Talk:Ed Trice/Archive 2

Additional Changes
Any comments that are ad hominem attacks, I am removing. Sorry. The talk page is not an umbrella under which anyone can post any malicious remark they feel they can "get away with" -- I just won't allow it. You have something to say about this "biography", say it. It's too sparse? That's because the articles that were previously referenced some of you removed.

Case in point: The Fischer vs. Karpov Gothic Chess match. It's been documented in at least 2 newspaper articles, Susan Polgar confirmed it, "New In Chess" issue 28, on Fischer's death, confirmed my visit to Iceland to discuss the $15 million dollar match, these are articles "in print" and easy enough to find, but because it was not "on a web page" these items were removed. Then there is http://www.GothicChess.com/radio.wma

My radio interview on the Dan Heisman show, hosted by the ICC. I've heard all kinds of wooden rhetoric why that could not be included, even one as absurd as "it is being hosted on a Gothic Chess site, so it's conflict of interest." What baloney. I suppose the Gothic Chess Federation owns ICC?

In short, SOME OF the "editors" on here are mostly detractors, who have little or no objectivity, and keep removing important, properly sourced material. I've identified who they are. I've identified why they have some "axe to grind", for their own perceived reasons.

You want to discuss something about my bio, discuss it.

But I think that creating a software program that was rated over 2200 in the year 1987, on hardware that was no faster than 7 MHz, that fit on an 800K floppy disk that also housed the operating system (no hard drive!) is significant.

I think being the 5th person to ever defeat the Chinook world champion checkers program, is significant.

I think drubbing Deep Thought in 1989 is significant.

I think publishing papers in the International Computer Games Association Journal is significant. Despite it's name, it's mostly packed with Computer Science PhD authors.

I think that proving a checkers endgame position (20 years older than the United States is) was being played non-optimally for nearly 250 years is significant.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, if you feel particular comments on this page contain poorly sourced contentious material, please let us know which comments they are so we can remove them. As for the rest, well, this isn't the place for me to be honest with you.  Just to clarify (talk) 17:20, 23 September 2008 (UTC)


 * Are press releases to be considered statements of fact? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donaldstrumpcard (talk • contribs) 03:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Even though it's posted elsewhere that is was 16MHz in the biography. It is hard to remember what the truth is sometimes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donaldstrumpcard (talk • contribs)


 * The Sniper ran on a Macintosh SE/30 the last year it played, according to Chess Life. Also this supports it
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macintosh_SE/30
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 20:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Comment Removed
The comment that was previously here was entirely uncalled for.

1. Since when has it been permissible to re-order comments on the page, inserted one higher up so as to draw attention to it?

2. I found nothing supporting of the snide remark at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines where it lists the purpose of the talk section as being used to

Communicate, Keep on topic, Stay objective, Deal with facts, Share material, Discuss edits, and/or Make proposals.

I am suprised the editors have allowed it to remain IN PLAIN VIEW and MOVED TO THE TOP, and, being the Living Person associated with this page, I object to the such material.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 23:18, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The entire content was as follows: 'This "Biography" Is A Joke; At the end one may read (quote): "[...] 500,995,484,682,338,672,639 unique legal positions, checkers is [...]" How ridiculous can it get?!'. I don't see any factual statements, poorly sourced or otherwise, which would violate WP:BLP.  I just see a (poorly formed) opinion that this biography is a joke.  That in mind, I'm restoring the material. Just to clarify (talk) 16:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have gone to the talk page for the user who posted the inappropriate comment which has hurt Trice's feelings, and told him the comment was inappropriate. That said, I don't think the comment should be removed because it doesn't violate WP:BLP nor does it insult Ed Trice himself; it only says negative things about the quality of the Wikipedia article (without suggesting improvements nor saying what exactly is wrong with the article).  Just to clarify (talk) 17:04, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well I removed it as unnecessary. Tell me why it was needed, other than you're a gadfly for insisting it should remain.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:59, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Also, why did someone remove my comments about {Name removed}? If Talk Page comments aren't to be removed, why were mine? You don't play by your own rules, do you? GothicChessInventor (talk) 16:05, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The guidelines on this are stated in Talk page guidelines. The original comment that you removed is about the quality of the article and, though not all that helpful, is on topic for the talk page. There is no reason for it to be removed. As for your comment about 98.204.199.179, stating names would go under "no personal details" guidelines on talk pages, with the stated name being just speculation anyway. Leaving it up could possibly be considered libel and cause legal problems for Wikipedia (this is why biography articles have careful rules). Again, the Talk page guidelines article has these guidelines. --Mosquitopsu (talk) 20:13, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * To add to what Mosquitopsu pointed out, you made a claim that violated WP:BLP. In particular, you made a claim that you won a lawsuit against this person, without providing reliable evidence backing up your claim.  This is a contentious claim, so if you make it, you must have a reliable source to back it up.  That includes talk pages.  Please read WP:BLP.


 * For example, I can't just make the claim "Ed Trice had a judgment imposed against him in the amount of $25,000 in a lawsuit with Harac Consulting LLC". I have to back up this claim with a reliable source: Go to this page, click on "case viewer" on the left, then enter case number "200607359", and you will see that Trice lost this lawsuit.  Just to clarify (talk) 16:51, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Insulted?
I noticed this
 * chief programmer Feng-hsiung Hsu insulted his commentary

(underscore mine) in the article. I'd rather not -tag it before here giving someone a chance to substantiate the claim that Feng-hsiung Hsu insulted the commentary. But I do think that a claim of insult needs to be substantiated (by a reference in the article), or the language needs to be toned down to something such as “chief programmer Feng-hsiung Hsu challenged his commentary”. —SlamDiego&#8592;T 11:13, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Feng wrote a book about Deep Thought/Blue and the text was a direct quote from the book.

ChessHistorian (talk) 19:04, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

USCF tournament history for Edward A. Trice
I have added a link to the USCF tournament history for Edward A. Trice. There is no doubt that this is the "correct" Ed Trice and not a cousin of his with the same name, as was suggested by ChessHistorian when a similar link was removed some months ago. For proof of this, see the comments by the Ed Trice that this article is about which he added to a game played by the still active Ed Trice at chessgames.com. Gallicrow (talk) 15:30, 7 July 2008 (UTC)
 * It looks like the game above comes from this tournament where trice scored 2.0. And, oh, there's nothing wrong with being a 1300 player.  Just to clarify (talk) 01:43, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * One win, one loss, two half-point byes, and an unplayed game. The two half-point byes account for one of the two points scored.  Bubba73 (talk), 02:55, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Whilst there's nothing wrong with being a weak chess player, I thought it should be cleared up that Trice is not an expert at regular chess, despite what he has claimed in the recent past: http://usacheckers.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=726&p=3892 Trice's comment (posted on 25th July 2006): "In 1989 I played in my last chess tournament, and with 2 wins, 3 draws, and 4 losses in the Under 2400 section, my rating hit bottom at 2207. I never played chess after this." Gallicrow (talk) 13:34, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It should be pointed out that Gallicrow HAS FABRICATED A BLATANT LIE about me. He is claiming I am being sued for $21,200,000 at this link here


 * http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/chessvariants/message/2723


 * Therefore, I would like everyone to know that he is an adverse party and he is not interested in contributing anything to this article.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 23:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree that Trice said a lot of really dumb things on message boards, and that he really needs to stop doing that. There's a lot more I would say about Trice, but I'm keeping to WP:BLP.  Someone's USCF rating can be easily looked up and verified.  There is plausible denial for things said on message boards; there is the remote possibility that someone is just pretending to be Trice on a message board. Just to clarify (talk) 14:23, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Editor 76.124.113.197 added information on Ed Trice's Gothic Chess rating and games history as a replacement for his USCF chess rating and tournament history. Since Ed Trice is the inventor of Gothic Chess, this information would seem relevant to the article in addition to the information concerning Ed's USCF rating. However, USCF ratings are administered by a neutral 3rd party (USCF). It is unclear how Gothic Chess ratings are administered, so a further comment on the validity of the Gothic Chess rating might be warranted.98.204.199.179 (talk) 15:00, 10 July 2008 (UTC)


 * It is disturbing that editors 76.124.113.197 and 72.78.136.184 repeatedly deletes discussion material from the Talk page. This is clearly against the guideline regarding striking the comments of other editors without their permission Talk page guidelines. Deletions from the Talk page are not the way to get one's viewpoint across. If 76.124.113.197/72.78.136.184 have a differing viewpoint, please post those to the Talk page for discussion.98.204.199.179 (talk) 14:53, 10 July 2008 (UTC)

Accuracy Of Ratings
As of July 11, 2008 I had played 293 games of Gothic Chess, which can be counted easily enough here

http://www.gothic-chess.com/one-players-games.php?id=63

Some of these games were played "at odds".

