eastsidepro **

Youth Champion = Ryan Pronk (theunites)
Minors Champion = Anthony Tramontano - 17 year old (checkerprosback - eastsideprog)
Majors Champion = Albert Tucker (atuck at Zone)
Masters Champion = Ron King

My prediction of King winning masters was correct :)

Corey Modich has played here before. I don't think he's in favor of mail-play style of games. He is mainly focused on Anti Checkers right now I think. He is also a head administrator for the new game site being made, www.wgcenter.com. I will talk to Ryan and Josh about trying out BK.

Jake Lopez: Can you talk any of the three into coming to BK?

I play all 3 of them daily :)

Ron King is going to the nationals!

He just finished ahead of Moiseyev in the PA state tournament. Ron King always finishes ahead of Moiseyev in tournaments :) I pick Ron King to win the masters division of the US GAYP Nationals.

Jake Lopez: Ryan and Corey have been playing for years. I have played them both.

Ryan Pronk leads the top division out of 3 players. Corey Modich 2nd - and 13 year old Josh Armstrong right behind.

No problem :o)

Gooner II: YES! Thank you. I was spelling Wyllie with one "L" no wonder I couldnt find it. LOL

http://www.wylliedraughts.com/

Is this what you are after Bill?

Yunior Lopez, a 16 year old, also beat Alex Moiseyev. One game means nothing when they have the title and you stay home and play on the internet and brag about pointless wins and ignore simple challenges from me :)

Grim Reaper: I can no longer find the Wylie site with the animated games. Is it still available anywhere?

I have played against three World Checkers Champions. Alex Moiseyev, Ron King, and Don Lafferty, winning one game from each of them.

I could give you the other dates as well, but "treasure" is a strange word to apply to something that is just a simple matter of fact.

I will be a guest in tomorrow's TV debate on international public law situation in the Middle East...first channel of the Czech TV...

Grim Reaper: You really treasure that occasion, don't you... Seems you've got that date burned into your memory and you can't help but toss it around every now and then.

Grim Reaper: Well you could mention that you found Alex "above average." LOL

And if Alex Moiseyev is listening, what would he think, given that he drove hundreds of miles to play some checkers with me on December 18, 2004?

Grim Reaper: Please do not forget to include in your remarks the comment "Purple is the most awesome checker dude I ever played." LOL

You'll speak about checkers I take it...

Next Thurday night at 9 PM Eastern I will be the guest speaker on chess.fm radio.

If you go to http://www.chess.fm just turn on your computer's speakers, and you can hear the broadcast.

There is a question-and-answer segment on the show, and for 20 minutes, I will be answering the questions tossed my way.

Grim Reaper: Prove it to me at Playsite. I will play you on your old home. Give you homecourt advantage. Any timer you want.

There could be an argument that Ed Trice is Marlon Alvarez (aka Steve Marlon, The Great Marlon, etc)

I have read somewhere: "Dr. Tinsley was exceedingly kind and loved by everyone."

Now you have to see why Trice 'got yelled at'....

Over the years, starting with the MS Gaming Zone in 1996-1996, Case's Ladder in 1997-1998-1999, Playsite.com over the same tenure, there has been one common denominator.

Some virtually unknown player has issued remarks claiming "I cheat". I was 456-0 on Case's Ladder with about 20 draws. I was undefeated on Playsite.com, winning a game from (then) World Champion Ron King. Even George Miller and I first "met" on Gamezone, and we played many an interesting game.

I took my lumps, like everyone else, but once I got good, I changed my ID from "HoodedClaw" to "Marion Tinsley", and boy, did I get yelled at! It was like a sacriledge (I still did not know he had recently become deceased, about 8-9 months prior) so I switched it to "Ed Trice" very soon thereafter.

I believe this "sacriledge" in their minds made me a marked man first. So be it, the big guns knew who I was now, and we would duke it out and the shouts would come flying also.

