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?