I offered Archbishop Odds in 2 games, winning 1 and losing 1

The win was a mate in 38 moves (the first 4 moves create the lost Archbishop) http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=129

The loss was 64 moves (again, the first 4 moves create the lost Archbishop) http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2735

My opponent that beat me in the Archbishop Odds games offered a rematch where he was giving me Archbishop Odds.

I checkmated him in 7 moves (the first 4 moves create the lost Archbishop) http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2737

As for the rating, the 293 games of Gothic exceed the sum of "regular chess" games I have played, I'm sure. I've corresponded with Mark Glickman, author of the rating system used by the United States Chess Federation. Since 2001, we have used his formulae, and he CERTIFIED the Gothic Chess Association's proper use in a paper that he wrote. You can see an ONLINE version of his paper here at his website at Boston University (quite frankly I'm surprised that none of you do SUPPORTING research for me, everyone of you looks for CONTRADICTING information, and using anonymous Discussion Boards, where anyone can post as anybody, as "proof" of things I say. Whatever happened to Wikipedia "reliable sources" ??)

http://math.bu.edu/people/mg/glicko/glicko.doc/glicko.html

Back to the list of my Gothic Chess games at http://www.gothic-chess.com/one-players-games.php?id=63

It's easier to tally the win-loss-draw counts up until you see draws (1/2-1/2). I'll do that, including the draw, to see if the count is correct.

W-L-D 9-1-1 (the one loss was the Archbishop Odd's game, so was one of the wins)

Next there is a run of 40 wins to my second draw bringing the total to...

49-1-2

It should be pointed out that some of the people in this range also play on ICC with the same handle

vaporlock vs. me

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2665 http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2664

botchvink vs. me

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2667

Also, the second draw I experienced was due to a bug in this site. Replay this game

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2570

And you'll see something weird was happening.

Next 5 wins 2 losses to the next draw, bring the total to

54-3-3

Next 4 wins 2 losses to the next draw, bring the total to

58-5-4

This has to be my most humiliating defeat, just 16 moves to a newcomer, where I "totally fell asleep" and missed a smothered mate by a Knight:

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2268

But, in this range, I also beat Yaacov Norowicz, the extremely strong blitz player from ICC who did well in the U2200 section in the 2008 World Open (everyone expected he would win, he finished "in the money" but 2 points from 1st place)

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=2064

Yaacov obviously forgot how the Archbishop moved, and I picked up his Queen in exchange for it. So, you see, Gothic Chess has very different patterns than regular chess, which is even more evident by the next game

I had also invited ICC's yoda2006, another strong ICC blitz player, and I won 2 games against him

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1696

He simply dropped his Queen in completely unfamiliar territory. Does this mean he lacks tactical vision? No, of course not. It means his board vision is not tuned to the Gothic Chess board's unique configuration and he's unfamiliar with the patterns that come up throughout the course of play.

In this next game

http://www.gothic-chess.com/javascript/game.php?gameid=1695

yoda was hit with an early flank check from my Bishop that he could not block, so he started out on bad footing. My Bishop pair was able to tie down key regions of real estate, ultimately assisting to set up a fork winning his Queen. Again, no tactical wizardy on my part, just an opponent struggling with the unfamiliar.

There is more "pattern recognition" that constitutes your rating than anything else. Skill is mostly perception, as DeGroot discovered in his landmark paper from the 1930's.

I think I'll stop the tally here at 87 wins 6 losses and 4 draws. You guys get the point. The 2000+ Gothic Chess rating is legitimate. It's tied to a high winning percentage. It uses the Glicko system, and it is accurate. Come play me a game on the site if you want to test me out. Back up your conjecture with your own experiences.

As for the USCF tournament history, I contacted the USCF about it after entering the Holly Heisman Memorial in 2004 when Dan Heisman had me listed as 2187 at round 1. Their database had been ascribing games to the USCF for me, that is certainly true. I have "taken over" and continue to play under that ID. I asked Bill Goichberg if I could play in the U1400 AND U1600 simultaneously at the World Open. He said a "peak" of 1430 was associated with my rating, which is the exact "high" that is permissible to still "tank your rating" and play U1400, so, "there might be some grumblings" should I on to do well in both sections. For that reason, I elected to "remove all doubt", and I will be returning to the World Open next year to play 18 games. —Preceding unsigned comment added by GothicChessInventor (talk • contribs) 16:25, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm not exactly sure what you're contesting here! (if anything). The article now lists both standard chess and Gothic chess ratings; are you stating that either of these is listed incorrectly?  Oli Filth(talk) 18:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm saying that other people are basing "claims" they read about on other discussion boards, yet discussion boards are not "reliable sources" acccording to Wikipedia. Anyone who posts information here should constrain themselves to reliable sources. I'm saying that people who have said that the Gothic Chess rating is inaccurate do not know what they are talking about. I've documented that it is accurate, and the INVENTOR OF THE RATING SYSTEM has acknowledge this. I'm saying that the USCF rating was deliberately "tanked" to become under 1400 for the purpose of playing in the World Open for large amounts of money, but only AFTER I advised them of their own post-1991 error, and they said that I am PERFECTLY ABLE to play in the Under 1400 section in ANY tournament. So, when I "beat up" on some U1400 people at next year's tournament, I don't want to hear any complaints when I get that $15,000 check. How's that? Clear?

GothicChessInventor (talk) 21:01, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Since I don't see any other comments pro or con about the Gothic Chess Rating system, you must be referring to these comments above: "Editor 76.124.113.197 added information on Ed Trice's Gothic Chess rating and games history as a replacement for his USCF chess rating and tournament history. Since Ed Trice is the inventor of Gothic Chess, this information would seem relevant to the article in addition to the information concerning Ed's USCF rating. However, USCF ratings are administered by a neutral 3rd party (USCF). It is unclear how Gothic Chess ratings are administered, so a further comment on the validity of the Gothic Chess rating might be warranted." My stress here is not the inherent validity and soundness of the rating system. I took that for granted as Ed Trice is a smart guy and probably worked out a nice smart rating system. My comment was only related to it being "unclear how the Gothic Chess ratings are ADMINISTERED". USCF ratings are administered by USCF. FIDE ratings are administered by FIDE. And the Gothic Chess ratings are administered by the Gothic Chess Federation which is... Ed Trice! This may be great when we are talking about Susan Polgar's rating in Gothic Chess (how did she do in the game pictured, by the way?) but when talking about Ed Trice's Gothic Chess rating, this seems... questionable. Not that there is anything wrong with Ed Trice's Gothic Chess rating, it may be completely fine. But having Ed Trice administer his own ratings... well that wouldn't be seen in a lot of competitive sporting activities because of the inherent conflict of interest issue. 98.204.199.179 (talk) 22:23, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding the prospective winning of $15K, that would be great. I'm sure when Ed does so, this page will be edited to proclaim it to the world.98.204.199.179 (talk) 22:26, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I second what you say. Concerning what should go in to the article, we have reliable sources (WP:RS) stating that Mr. Trice has his UCSF rating; we don't have any reliable sources stating that this rating is because of an error on the USCF's part so adding any information of that kind to the wikipedia is inappropriate. Just to clarify (talk) 16:25, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't think anyone is doubting the inherent accuracy of the rating system. However, (1) the pool of players for Gothic Chess is very small (2) the bulk of the players on the rating list have their initial 1500 rating, and (3) I haven't seen anything that correlates those ratings to USCF of FIDE ratings.  The ratings are meaningful only for that pool of players.  And that's all I have to say about that.  Bubba73 (talk), 22:14, 14 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well then why don't you find someone with an ACCURATE chess rating to log onto the site and play as many games of Gothic Chess against me as they desire? Then you will have your own metric by which to judge the two systems.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:43, 15 July 2008 (UTC)

Letter from the late Don Lafferty, World Checkers Champion
For those who have posted here (and elsewhere) that I did not make the World Championship Checkers program...

Here is a link to a scanned letter from the late Don Lafferty.

http://www.gothicchess.com/images/lafferty.jpg

It is dated June 30, 1997 and reads:



GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:50, 15 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Presumably, Ed Trice's co-author, Gil Dodgen, would also agree he was a co-author of this program. A joint paper (http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.85.582&rep=rep1&type=pdf) has the statement that they are coauthors of this program in its bibliography.98.204.199.179 (talk) 04:01, 16 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Also on the WorldChampionshipCheckers.com page here, so I don't know why all the "nay-sayers" are so outspoken against something so obvious.

http://www.worldchampionshipcheckers.com/database_paper.html

GothicChessInventor (talk) 06:38, 16 July 2008 (UTC) I agree that it is difficult to support what the sole administrator to a rating system has to say about his own rating. There is no disinterested thrid party so I would move the record be struck. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Donaldstrumpcard (talk • contribs) 20:37, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

This Biography is Lightweight
I have patiently given this article appr. one year to develop before judging and criticizing it. Presently, it consists of three substantive sections: "early career", "Gothic Chess", "recent career".