That was the net then... and some things do not change. Rather than issue far-flung statements, let me call to the attention of everyone some unbiased facts:

1. I beat Chinook with its 6-piece database of 2.5 billion positions several times. I was the first person to defeat it twice in one day. It you go to http://www.cs.ualberta.ca/~chinook/WallofHonor.php you can see this.

Novice level
286. Ed Trice, October 20, 1996

Amateur
52. Ed Trice, October 20, 1996

Then again the next day, on its highest level:
Intermediate
86. Ed Trice, October 21, 1996

You have to understand something. This list is built from the bottom up. You will see there are VERY FEW people underneath.

I was only the 6th person to win against Chinook on its highest setting, and it had been online a little over a year at that point. To win 3 game in 2 days against it was unheard of at that point.

So, people might say "You were using a program". You have to remember, back then, there were no programs! Dr. Schaeffer did not make his databases available to the public until June of 1997. In fact, Gil Dodgen and I were the first to use his 6-piece database probed in RAM when we released World Championship Checkers (WCC) on August 13, 1997.

Chinook was the undisputed strongest program out there at the time, plus it was running on a 150 MhZ SGI box in Canada. And, at the time of my victory, 100 MHz Pentiums were top of the line, with 133 MHz comming out later that fall.

Gil's previous program, Cornell Checkers, was a DOS program that had no databases in 1990 and a 4-piece database in 1992. He discontinued it in 1994 when an operating system change at Microsoft undermined his 32-bit DOS extender program. His software ran for the last time in 1994.

After I played a phone game against his Cornell Checkers program, and beat it soundly, Gil "hired me" on the spot to serve as the evaluation function consultant for our new checkers program. I coined the name WCC, published it, and we were a team.

2. I beat the World Computer Chess Champion, Deep Thought, in 1989. I know, not checkers related, but I gave Deep Thought its quickest loss ever, 20 moves.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgamegid=1272214

In fact, I am the only person who may make the claim to have defeated programs that have held World Machine Champions in the game of checkers and chess.

Basically, I know how to find positions that might be problematic for software programs, because I am software programmer myself. I know how hard it is to get a program to "understand" a piece of knowledge such as a tailhook, single corner cramp, double corner cramp, diamond cramp, 2-holding-1, when to break a bridge, when a doghole man-up scenario will lose and draw, etc.

I am uniquely quialified to beat up software, since I know what is usually outside of its domain of understanding.

On a side note, I also wrote the first software program to eclipse the 2200 mark (delineating the Master Class) when "The Sniper" won its 3rd round game against Mike Tempkin in 1987 at St. Joseph's Prep High School in Philadelphia.

This was that many years after Ken Thompson's "hardware master", Belle, eclipsed the 2200 mark.

He had a $600,000 system funded by Belle Labs. I had my 512K Macintosh with a 7 Megahertz clock.

That's Megahertz, not Gigahertz.

3. I have already showcases two checkers games where I should have lost. Any "majors" player could have won the game where I missed the Andrew Jackson Defence in The Switcher. I would like to beleive a Master Class player would be needed to complete the difficult ending to win against me in the other game.

Again, programs have books to avoid such losses, and endgame databases can drive you the rest of the way home.

4. I play dangerous, sacrificing lines that are far beyond the horizon of computers. Look at these games:

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=325125&i=17

In this game, I sacrificed a Chancellor for Archbishop, then I throw away my Knight, all for position play, against a very strong player. There is a mate in 59 with optimal play.

http://brainking.com/en/ShowGame?g=821982&i=31

In this position, I played Ri3 with my Queen hanging. If my opponent takes the Queen, I have a mate in 47. He avoided it. I wonder if anyone here could resist?

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=347378&i=67

Here I sacrifice an Archbishop to begin a very lengthy mating sequence in Janus Chess, which I am sure came as a surprise for Caissus, a very strong Janus player.

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=532067&i=31

And of course, here is my 26 move win against 2700 rated Alex, with a two piece sacrifice at the end to wrap it up.

