previously occupied by Ray Keene. I was again invited as arbiter, but my participation was vetoed by Team Fritz, as will be discussed in Part Three. Part One deals with the controversial qualifying tournament held in Cadaques, Spain,. to choose a challenger for Kramnik. Because many questions have been raised about this event, I am going to refrain from presenting any prejudicial commentary, though I may do so at some time in the future. Instead, I place in the public record a large set of internal emails. I should point out that I never received any compensation for my work, and am under no obligation to keep this material from the public. It is certainly in the public interest to make this material available, and however one might judge the actions of each individual, I think that all the correspondents behaved very well. Indeed, even after I withdrew from the qualifier I remained an integral part of the team working on the big final match, so obviously we felt confident that we could all work together. It is not my intention to disparage any individuals involved. Each has made very significant contributions to chess and our disagreements over matters of policy and philosophy should not be taken as personal animosity. Part Two contains email documentation and all the drafts and final agreed form of the rules for the planned Bahrain match in 2001. These are NOT the rules under which the match is being played. My rules were replaced when I was. However, it is a fascinating set of exchanges and contains discussions of many tricky questions. Anyone interested in human vs. computer mind sports will learn a lot! Part Three is simply a matter of putting the facts of my non-participation (including lack of compensation for any of the 20012002 work!) on the record. This may not be of particular interest to most folks, but I want to complete the tale. Because this document is intended as a record, I have made it available online and in PDF format.. Although I retain copyright to the overall document, you may use as much of the text as you deem appropriate in discussions of the event. If scholarship or reporting requirements demand an exact copy of some original email with all headers and so on, please contact me by email and I’ll see what I can do. You can read the articles online in HTML or PDF format or download it in PDF format. The PDF is much easier to follow. |
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