Most of the article's content relates to Gothic Chess for which there is already a reasonably good, seperate article.

Firstly, the sections about the "early career" and "recent career" of Ed Trice are interesting to Ed Trice (I presume) but are hardly of historic, encyclopediac importance.

Secondly, it would have been more accurate to name those sections "early hobbies" and "late hobbies" since his primitive dabbling (by modern standards) with AI programming was not in a professional or academic capacity.

Thirdly, it would be a mistake to confuse his primitive dabbling with any claims that he is a pioneer of historic importance in artificial intelligence research. Nowhere but here is Ed Trice mentioned is such a ridiculous context. This state of affairs harms the effort of Wikipedia to build a good reputation as a source of reliable information. Notably, the needed references to textbooks and/or journals are not forthcoming.

Fourthly, hundreds of millions of white-collar people worldwide have careers as well as hobbies but most of these people do not vastly over-estimate their importance to the world scale.

The edit history for this article reveals dishonesty on the part of Ed Trice working as GothicChessInventor, two major sockpuppets ChessHistorian and GothicEnthusiast as well as numerous, anonymous IP sockpuppets (all traceable to the Philadelphia, PA, USA area) in falsely claiming grandiose achievements. Hence, I do not consider that this article is worthy of the benefit of ANY doubt for the dubious, unreferenced achievements that persist within it. Moreover, I recommend that this article be deleted thru normal processes as it does not quite qualify for speedy deletion and its deletion will probably be contested by you-know-who. --BenWillard —Preceding undated comment was added at 23:01, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Whilst I'm inclined, to an extent, to agree with your assessment of this article, a better way to discuss deletion is, of course, to either propose or nominate the article for deletion (I suggest WP:AFD to be more appropriate in this case). Bear in mind, though, that Trice does have something approaching an internet presence, and also that he had little to do with the article in its current state.  In any further discussions, though, I think it would be better to steer clear of ad hominem attacks and unsubstantiated accusations of dishonesty and sockpuppeting etc.  Oli Filth(talk 23:35, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I am not aware of any ad hominem attacks against Ed Trice within my comments above. I realize it sounds negative but it is just my objective assessment of the present quality of the biographical article about Ed Trice- an important distinction.--BenWillard  —Preceding undated comment was added at 00:56, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You seem to have forgotten the conversation that you Oli Filth and Mangojuice had with GothicChessInventor, who openly admits to being Ed Trice, over vandalism and sockpuppetry that matched the IP of his computer. See GothicChessInventor-talk, section "Your Recent Talk Page Comments".  Did you actually believe his denial that one of his 47 employees must have stolen his password to commit this act of vandalism and sockpuppetry instead of him?  Your words are where these accusations first appear, not in mine.  --BenWillard  —Preceding undated comment was added at 01:26, 27 August 2008 (UTC)


 * "arrogantly, vastly over-estimate their importance" reads like more like ad hominem than constructive talk-page discussion, to me at least. As for sockpuppeting, there is no evidence, as far as I'm aware, that the two accounts mentioned above are operated by Trice.  At any rate, this is not the place to discuss such matters.  If you believe sockpuppeting is occurring, report it at WP:SSP; if you believe the article should be deleted, put it up at WP:AFD.  Oli Filth(talk 07:50, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Personally, I don't like the tone of Mr. Willard's post above, but I agree that Mr. Trice is not notable enough to merit a Wikipedia article. I would not put this article on the AFD block, and can not vote for it to be deleted (Since, yes, this is a sockpuppet account), but I agree that Mr. Trice hasn't done anything Wikipedia-notable except for Gothic Chess, which already has a Wikipedia article. Just to clarify (talk) 22:48, 27 August 2008 (UTC)

Recent removed article content
Someone recently removed comments about me not being in any newspaper articles about helping Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer solving the game of checkers. I would like to remind that person that the article that appeared in the Baltimore Sun Times was responsible for the creation of this page initially. It was rather expansive and I was quoted in at least 5 different newspapers.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 03:18, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

P.S. If the databases were wrong, the proof collapses. In 2001 Gil Dodgen and I proved his 8-piece database contained faulty information. If he built his 9- and 10- piece databases off of the 8-piece, his 6 year effort from 2002-2007 would have been wasted.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 03:22, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Here is one link

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/baltsun/access/1307478491.html?dids=1307478491:1307478491&FMT=ABS&FMTS=ABS:FT&date=Jul+20%2C+2007&author=Dennis+O'Brien&pub=The+Sun&desc=AT+CHECKERS%2C+CHINOOK+IS+UNBEATABLE%3B+COMPUTER+PROGRAM+DEVELOPED+WITH+HELP+OF+GAME'S+BEST+GOES+BEYOND+HUMAN+ABILITY&pqatl=google

I entered "Ed Trice" and "Baltimore Sun" into google and found a snippet from the original article.


 * The only information we have that meets WP:RS guidelines concerning Ed Trice's contributions to solving checkers is Mr. Trice commenting on Checkers being solved. In particular, the above link gives us this:


 * "It's really a profound scientific discovery," said Ed Trice, who has developed computer programs to play both checkers and chess. "In 2007, if we're just solving the game of checkers, think about trying to create programs that can help determine the right course of treatment for a patient, and how complicated things like that can get."


 * This is just Trice commenting on the subject, and doesn't discuss his contributions. We need more information that meets WP:RS guidelines talking about Mr. Trice's contributions to solving checkers before it is appropriate to talk about it in the Wikipedia.


 * In addition, because of WP:COI, it is not appropriate for Ed Trice to edit his own biography, unless there is material that violates WP:BLP (I feel Trice's conflict with Labate, for example, does not belong here because it's contentious, and is not reliably sourced). Just to clarify (talk) 17:16, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * FWIW, Trice is not in the index of Jonathan Schaeffer's book One Jump Ahead: Challenging Human Supremacy in Checkers. Bubba73 (talk), 17:46, 11 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I am mentioned in his new book that just came out. http://books.google.com/books?id=IVumOsLLqgAC&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=%22The+7-piece+perfect+play+lookup+database+for+the+game+of+checkers%22&source=bl&ots=pmH4D8e8z2&sig=1-SS9R8W3L8BvLCFcgjtaqR0_70&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA242,M1
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 00:11, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I also agree with removal. This is like an acknowledgement in an academic publication.  Acknowledgements are not generally noteworthy; I would want to see substantial secondary coverage of this link before thinking it should be included here.  Mango juice talk 17:52, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

I believe Trice's checkers contributions are noteworthy. Jonathan Schaeffer's book came out in 1996. Trice wrote the checkers program in 1997. About Trice being in the newspaper - the reporters obviously contacted him as a reputable source for the newspaper article. Reporters do their research, before contacting people, and after they get their comments. Many people don't even appear in articles even though they were contacted. So Trice's contribution to checkers is noteworthy. I downloaded and read Trice's PDF file about checkers. I played checkers as a kid growing up during the Great Depression. We all did. It kept us from losing hope and just going crazy at times. Neighbors would come over and it was a social atmosphere. But people in my town were quite good at the game. That ending in the paper called Fourth Position was something I was taught when I's about 13 years old. Couldn't believe the side winning by a king could never force a win sometimes but it was true. And that paper of Trice's showed the hardest version of the ending and how to win it. Seeing that position again reminded me of my "pa" who I haven't thought of in a long while. When you get to be as old as me, ya reminess a lot. There's not much good info on checkers around anymore so I like to keep what is good online. I say keep it. It's good stuff.

Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 17:27, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello. This doesn't really answer the points above about reliably-sourced secondary coverage, so unless you can help with that, I'll have to revert your reversion of my reversion!  Oli Filth(talk 17:52, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oli you're wrong. That is very reliably sourced. When a newspaper article initiates contact, that makes it a reliable source. Doesn't matter what you say. It's sourced.

21aidepikiw12 (talk) 21:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * There is no source (thus far) that indicates that Trice had any input other than building an independent database, nor that this was any more noteworthy than receiving a brief "acknowledgement" from Schaeffer. To infer otherwise from a quotation in a newspaper article is original synthesis.
 * Note that I'm not going to perform any more reverts to this material today due to WP:3RR, but I would suggest not putting this material back until a source is found that Trice's contribution was notable. Oli Filth(talk 21:43, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer has a new book out called "One Jump Ahead - Computer Perfection at Checkers". I am mentioned on page 241 of the new book.

You can see this here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=IVumOsLLqgAC&pg=PA241&lpg=PA241&dq=%22The+7-piece+perfect+play+lookup+database+for+the+game+of+checkers%22&source=bl&ots=pmH4D8e8z2&sig=1-SS9R8W3L8BvLCFcgjtaqR0_70&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=8&ct=result#PPA242,M1

If you do a google search with the name of the paper I wrote...