The point of all of this: To have any form of software duplicate these moves, you would need, in some cases, over 80 plies of searching. This is BEYOND what a program can do tactically, and it is in the domain of what we call strategy.

Strategy is, essentially, long range tactics.

Why do you first try to double rooks in an open file, then seize the 7th rank with one, then the other? Because you have done it 1,000,000 times and you know it is a formula for success.

Sometimes moves such as Rad1, Rd7, Rf7, R1d7, Rxg7+, Rxh7+ are intersperesed between pawn pushes, recaptures, some checks or check evasions, or some other minor piece exchanges. This can push the tactic beyond the horizon of the program's ability to search. So, while we humans say "oh, double the rooks, seize the 7th, and you win", programs cannot do this.

Such is the case with my games on here. I do well because I bring the sum of my experience at beating software programs with me. I am unique in that I program them, have written some World Class software myself, and I do not give up thinking of ways to destroy my opponent until every last plausible attempt involving any amount of sustained attacks have been exhausted.

I will kill anyone who wanders onto my board and does not play with equal aggression.

Do I need to prove that too?

Obviously you all jumped on the bandwagon now. I still conclude (and I'm 100% right) that Mr. Trice uses a program. I'll stop posting on this subject so no one else is offended like Baker and Elijay lol!


What is everyone's response to Moiseyev's victory over King?

What is everyone's predictions for the nationals coming up? Anyone here at BK attending the nationals?

Oh, and does anyone know where I can find a website that offers published play or any type of stragedy teachings in Brazilian Draughts?

Allegations of cheating are MUCH worse than any cheating that does actually occur.

If someone uses a program against you and you lose - so what, it's just a game. If you think they might have cheated then just don't play them, it's very simple. Results and so-called Ratings are meaningless for online internet play because you will never know. Win or lose just play to learn, improve your game and for enjoyment. I hear far too many people saying "cheat" and it's just so unpleasant. The same topic is also on the IYT message board.

Naturally, the only results that mean anything are from live tournament play, but that doesn't mean that only people who have played in live tournaments are good players. I played for many years before finding any books on the game and discovering "published play" but I found that often my first 10-15 moves or so matched many of the standard openings. But if you are a reasonable player without an ACF rating or live tournament reputation then should you be "called to account" if you win too many games? By whom?

Accusing an anonymous internet player of being a program is one thing. This has, surprisingly, happened to me on occasion and I just tell them that I'm pleased that they think I'm that good. The game is over and we can both move on. Not so at mail play sites like BrainKing or IYT where games aren't over in 5 or 10 minutes and some players have identified themselves with their real names.

Public allegations labelling someone who has given you their real name as a cheat is another matter entirely. It is potentially very damaging of their good name and smears their reputation and is, of course, libellous. Mr. Lopez's outspoken remarks are personal insults to Mr. Trice and are very unpleasant. I would be grateful if posts of this kind could be removed from the message boards and the perpetrators prevented from further postings. This kind of behaviour reflects badly on the character of the person posting and damages them as much as, if not more than, the intended recipient.

My guess is that Mr. Lopez is a young man with a lot of excess testosterone and aggression. I can just feel it oozing from every post. Mr. Lopez you will make many more enemies than friends in the checkers/draughts fraternity if you carry on with this kind of crusade. You (or someone claiming to be you) have made similar postings on the BBS (such as asking Mr. Fierz if anyone had a copy of Suicide-Cake). Please Mr. Lopez, I beg you, learn to lose graciously and congratulate someone on winning even if you are suspicious they did so unfairly. That takes much more courage and self-control than simply being confrontational and you will be a bigger man than they are. If they did cheat, so what! where's their sense of achievement and satisfaction?