"The 7-piece perfect play lookup database for the game of checkers"

You will find not only every place on the net that hosts information about it, but also the name of every other paper ever written that refers to this research, including books. The new Schaeffer book also refers to this paper.

I know you guys have some axe to grind against me since you are always trying to "taking something away" from my page here or otherwise discredit me. But you are really making yourselves look bad when there are so many obvious supporting facts, yet you make blanket statments like "it's not reliably sourced."

1. My opinion was sought after by newspapers. Not "blogs", not anything "online", but actual, credible newspapers. THEY HAVE A VERY HIGH STANDARD before going to press, and they do phone interviews, consulting many sources, before they print one line of text in their newspapers. And, unlike you, they do not let their own opinions shape what really matters, the QUALITY of their work. If you don't think so, then show me a newspaper clipping where you were mentioned, and post something "verifiable" online here. Any takers?

2. My paper on checkers has been published in more than one hardcover textbook that is sold on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other booksellers. Nobody before or since has even attempted to compute "perfect play" for checkers endgame databases. In some respects, it's harder to do than chess endgames. If you actually read the paper, you might understand why. Instead, you try and have it removed, making idle claims that it is not (insert your own biased, fake reason here) as if you actually know what you're talking about. Well, you don't. And, again, your attempt to discredit it is really making you look bad.

3. I am mentioned on the website of the person who solved the game of checkers. The heading is "DATABASE VERIFICATION". Do you know how hard it is to verify that your own computation of 132 billion endgame positions exactly equal the 132 billion that another person computed? You have to be able to read/write each others formats. You have to know how each datum is indexed. Then you have to extract it from the index. Then do the comparison. And, the first time we did this, THE RESULTS DID NOT MATCH! So, how do you determine which set of data was incorrect? It took over a week before our data was known to be correct. And, in case you can't figure this out, YOU CAN'T SOLVE THE GAME OF CHECKERS IF YOUR DATA IS INCORRECT, therefore I HELPED WITH THE SOLUTION TO THE GAME OF CHECKERS. Everyone in the artificial intelligence arena is aware of this. Schaeffer gives us credit in papers he later published. I mention all of this because you people have no idea how much EFFORT went into such a computation. And how often can somebody offer assistance to the world's leading authority in a particular domain?

You mock and discredit what you don't understand.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 23:53, 11 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I think it would be more productive if you expended your energy on, for instance, locating a source that indicates notability (see below for exactly I mean), rather than another long-winded diatribe (I'm not "biased", why on earth would I have "an axe to grind", and actually yes I have been mentioned in a newspaper article but that's completely beside the point!).


 * I'm not disputing that you performed this database work (and I don't think of any of the editors above are, either). I'm sure the process was "hard", but that doesn't automatically make it notable.  Having a paper published doesn't confer notability, what matters is whether it's widely cited.  As you suggested, I did a Google search on your paper's title; pretty much all it brought up were a bunch of links to academic journal search engines.  So I did a Google Scholar search instead; it came up with 2 citations.  Yes, one of them is from Schaeffer, but remember that notability isn't inherited.  Scaheffer's achievement may be notable (I'm not disputing that either; there are, as you say, abundant newspaper articles, etc.), but again that doesn't automatically mean that your effort inherits that notability to the extent where it's worth putting in an encyclopaedia article.


 * Essentially, what I'm trying to get at is that we need some independent source that supports the notion that your contribution was notable, I think that's what the other editors above are trying to say as well. (At least for me) it's not about trying to "discredit" your achievements, it's about having an article that isn't full of random fluff.  If you can provide a source to back up your claim that "everyone in the artificial intelligence arena is aware" of your contributions, then I think we're in business!   Oli Filth(talk 01:04, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Wright Brothers were unknown bicycle mechanics in 1902. Albert Einstein was an unknown patent clerk in 1904. In 1903, the field of aviation was invented. In 1905, Isaac Newton was set on his head when Relativity was published. What "credentials" does anyone have before they make their mark?


 * Only 3 people on planet earth have been able to solve very large checkers endgame databases that Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer trusted enough to incorporate into his "proof" of the game of checkers. Gil Dodgen, Ed Gilbert, and myself are the 3 people. If you download Schaeffer's paper when he announced he solved checkers (also available at http://www.GothicChess.com/checkers_solved.pdf ) you will be able to see -


 * The endgame database construction program is correct. Two groups have independently computed the 8-piece databases (Ed Trice and Gil Dodgen; Ed Gilbert),  yielding identical results to ours.


 * What more notability is needed? The man who solved checkers could not make any announcement without independent verification. Otherwise, anybody could make any ridiculous claim, and nobody could verify it. Before he computed the 10-piece database, he acknowledged that Gil and I proved his data was INCORRECT. This is also mentioned in a paper Schaeffer published (and in his new book also). Imagine if he computed the 9- and 10- piece db and found out 6 years later he was wrong! Data from smaller databases feed the larger databases. You make one mistake early on, everything else inherits it.


 * When the world's leading authority gives you such credit, and you are in the academic community, it's well understood. I'm mentioned in newspaper articles. I'm mentioned in a book. I'm mentioned on the website of the guy who solved checkers. I'm mentioned in the papers published by the guy who solved checkers. That's notable. That's several sources by "the #1 guy" in the field. That's all that's needed. Why don't you email Dr. Schaeffer yourself and ASK him, rather than just speculate incorrectly in a domain that you know little about?
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 18:20, 12 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure what argument you're trying to make in your first paragraph above; that you haven't made your mark yet? I'm guessing not, so please clarify!


 * I've already downloaded and read (well, skimmed) Schaeffer's paper, and I have no argument with the fact that he does indeed credit you with an independent database computation. But the comments from a single guy (however notable he may be in his respective field) don't confer notability; that wouldn't do for an article on an academic figure, why should it do so here?  Similarly for a quote in a single newspaper article (I can only find one), which, as far as I can see, doesn't actually make any mention of your involvement.


 * To quote WP:N: ""Significant coverage" means that sources address the subject directly in detail, and no original research is needed to extract the content. Significant coverage is more than trivial but may be less than exclusive." (emphasis mine). Again, in summary, we need evidence that your contribution has (by definition!) been noted by more than a single guy.  Oli Filth(talk 19:38, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Database Verification and Additional Sources from Elite Programmers

 * It sounds like you don't understand that DATABASE VERIFICATION = INVOLVEMENT. This is not an easy task, and can take a very long time to execute. In order to find mutiple sources, all you have to do is search on the names of programmers who have built databases with 8 or more pieces for the game of checkers. In chronological order, these people/teams are


 * Jonathan Schaeffer/Chinook
 * Gil Dodgen and Ed Trice/World Championship Checkers (WCC)
 * Murray Cash/Nemesis
 * Ed Gilbert/Kingsrow
 * Martin Fierz/Cake++


 * That's all there is, 6 people on the earth. Of these people, only 5 names have appeared in academic papers: Schaeffer, Dodgen, Trice, Gilbert, and Cash. These are the elite checkers programmers/teams in all of the world. There is nobody else even trying to "catch up" to their programs' performances. Chinook would be like Rybka in chess, clearly the best of the best by a wide margin. Kingsrow is like whoever is closely trailing Rybka. Cake would be very close to Kingsrow, but Kingsrow now has the 10-piece database which is very powerful. Nemesis has a huge opening book, which would have to put it above WCC. And WCC could still beat every human on the earth, much like an older version of Fritz, but since it has not been improved since 2003-2004, I would have to put it as 5th best in the world.


 * As for references, just about everyone in the above list of elite programmers mentions me somewhere. It's not too hard to find either


 * http://www.furl.net/item/40945061


 * Personal correspondence. November 14, 2001 - December 7, 2001. The original chinook 8-piece database was found to be in disagreement with the Dodgen-Trice database after comparing results. Once the Chinook data were corrected, another discrepancy was discovered. Testing revealed that 1123 bits (not bytes) on a CD that Ed Trice copied and sent to Gil Dodgen for subsequent computation were in a damaged section of the disk


 * http://www.uncommondescent.com/biology/biological-neg-entropy/


 * Jon and his team eventually computed the eight-piece endgame database for checkers, and later my colleague Ed Trice and I computed it as well. Jon and I compared results, and it turned out that his database had errors that had evaded his error-detection scheme. This scheme produced internally consistent results, despite the errors. Later, Jon detected errors in my database, which were traced back to a scratch on a CD that evaded my error-detection scheme.


 * http://www.fierz.ch/history.htm:


 * Gil Dodgen went on to create World Championship Checkers with Ed Trice, and some new players arrived on the scene, all from England: Adrian Millet with Sage, Murray Cash with Nexus and later with Nemesis and Roberto Waldteufel with Wyllie. Roberto was the first to publish a program with a 7-piece database, which he computed on his own - the Chinook team was not releasing their 7- or 8-piece database. Murray Cash and the Trice/Dodgen team both computed the 8-piece database by the end of 2001, and after I also finished computing the 8-piece database in early 2002, Schaeffer finally released the 8-piece Chinook database to the public.


 * http://pages.prodigy.net/eyg/Checkers/10-pieceBuild.htm:


 * Verification is an important part of building endgame databases. When something takes years to compute, the probability that an error will occur sometime during the process is not insignificant. Of course one or two errors in trillions of positions is not so bad, but the danger is that an error can propagate to all the positions that play into it. This can effectively make all computations worthless after the first error. It would be really depressing to compute the entire 10-piece database and then discover that most of it was garbage! Nearly everyone that I know who has computed endgame databases for checkers has some experience with random errors that they can relate. The best way to verify the data is to have another independently built database to compare it against. But if you are the first to compute a database then you would have to compute it twice, and this doubles the effort. A somewhat quicker method is to visit each position in the database and verify that its value is consistent with each of the positions that it immediately plays into. It is still possible to have errors when all the data is self-consistent by this test, but the probability is small. This type of verification adds about 40% to the total build time. For the 10-piece English checkers database, I was fortunate that Jonathan Schaeffer had built this before me, so I was able to verify my data against his. Jonathan was happy to have an independent confirmation of his data, and I was happy to be able to build the data without needing the two additional computers it would take to include self-consistency checks and still finish the build in one year. After building each slice, I emailed Jonathan the win/loss/draw counts, which he compared to the counts extracted from his data. For the first 6 months we were in perfect agreement, but after sending the counts for the slice with 2 black men, 3 black kings, 2 white men, and 3 white kings, I received this message from Jonathan.


 * "Bad news. We differ. You have one more win -- we have one more draw."


 * This was disturbing news, but as we worked to narrow down the location of the error, it was a relief to know that this was very likely an isolated error in a single position and had not propagated to any of the positions that played into it. If it had, then if the error was in my data it would have meant about 1 month of my work was worthless, but if the error was in Jonathan's data then he would have had to recompute half of his database and all the subsequent work he had done towards solving the 3-move openings. We narrowed down the discrepancy to a single leading rank subdivision of the slice. I recomputed this subdivision, a 3-day task, and this second time the counts agreed with Jonathan's. From my log files I was able to trace the error to a particular machine. The counts in the log had been correct after the build, but an error had occurred during the compression pass. This was my first experience of a random error during any checkers database building, but Jonathan was familiar with these, having experienced not only similar errors during compression, but also errors during file transfers on a LAN, and random bit errors in ram. Before this incident I was beginning to wonder if verification was really necessary, but now I have no doubts. As a test of the self-consistency method, I ran a self-consistency check on the data containing the error, and it correctly detected it.


 * AND...


 * The 9-piece subdivisions were very large files that required 64-bit indices because of the large number of positions. When the database is used for engine lookups all of the indexing data is read into ram buffers before any searches are performed. This indexing data for the 9-piece database consumed almost 300mb of ram, and for the 10-piece database would consume nearly 2gb. This is a huge overhead. On a 3gb machine only 1gb would be left for database cache buffers. If the indices could be made 32 bits then this overhead would be cut in half. As I was thinking about ways to do this, I received a suggestion from Ed Trice which was simple and effective. His idea is to subdivide each slice into fixed size subdivisions of size 232. To find which subdivision of a slice a position is in, the 64-bit slice index is computed for the position, and this number is divided by 232. The integer quotient identifies which subdivision contains the index, and the 32-bit remainder from the division becomes the index of the position within that subdivision. My only change to this was to use 231 as the size of the subdivisions so that I didn't have to test for overflows in some 'for' loops in the code. After each slice was built I re-indexed on the newer P4 that has Intel's hyperthreading feature. The re-indexing operation runs between 12 and 15 times faster


 * So, there you have it. Proof that database verification is important (from Ed Gilbert, the ONLY other person on earth to have a 10-piece database) as well as a note from him describing how I solved one of his own programming problems with his 9-piece and 10-piece database's "brick wall" limits concerning RAM useage. Martin Fierz, a rival more than anything, even mentions how we made the 1st 8-piece database outside of Schaeffer. And so, you have your multiple sources, the elite of the elite, and they all make the point.


 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 18:09, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hello again; my first point to make is that I've taken the liberty of formatting your pasted quotes, as some of them are quite bulky and break up the flow of the talk quite a bit. If you object, please let me know.


 * To the point in hand. I perfectly understand that verification can equal involvement, and as I've already said, I'm not disputing the fact that the work you performed was used.  However, I am making the distinction between involvement (or contribution) and notability; they're very different concepts, and notability is what's required here.


 * That said, I see you've found a collection of links (I've already obtained much the same links via some Google searches I've made recently). I don't think the first two are acceptable, as one is personal correspondence sourced by your own paper, and both appear to be from your co-author/colleague, so hardly independent.  The third doesn't discuss your database verification contribution to Schaeffer's work (however it does discuss your 7-piece work, but that's already mentioned in this article).  The fourth doesn't discuss it either.


 * However, I accept that there is some notability from within that (very) small community, although it would be a considerable stretch to suggest that this really meets what WP:N et al are talking about. Therefore, as a compromise, and considering WP:UNDUE, my preference would be to move the last paragraph of the "Gothic Chess" section into its own section, and combine in a few details of the "Recent career" section, as it seems to be highly related.  I would get rid of excessive details (such as the number of possibilities) as they're simply not relevant (and per WP:UNDUE, etc.).  I would also require something to back up "several research papers in the domain of artificial intelligence"; I can find only one paper in the ICGA (80-square chess), and only one other (7-piece) two papers, no matter where I look.  Only one of these seems to be even remotely related to AI, so if you can point me at a location of other material that would be great.