It's human nature for Mr. Trice to seek to defend himself and his reputation. We all instinctively feel it's necessary to justify ourselves when accused of something - it's a trap we all fall into. But it is a trap. If I defend myself by telling you how good I am then it comes across as conceit or arrogance or "well he would say that wouldn't he!" Mr. Trice you have done yourself no favours by responding to Mr. Lopez's allegations in the way you have. Your best defence is to ignore him and let any that know you personally spring to your defence. Regrettably, nothing you can say or do will change the mindset of someone who is bent on attacking you in such a way. Your knowledge in the field of artificial intelligence and 2-player game programming is not in dispute. But to argue your case in the way you have reflects badly on you too, I'm sorry to say. Your retorts have just inflamed the situation.

As for the challenge for Mr. Trice to play at Kurnik. He would be well advised to steer clear of such a contest. For one thing playing 5 minute games at Kurnik is an entirely different matter to playing on mail play sites where you can take as long as you want on each move. The standard of play is quite different. The best players at Kurnik are those with quick (and young) minds or those with encyclopaedic book knowledge. Secondly, Mr. Trice would be in a no-win situation. Win at Kurnik and Mr. Lopez could still say "well he used a program there too". And if he loses at Kurnik, then he would no doubt claim that just proves he uses a program at BrainKing. I'm not sure what result Mr. Lopez would expect for him to say I'm satisfied that Mr. Trice didn't cheat!! Thirdly, I for one wouldn't wish to play someone who publicly posted such abusive and fatuous criticisms of me. Fourthly, and most importantly, the challenge is an uneven one. The way it seems to me is that Mr. Lopez would be playing a game of checkers whereas Mr. Trice is being asked to play for his reputation. How uneven is that? I can't comprehend being asked to play a game of checkers in order to defend my name and reputation. Mr. Trice would do well to avoid any such challenge.

Good point. I supppose it should be an honor of sorts to be accused of cheating. (Assuming of course that you're really not cheating. lol)

John Baker: No correction needed. The accusation of cheating is easily made but impossible to prove and also nearly impossible to disprove so it is best not made. One form of cheating, the use of boosting through multiple nics, can be determined by the site owner but computer programs, books etc. can not be. You could print out reams of games from published play and study them endlessly and produce results that might look like they approximate a computer program. Who knows for sure? The very few times I have been accused of using a program I am highly flattered that someone thinks I am playing at that level. LOL

Jake Lopez: I am an enthusiastic checkers player, but I care not about removing cheaters. If I suspect someone of cheating, I will simply refrain from playing that person. You say you "SLIGHTLY care," but it's obvious that you DEEPLY care. Read over your own posts. You've made it seem like this is very important to you. Sounds like you've done some research into it too. Also, you say, " It doesn't change or affect my life in any way," but if you are becoming emotionally involved in this battle, then it is affecting your life in ways we can't define.
If someone is cheating and you slightly care about it, then report the player and put him/her on your ignore list. I think that would be the right way to go about things. Purple can correct me if I'm wrong about that.

John Baker: It doesn't change or affect my life in any way Mr. Baker. And I SLIGHTLY care because everyone should care about removing cheaters. It's obvious he cheats here at BK (My claim) and has been cheating for many years (Anonymous claim). It's not that hard to log in to Kurnik and play me some games. I've never been false about accusing someone of being a cheater in draughts and I know I'm not wrong about Mr. Trice, who seems to be the biggest program user in online draughts history.

Give it up Jake. If you succeeded in getting Ed to play you and he won, you'd just accuse him of using his program. And if he lost, he'd say it was just one game and you'd really have to play dozens of games in order to get accurate results. Why do you care so much anyway? How do the actions (or claims) of Ed change your life?
John Baker

Well you didn't show up to the Kurnik tournament. Fine players like John Chappell, Dustin Sherear, Carter Williams, and Clayton Nash participated. Missed out on a good oppurtunity to show your true skill. The best way to play true/safe checkers online is at Kurnik and VOG.

Why won't you go to Kurnik?

As for the earlier comments about my endgames.

Look at these two games.

Game 1

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=647831&i=47

My opponent could win on the next move with d2-e1 but he played d2-c1 instead. If I was using a computer program, I would never have gotten into this psotion to begin with. I will allow someone like George Miller to confirm I am in a loss. I can't be responsible for my opponents not winning.