 * One last note; you're well aware that you shouldn't be editing your own article, so please stop!! Oli Filth(talk 19:37, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * A person shouldn't be claiming their own notabilty - others should do that. WP:Vanity.  Bubba73 (talk), 20:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed... Oli Filth(talk 20:32, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm only editing mistakes or statements that no programmer would make to describe something. Whoever wrote it is not well versed in the lingo. As a published artificial intelligence researcher, I reserve the right to correct any and all such mistakes.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:46, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * A "small community" does not discount notability. How many people have built their own airplanes? How many brain surgeons have also built their own specialized tools? My point is that there are many "specialized fields", esoteric or otherwise, and your interpretation of the Wikipedia definition of notability is just that - an interpretation. Checkers is an easy game to learn, also easy to program. I don't think there is a college Computer Science curriculum in the country that doesn't have some form of assignment involving the game of checkers. Yet from this vast sea of entrants, there are really only 5 programs that are in the elite class. Of these 5, only 1 has the Perfect Play databases. In 2009, nobody else on the planet has figured out how to make them. I was also part of the 2-man team that CORRECTTED, not just VERIFIED, the 8-piece databases (132 billion positions where each side has 4 pieces) of the world's leading checkers researcher, Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer. If that's not notable, nothing in artificial intelligence is either.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:54, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Speaking of references...
We also need them for the following superlatives:
 * 1) "Sniper ... became the first ever hardware machine to earn the Master title"
 * 2) "... produced the strongest commercially available checkers software ..."
 * 3) "... its quickest loss ever"
 * 4) "... The World Championship Checkers program is the only software package that strongly solved over 19 billion checkers endgames ... Other programs do not have this capability."
 * 5) and the interchange with Feng-hsiung Hsu, as the book suggested above brings up nothing in a Google books or Amazon inside search.  Oli Filth(talk 21:31, 13 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Sniper is "software" not "hardware" so I don't get your point? I never said it was hardware. If you have the December 1990 issue of Chess Life, read the article. It is directly from there.
 * For the strongest checkers program commerically availale, refer to the ACF Bulletins of the time. They did a review of WCC and it played in computer-computer tournaments as well as computer-human tournaments. Try doing a search with WCC Manchester checkers in google. Should turn up something. Like WCC was derived from, and improved upon, a program that drew Marion Tinlsey 3 games, and lost to him only 1 time. http://software.techrepublic.com.com/abstract.aspx?docid=405567
 * A website showing every game ever played by Deep Thought is online at chessgames.com. They have some sophisticated querying capabilities built into their GUI so you can do a report on all of its losses which brings up 28 games. The URL for that is http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?pid=13728&result=2nd and you can see my game has 20 moves in it. No other game that Deep Thought lost comprised fewer moves.
 * WCC is the only program that strongly solved the game of checkers, that was the entire point of the paper that was published. This result was announced in that paper. The fact of the matter is, nobody else even knows how to strongly solve checkers positions, it gets too complicated! The problem arises because when kings come onto the board, they have reversible moves. Sometimes the best play is to go for a reduction in material and initiate a trade. Sometimes a trade prolongs the game. Sometimes promoting a checker to a king is the fastest win, and sometimes this can greatly increase the length of a game. While you are solving the databases, this information is not yet known. If you know of a program that has strong solutions available for the game of checkers, provide a link. Note that some programs have "conversion" information, but this is not a strong solution. That is, programs know how many moves it takes to either promote a checker or force a trade, but this is not enough information to win optimally, which is what a strong solution is. WCC played 2 different programs, gave them both won endgame database positiions, and neither program could defeat WCC.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 16:58, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That's my mistake, a reading error. Strike that!
 * I'll look into this one in more detail in a bit, but so far I can't find anything independent via Google.
 * As long as we can be reasonably sure that list is definitive (i.e. it really is all the games), then that link should be fine, so I'll add it.
 * I don't know of an equivalent or stronger program (obviously, it's hardly my area!), but that's not really the point. The point is that in its current form, the article makes a blanket claim that WCC is the only such program, with nothing to back that statement up; I know your paper does (did), but that's not independent.  Can we find a independent source?
 * Oli Filth(talk 19:45, 14 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Finding this stuff is not too hard. It's just a matter of using the proper search terms. If you enter WCC checkers "perfect play" into google (I put "perfect play" in quotes to find the two terms conjoined) you come up with these search results
 * http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&fkt=2247&fsdt=12706&q=WCC+checkers+%22perfect+play%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
 * Look for the citation by "Jaap van den Herik" author of "Advances in Computer Games: Many Games, Many Challenges"
 * There are other links talking about the "perfect play" of WCC - http://www.bobnewell.net/nucleus/nucleus/plugins/print/print.php?itemid=133
 * Just by way of contrast, here's a computer solution, done using the "Perfect Play" 7-piece endgame database of World Championship Checkers Platinum III. WCC-III gives a win in 89 moves (actually 89 plies), which is a couple of plies shorter than Wiswell's published solution
 * Again, no other programs have it, so WCC is the only program mentioned with Perfect Play
 * Even a link on the Rybka forum shows up -
 * http://rybkaforum.net/cgi-bin/rybkaforum/topic_show.pl?tid=2906
 * I fully agree with this. One evidence would the 7-piece checkers endgames - on this page it describes (see also 3.2.1 in this PDF) how Kingsrow [with win/loss/draw info] was not able to beat WCC [with TBs] starting from various won positions
 * Being the above was a chess forum, they use "TBs" = "tablebases" rather than the term "databases" as checkers programmers tend to refer to their info.
 * Bob Newell did ask me to explain the differences between the various databases for his checkers readership, which I did do here -
 * http://www.bobnewell.net/checkers/edexplains.html
 * So again, it shows how the WCC Perfect Play could win much more efficiently than the Kingsrow "conversion" database
 * If you can show me a link to a program that has perfect play databases other than WCC, I'd like to see it. Otherwise, we have plenty of proof to my claim, and no contrary claims.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 15:46, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Lack of a counter-claim is hardly a verifiable source for your claim! As for "perfect play", that seems to be invariably stated in quote-marks or caps, which is not particularly surprising given that that's the name its creators use to describe it in the original paper.  Given that nothing independent above (and nothing that I've found from my own searches) indicates that it's the only or strongest such program, I think a much safer (and more future-proof) wording would be along the lines of "WCC was the first program to ...".  Oli Filth(talk 18:56, 15 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The term "Perfect Play" was put in quotes for a very good reason. There are 3 kinds of checkers databases and these are Win-Loss-Draw (WLD), Distance-to-Conversion (DTC) and "Perfect Play." Early on some of the a.i. people were refering to them as the PP databases! They abbreviate everything! So, since the other 2 database terms had three letter acronyms, I just added the term "Lookup" to "Perfect Play" so they became known as the PPL databases (for "Perfect Play" lookup. Since I thought they might eventually drop "Lookup" I made sure that "Perfect Play" was always in quotes. Authors tend to keep everything in quotes in the quotes when they repeat things.)
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 05:12, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Lack of a counter-claim is veritable information. In logic courses you are almost always given the statement "All ravens are black" to disprove. You can work on disproving it 2 ways. Search for non-black ravens (a single blue raven will suffice) or search for black non-ravens. The first one seems obvious and the second one seems absurd. But if you "look at everything that is black" you will look at the union of the set of all ravens and everything else that is black. If you can show the intersection of this set with the set of all ravens is a 1-to-1 ratio then you have proved all ravens are black the hard way.


 * Show me one other checkers program that can announce the distance to the final position in the game, moving instantly, and always decreasing this counter. If you can't, there is only one. Given the difficulty of the problem, you might have to wait a while. Schaeffer's work has been duplicated by other teams. Perfect Play has not!
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 05:21, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

My recent edit
I've just made some fairly heavyweight changes to the article, which I'll summrise here:
 * Removed some unsourced statements, per the recent discussions above - they can be re-added if suitable independent sources arise
 * Removed several trivial or irrelevant details per WP:UNDUE
 * Streamlined a lot of the language, i.e. generally reducing the verbosity
 * Broke out all the checkers stuff into a separate section
 * Formatted all references consistently, and removed redundant ones
 * Removed redundant "external links", they're essentially already covered by some of the references

I think there's still some irrelevant details that should probably be removed per WP:UNDUE (e.g. do we really need to know all the details about the Gothic Chess Computer Championship, an incredibly obscure event? At best, this should be moved to the Gothic Chess article). But I'll leave that for another day, perhaps... Oli Filth(talk 22:20, 15 January 2009 (UTC)

Reference for The Sniper
I would like to see a proper reference for the Sniper program that Trice claims to have written. The reference given in the article is the USCF rating for "The Sniper Compx" and contains a single entry - a rating of 2129 achieved in the year 1990. I have searched an online history of computer chess - www.computerhistory.org - without finding any mention Trice or the Sniper. Can anyone can point me towards a magazine article from 1987, an advertisement for this program (I assume it was commercial) or more details of where it achieved this 2200+ performance in 1987? Gallicrow (talk) 13:43, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The Sniper played in its first tournament in 1987 in Pennsylvania. It was rated over 2200 initially by virtue of going 3-0 against an average field of 1807. It did not suffer a loss in its 2nd or 3rd tournament and its rating rose. It only lost to Stephan Rakowski (2300+) and Mark Eidenmiller (almost 2400) at PA State Championships that I no longer remember clearly. It's rating dipped below 2200 (I think) after playing in the same tournament that was Hi-Tech's last tournament. The Sniper had 2 wins and 3 draws, the draws due to a repetition bug in it. It drew against players rated under 1900 and also Keith Kuhn (about 2000 even).


 * You need to get the Chess Life magazines from 1987, 1988, and 1989. The December 1990 (or 1991) issue of Chess Life had a 2-page article written on The Sniper by Alex Dunne. Alex won a correspondence game against it, and he played 2 quick 10-minute games against it between rounds at the 1990 World Open (just for fun). Alex has been a long time editor for Chess Life and he could verify this. The USCF does not have records online before 1991 but it has plenty of printed material.


 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 04:55, 22 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Looks like the "WayBack Archive" has the reference. It was distributed by Circumflex Software.
 * http://web.archive.org/web/19980111072335/http://www.circumflex.com/
 * http://web.archive.org/web/19980111072546/www.circumflex.com/Sniper.html
 * http://web.archive.org/web/19980111075110/www.circumflex.com/SniperGames.html
 * The best I could find on short notice.
 * The best I could find on short notice.


 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 05:01, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

I have removed the mention of "The Sniper" until we can get some good sources backing it up. Chess Life will do but we need to know: Which year, which month, who wrote the article, and what was its title? And, if you can, please find some proof on the web that this article was indeed written and published. Just to clarify (talk) 19:42, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The wayback links above specify Dec. 1991, pp.32-34. Oli Filth(talk 19:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * OK, looks good. Now, we just need to know the title and author of the article; see Grand Chess for what I'm looking for.  Who here has some old Chess Life magazines in their garage?  Just to clarify (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Author was Alex Dunne. Title of the article was "The Check is in the Mail", part of his regular column. You might be able to find it here
 * http://main.uschess.org/content/view/7527/393/
 * or at least be able to contact Dunne for verification.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:04, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Undoing the incorrect changes made by OliFilth
I reset this page back to where it was before OliFilt introduced more erroneous claims.

GothicChessInventor (talk) 16:00, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Ed, there are no "incorrect claims" in my series of edits which you've wholesale reverted, seeing as none of them "introduced" any material. This is a COI edit, plain and simple.  If you have specific issues with specific edits that I've made, then discuss them here, but don't perform wholesale reversions (or indeed any edits at all other than those suggested at WP:COI) under the guise of "making corrections".  You know the drill by now.  Oli Filth(talk 16:04, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If you were correct, I would agree with you. Kindly explain how my 300+ rated games of Gothic Chess are not relevant, yet only 100 games of chess played over a 20 year period are relevant. You can't keep making blanket statements that are INCORRECT then citing some Wikipedia Clause as if it applies. I won't allow you to do this, and I have every right to edit this page, and any other page on Wikipedia. If you don't like it, find a new hobby.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 16:13, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Removing extraneous detail is not an "erroneous claim". In any regard, your edits are totally out of line with WP:COI, so I've now listed you at WP:COI/N.  Claiming 3RR as some sort of magic protection won't help you here.  Oli Filth(talk 16:39, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * More of the OliFilth "the rules apply to you and not to me" bull.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 17:55, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * In this case that's kind of obvious; of course the COI rules apply to you but not me. But even disregarding COI, your entire justification for a complete reversion of six of my edits seems to be that you want your Gothic Chess rating listed.  Not good enough, I'm afraid.  Oli Filth(talk 18:18, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I don't get why the Gothic Chess rating was removed either. You say Gothic Chess is what he is noted for, then you remove his Gothic Chess rating. The rating was listed here for a long time. I think there needs to be a better reason to pull it down you ask me.
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 15:11, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the rating because it's hardly a notable metric. Oli Filth(talk 15:56, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on what, I mean, besides your say-so.
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 16:15, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Based on the concept of "notability" as Wikipedia defines it. Oli Filth(talk 20:50, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

OliFilth has commited a 3-RR Violation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Oli_Filth

Original Version: 
 * Revert #1 
 * Revert #2 
 * Revert #3  —Preceding unsigned comment added by GothicChessInventor (talk • contribs) 17:51, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * No, I haven't. Read WP:3RR more carefully.  Although this might be considered edit warring, I'm not sure people will pay too much attention when it's to deal with a series of unjustified COI edits.  Needless to say, posting the above in three four different locations isn't going to achieve anything.  Oli Filth(talk 17:59, 24 January 2009 (UTC)

Ed, you have no business editing this article except for things like WP:BLP being broken. I am asking you to no longer edit this article. Just to clarify (talk) 19:44, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

I don't think Wikipedia allows you to tell someone else they can't edit an article. All I've seen you do is remove things that have been well known to be Trice's for over 20 years now. 20:35, 25 January 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChessHistorian (talk • contribs)

What is Trice most noted for?
I saw something that said Trice was most noted for his Gothic Chess and now I can't find it.

I'd like to disagree with that. I'm a checkers player and let me tell ya, 1997 was a year checkers was put on its ear! The release of the WCC checkers program was the reason. Before this program, just about everyone was fidlin' with Cornell Checkers by Gil Dodgen, which was a suped up version of his Checkers 3.0 he was selling for like $300. And ACF members were using Social Security checks to save up for it and get it! Gil Dodgen's program was playing in checkers tournaments and doing mighty fine. In some tournament him and Chinook both played. They were doing battle till the end. It was Chinook vs. Lafferty and Checkers 3.0 vs. Tinsley, a dream match. Tinsely was #1 human player ever. Lafferty knew just about everything Tinsley knew, but he couldn't defeat Tinsley. Chinook was the #1 checkers program but Checkers 3.0 sure made some serious improvements to be at this level in the last round.

Anyways, Checkers 3.0 was listed as ranked #6 in the world among everyone, programs and people. It was Tinsley and Chinook at #1 and #2, so #6 was a high honor. Checkers 3.0 was then sold or something to Cornell Checkers and they made it better looking with graphics but it was still strong as ever. Then Cornell Computers, who did the Cornell Checkers, they went belly up.

Gil kind of disappeared from the checkers scene for a while since he was discouraged. Then Chinook retired from checkers tournaments. Like a year later Chinook was connected up to the web for everyone to play. Tough nut to crack! If you beat Chinook you got your name put up on a page. A real reward that was, but at the end of 1995 only 1 name was up there for winning online! In 1996 some strong checkers players from Kentucky got a win or 2.

Then this name nobody heard of shows up. Ed Trice is on the list, 3 times inside of 2 days. Nobody gave Chinook such a shalacking! Gil gets in touch with him when he hears of it from someone in the checkers world. He asks him to play a phone game against Cornell checkers. Gil tells him what squares Cornell wants to go to, Trice makes that move on a separate board and he tells Gil where he wants to go.

Ed wins.

Ed also tells Gil he's a programmer and he was thinking about writing a checkers program for the Mac one day. Gil says "why bother, help me make mine better" and by 1997 WCC comes out on both the Mac and PC at the same time.

WCC had Ed's play that could win some openings against Chinook and it had Ed's new evaluation that was able to beat the older Cornell program. Plus WCC now had the Chinook checkers database that Schaeffer was giving away for free.

Now I had Cornell Checkers and it was a good lil program. But when I got WCC I would get killed, fast, and with moves ya never knew were possible. The whole checkers community was glad to see Gil back and we sure as heck were happy Ed brought him back. We all knew who Ed Trice was. He sparked the interest in checkers programming that had gone away after Chinook retired and Cornell went out of business.

Other programmers took up the challenge a few years later, and they became quite strong, using WCC as a sparring partner to improve over it in time. Nemesis became a top program from England. It had a huge opening book that wouldn't let you get any edge. A program known as Cake came out about the same time as Kingsrow, both from the USA. There was some other English program named Sage and another named Wyllie but these were playing second fiddle to the others.

I don't think anyone outside of checkers knows this stuff. They're ain't many of us, hardly 1200 members of the ACF in the 1990s and maybe only half of that now. But I'd say from 1997-2002 Trice was widely known for his checkers stuff while Gothic Chess was still getting started. I put my 2 cents in on this cause I don't see why this whole article was re-writ to make it look like Gothic was all he ever done. Horsefeathers to that!

Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 15:53, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If you can find more sources that indicate a wider notability for the checkers stuff, then I'd be happy to work it into the article. I'm not sure it's true that the "whole article was re-writ to make it look like Gothic was all he ever done"; all I've done in that regard is put the Gothic Chess section first, because it would seem (to me) that that's what Trice is most known for.  Oli Filth(talk 16:00, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Look how you talk "I'd be happy to work it into the article." So it's your article? Why do I need to do the research so YOU can work it into the article? Don't you see you come across as conceited and arrogant by saying such? I ain't here to start a row but I want to say you sure sound like you are full of yourself and that's bad news for Wikipedia.
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 16:13, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Do it yourself if you'd like! I've never claimed that it's my article, only that it's certainly not Ed's.  Oli Filth(talk 16:29, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Trice is probably most noted for the Fischer vs. Karpov match in Gothic Chess that never was. It was for millions, I forget how much. This was sensationally reported and many people believe it was a publicity stunt. Key players in this were Susan Polgar, who said the match was real and the money was raised to have them play. Lothar Schmid, match referee for Fischer and Spassky both times, was the referee for this match too. Shouldn't this be added?
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 16:54, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Unbelievable! ChessHistorian- Do you actually believe Trice is most noted for a non-event, something that never happened?  --DavidWatersHC  —Preceding undated comment was added at 17:14, 25 January 2009 (UTC).


 * Fischer will be long remembered for NOT having played Karpov in 1975. One can be remembered for having NOT done something.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 20:32, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * In my opinion, it would make more sense to mention this in the Gothic Chess article rather than this article, if at all. However, I'm still not quite sure what the relevance of mentioning a "non-event" would be.  Oli Filth(talk 17:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)

Latest reversions
Re this edit. Firstly, flinging accusations of "vandalism" around like this is extremely bad form.

Secondly, I've justified each of these edits you reverted in the edit summaries and in the talk pages above. But in summary:


 * Ed Trice is predominantly notable for his invention (or whatever you want to call it) of Gothic chess. Therefore it makes sense to put the corresponding section first.
 * "It should be pointed out that Capablanca changed the setup proposed by Henry Bird in 1874, yet nobody mentions this when disucssing Capablanca's chess variant." has absolutely no place here! It's simply irrelevant/off-topic.


 * Then you need to remove all references to Capablanca. You make it sound like all Trice did was change a few pieces, which is exactly what Capablanca did to Bird. In fact Gothic Chess is much more similiar to Bird's chess, so it should be compared to Bird and not Capablanca.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:37, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * In Ed's own paper, he states "This paper focuses on the 80-square version of chess recommended by Capablanca ... and proposes a slightly modified version of his setup as a plausible enhancement, called Gothic chess." Oli Filth(talk 21:43, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Yes but the paper went into much more detail than your byline above. The conclusion was Capablanca Chess is white to move and win, such is the flaw, and Bird's chess differs only in Chancellor and Queen placement, that's all!
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * How would you suggest we summarise Gothic Chess here, then? Oli Filth(talk 21:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Details such as 16MHz are just article-bulking, and potentially misleading. (Could it not run on anything faster?  Could it not run on anything slower?)