Here is a second example, when I forgot the Andrew Jackson Defense to the Switcher...

http://brainking.com/en/ArchivedGame?g=208684&i=6

From here I should lose. f8-g7 was the way to draw that line, and I played it enough to know better, I just merely forgot it.

So, again, Jake and his far-flung assessments are demonstrated false. Every prorgam has moves in the opening book to avoid the early loss, and endgame databases can salvage draws from a great distance, which could have saved the first game.

....Who the hell is Pedro...

You're going to judge my skill by 6 games? Fool.

It is obvious you are scared to reveal your true skill at Kurnik. So it's obvious you use a program. It's easy to lose 16 games on purpose to throw us off but those games were obviously lost on easy mistakes you made on purpose. Play in the Kurnik tournament today at 5:15 eastern and see how you do.

What a blast...

Oh, I get it. Jake is Pedro's pawn account, now it all makes sense. Jake is Pedro. Got it. Bye bye (hides Pedro.)

I see Pedro needs a new hobby. Gee whiz Pedro. Don't you have a life, or are you still trying to derail the Gothic Chess Federation, lol.

[Grim Reaper, United States, Brain Rook, Male] Grim Reaper (hide) Re: 21. May 2005, 17:45:06
- viewing profile (Grim Reaper) -
Jake Lopez: If you don't know the answer to that, you don't get the American Checker Federation bulletin. You are now on hide Jake, I will no longer respond to you. Have a great life.
Reply
-----------------------------------
--------------

Jake Lopez's Checkers record:

4 wins, 0 draws, 2 losses

Why am I even wasting my time with you?

You are now on hide.

Have a great life in your little imagined world of greatness. I am sure you will be the World Champion in no time.

(laughs so hard I almost fell off the chair.)

Say what you want, you can't make a 3000 member organization that was based in Canada disappear. The PGN of the games exist, I have seen them, I went over the games from my tournament, the move list is accurate.

I have computed the 10-piece database. Not only that, it has perfect play information, not just "win-loss-draw" like other programs. It also has an Aggressive Draw Hueristic that will put you into the position with the fewest legal moves to draw, move after move after move, until your own 8-piece database program's draws are beyond its horizon, meaning you will spiral into a loss before you software realizes it.

It sits on a box down at the University of Pennsylvania with 256 Gigabytes of RAM and 32 separate 2-terrabyte hard drives to store the databases. Its search speed is about 8 million positions per second.

I can't remember if I sent Purple an early copy of the paper I was writing on it, or not. He can reply if he wants.

If I used that program against people on here, I would have 0 draws, not 16.

You should really do some more research before you say fairly unintelligent things.

You can start your research here:

(a book I am in...)
http://ostg.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/isbn=1402077092/nrd=1/

By the way, I helped to correct the Chinook 8-piece databases, which had errors in them until late 2001. It is mentioned in that book, page 210. Write to the publisher, ask them to email you the "Acknowledgements" paragraph from that page. Or send an email to Dr. Jonathan Schaeffer himself, he will tell you.

http://www.gothicchess.org/7_piece_perfect_play.pdf

As for my abilities, articles I had written for Draughts Razoo, and English magazine, were very well received. And World Champion Alex Moiseyev said my annotation of one of HIS games was the best quality of analysis he has seen, and it will be given the most real estate in the book he is publishing. I guess a computer program I wrote distilled the essential strategic concepts and was able to put them into laymen's terms as well.

And I don't have 2 computers, I have about 175 or so in my company.

Grim Reaper: You are green with envy. Are aren't a nobody, you're a green man.

The tournamet you attented wasn't legit. Just like the state fair tournament I attended. I didn't bother mentioning it because it's a worthless tournament just like yours.

Do you consider yourself a draughts master?


Why do 99% of your endgame moves match up my 8pc endgame program? Do you think like a computer?