 * I disagree, it puts the achievement in perspective. What would Shredder or Fritz be rated on a 16 MHz machine? By that way, that was one of the fastest available processors in 1991. So the remark needs to remain so people who read the article understand it was a strong program running on hardware 20 times slower than machine of 2008.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:39, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Hmmm, perhaps we'll have to agree to disagree! I would've said it doesn't need to be said that general-purpose computers were less powerful than today (if the reader didn't already know that, specifying "16 MHz" certainly isn't going to help!).  Perhaps it would make more sense to say something to the effect of "ran on a general-purpose/home computer".  Oli Filth(talk 21:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I removed the Gothic Vortex stuff because, as I said above, this is absolutely non-notable (unless it can be demonstrated otherwise).


 * Well it was notable enough to be published by the International Computer Games Association Journal in The Netherlands! It was notable because it was the first sponsored tournament dedicated solely to a chess variant computer tournament. It was sponsored by Best Buys or something like that, and the programmers were eligible for up to $5,000 in prize money. Every time Vortex won the event, the money rolled over to the next year. That kind of sponsorship never even reached the chess world. It is notable. Trice showed me the press clippings from the Philadelphia newspapers.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:46, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Any specific references? Oli Filth(talk 21:55, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * There are many references, depending on the search terms. And, of course, the entire Championship Results were published in a paper, the ICGA Journal, which has an SSBN
 * http://www.chessville.com/GothicChess/ComputerWorldChampionships.htm
 * http://www.tckerrigan.com/Chess/TSCP/Community (brief mention from one of the participants)
 * http://www.stmintz.com/ccc/index.php?id=395908 (from Germany)
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 22:53, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * And what the heck is a "blacklisted hyperlink"? I tried to list a link to some page somewhere in the list above, is chess championships a banned topic?
 * I had to try and save this comment like 6 times before it accepted it.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Not something I've ever seen before. Did one of the links you tried to add match any of the patterns at MediaWiki:Spam-blacklist?  Oli Filth(talk 22:58, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The second two are trivial mentions (see the first point in WP:GNG, and the associated footnote). Other than that, we currently have a single link (the first one you listed above), which is written by you.  Incidentally, do you have a specific reference for the ICGA article?  Oli Filth(talk 23:07, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oh, and I removed the ratings because the chess one is unremarkable (relatively), and the Gothic one can hardly be considered a notable metric (compared to, say, a USCF rating).


 * I never put them in initially. That was Sam Sloan, the convicted felon who spent time in jail for kidnapping his own daughter, and Rob Mitchell, the insurance salesman from Tennessee who tried to bill me $30,000 for contacting Bobby Fischer in 2005 when it was Susan Polgar who he contacted.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 22:41, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

If you feel that any of the above is wrong, then discuss it rather than blanket reverting everything. Oli Filth(talk 20:57, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I am the reporter that originally interviewed Trice when Schaeffer solved the game of checkers. We did a much more thorough interview than anyone on here since we do face to face meetings and actually visit the environment and business center. The Gothic Chess Federation had a subscription base of 11,000 in its peak around mid 2005. I saw the press that printed Gothic Chess Review, a 28-page newsletter than went out 4 times per year. With one print per household, and some families with 2 or 3 members, their member base was close to 15,000 as best I could tell, though Trice insisted it was nearly 20,000. Compare this to the entire USCF population, and its about 20% if you go by their figures at the same time. I don't agree that any discounting of a rating as being irrelvant based on your comments stand. There were more members of the Gothic Chess Federation in 2005 than there were USCF members during World War II.
 * ChessHistorian (talk) 21:33, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I wasn't necessarily thinking of membership count as a measure of notability, more, for instance, national or international gravitas. Anyway, what does it really mean for Ed to have the highest rating in a proprietary system that he controls?  Oli Filth(talk 21:51, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oli don't look now, but you ain't being too objective with your comments above.
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 22:49, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I would prefer to see the bio read in order of the events rather than some sort of "ranking the notability" which is subjective. Every other bio is listed chronologically and I see no reason why to differ here.
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 22:47, 25 January 2009 (UTC)


 * That would hold if the sections were still entitled "early career", etc. But they aren't; there's no longer any chronology implied.  As for a counter-example, see for instance Claude Shannon.  Whilst its true that the first section is largely chronological, there's a whole section later entitled "Other work" which isn't.  Oli Filth(talk 22:52, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * As for "ranking the notability", that's entirely what the WP:Undue weight guideline is about! Oli Filth(talk 22:58, 25 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I fail to see why a biography needs to be anything other than chronological. It is "encyclopedic" to progress in this fashion. How is Einstein's biography structured? Did Eddington's verification of Relativity with his observations during the Solar Eclipse get higher mention than Einstein's receiving the Nobel Prize for the photoelectric effect? Which is more important? Which came first? Since Einstein was more notable for Relativity, which he never received the Nobel Prize for, should that be moved to the bottom of his page? Your argument breaks down under further examination.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 22:38, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Albert Einstein's entire career is well documented in (probably) dozens of biographies, and therefore makes perfect sense to summarise the existing sources in a chronological sense, documenting his life from beginning to end. This article is currently structured as three standalone sections, not a biography.  There is no reason to list it chronologically, as it is not written as a history of your life.  Whilst (let's say) several thousand people are aware of your work on Gothic Chess, probably a few tens at most are aware of (e.g.) your chess contributions.  It's ludicrous to have anything other than the "gothic chess" section first, as without the notability that that confers, this article would have no reason to exist.  Oli Filth(talk 22:54, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * What a load of bunk! You mean to tell me nobody read Chess Life in December 1991 when the USCF membership base first went over 75,000? What about my sales commission checks from Circumflex Software from 1992-1997 while The Sniper was for sale? Are you telling me they paid me commission on sales of 90,000 copies of the program out of the goodness of their hearts?
 * I took a year off work from 1997-1998 the sales were so good.
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 22:59, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If it's as notable as you claim, why is there next to nothing to be found on the web? Oli Filth(talk 23:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Oli, where I'm from, somebody would surely say you've been sitting on a cactus. Was the man supposed to post his income on the web which wasn't even around when the thing was sellin? Ahem! I hate to say I think I see your point and removed Ed's ratings and such. Not really needed. I also reworded some stuff about the programs. "several programs to play chess and checkers" ain't quite right. You say "a couple" when you're talking 'bout just 2 things, for one, and for two, he wrote 3 programs, ain't that the whole article, the Gothic Chess?!
 * Octogenarian 1928 (talk) 01:00, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I'm not looking for his income, I was referring to general notability of this program.


 * As for your edits, I've kept some of it but reverted the "blanket reversion" aspects, moved the "80-square" into the Gothic Chess section, and re-added mention of the Championship now that Ed has located a suitable ref. The "two piece" business used to be in this article, I think, but was removed a long while ago because it was felt unnecessary given the Gothic Chess article.  Oli Filth(talk 01:07, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Again, this level of detail is really not necessary (especially in the article lead) when there's a link right there to the Gothic Chess article. Regarding "z" vs. "s", please refer to WP:ENGVAR, but I'll let you have that one!  Oli Filth(talk 01:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Incidentally, the pieces aren't "new"! Oli Filth(talk 01:29, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Socks
I've indef'd User:Donaldstrumpcard as an obvious sock. Anyone who wants to tell me whose sock, please put it on t:DTC William M. Connolley (talk) 22:55, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Donaldstrumpcard = "Rob Mitchell" from Tennessee. If you want to read more about him, here is the link http://gothicchess.blogspot.com/2007_07_01_archive.html
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 23:04, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * If I had to say, it is "Just to clarify" who is Rob Mitchell who is Donaldstrumpcard
 * GothicChessInventor (talk) 23:06, 26 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Ed, please do not speculate about my identity. As I told you before, You are not allowed to do that.  Please read what I told you last August, follow the rules here at Wikipedia, and no longer talk about who you think I am. Just to clarify (talk) 08:21, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

Sniper notability
I don't like seeing the claim that the Sniper was the first chess engine running on a home computer with a rating better than 2200. There is no evidence on the web that this claim is true; even if it were true, it's not notable. I haven't seen any mention of it in articles about the history of computer chess on the web such as this article.

For something to be included in the Wikipedia, it has to both meet WP:RS and be notable. A claim that hasn't been verified and is so non-notable there aren't any articles talking about its strength on pages discussing the history of computer chess is one that doesn't belong in the Wikipedia. Just to clarify (talk) 08:43, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Some links: USCF rating (?? very light on details) Very brief mention of "Sniper III" by Ed Trice This is all I can find.  The only claim I feel comfortable having in the article is that the program had a rating of 2129 in 1990 or 1991.  Just to clarify (talk) 08:49, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I notice you've removed the ref to the Chess Life article? Oli Filth(talk 09:28, 27 January 2009 (UTC)


 * I just don't feel comfortable putting a reference like that in the article namespace of the Wikipedia until we can get some kind of verification from a non-biased source. Just to clarify (talk) 14:26, 27 January 2009 (UTC)