At kurnik you can't use a program unless you use 2 computers - But we can make the timer fast enough where you will not have time to switch from comptuer to comptuer. Lets play some games there and see how good you really are.

So you criticize my play, yet I have played in a live tournament, while you have not.

I see no logic in your statements.

If I am such a "nobody", and, using your own metric of "nobodiness", you are less of a nobody, I don't think anyone would care about the result of of "nobody" vs. "less than nobody" contest.

So, why don't you go play with yourself.

I never said I played in live tournaments. I'm going to my first one this summer. We should meet at Kurnik and play some games.

Still waiting for you to tell us where you have played live tournaments. All games from the 22 NACA tournaments are in the Wyllie Games Archive from what I have been told.

I don't see any results for this tournament online. Care to give them out? Or are those results not to be discussed either? If you are still online right now (around 11:10pm pac time) - Go to Kurnik.org and play me some games.

That's because Alex asked me not to discuss the result

I beat Kingsrow 1-0 with 19 draws, get your facts straight. That version of Kingsrow had the 2.9 trillion positions in the 9-piece database and an opening book of 800,000 moves.

How well would you do against it?

Present at the NACA tournament were two past and present Canadian champions, some mail players, and some people who started playing checkers about 20 years before I was born. While the Canadian Checker Federation was not as sizeable as the ACF, it has master members who have taken points off of ACF masters, and I took points off of them.

Say what you want. I played 32 games in 3 days, lost none, and won 18.

I played in one tournament, and, from what I saw, checkers tournaments don't have a lot going for them.

Let me hire you as the President of my company. You are now making $675 an hour.

Here are your choices.

Work Friday and half of Saturday, and earn about $8100 in straight time pay.

Or, take off Friday, earn none of the aforementioned money, travel about 600 miles to a tournament playing site to breath smoke for hours at a time, win maybe $50 - $75 in a checkers tournament, drive another 600 miles back, then listen to more buttheads like yourself say "Gee you only won 1 tournament... you couldn't win if condition X-Y-Z happened."

Now, Mr Lopez, care to disclose your checkers tournament career?

Grim Reaper: lol NCAA tournament? Are you kidding me? Who actually showed up to that to give any regular online player a challenge. That is like playing in a state fair checkers tournament. You were just playing amatuers. After your 2-0 win over kingsrow...It doesn't matter if Moiseyev went to your house. You beat kingsrow 2-0 with draws. That is a master-level result. I don't see Moiseyev telling anyone that you're a master after playing you at your house.

I wonder why World Champion Alex Moiseyev came to my house on December 18, 2004?

Hmmmm... I wonder.

And what tournaments have you played in?

By the way, I won a NACA tournament in 1997 (an Open invitation held in Nyak, NY), 28 points out of 32, with no losses. It was 11-man ballot.

Did you forget about that one tournament result?

I don't know if all checkers tournaments are like this one, but there were 3 people there under 60 in my section (myself and two others) and it was not played in the best of locations. The cafeteria featured creaky wooden chairs that were very uncomfortable and not well balanced. There was some Bridge event going on not far from us, which allowed smoking, so the place stunk like old cigars (though the cigarette smokers outnumbered them probably 10 to 1, the cigar smoke was what I remembered most.)

The mens room was crowded at times, and in the summer the pungent odor of urine wafted you when you were still 50 feet away. It was enough to make you wish for a third kidney.

There were only about 40 players in the so-called Masters Section, with a surprising 60 or more in what was labeled the "Mixed Amateur" section. There were only 2 ladies present in the whole event.

NACA ran events from 1996-1999 and was relatively short lived, based somewhere in Canada. They claimed to have 3000 members, but offered no publication (just a BBS online) and only organized 11-man ballot checkers, bridge, and some other non-poker card game that I cannot remember.

Ed Trice has not played in a live tournament. He is an unknown compared to George Miller.

Ahh yes, that's it, have been reviewing some lassie games since i am playing a few now, i know i saw one somewhere, thanks