September 24, 2025 • 21 mins
Step into a world where a machine, adorned with blinking lights and the scent of ozone, enters the prestigious Grand Master chess tournament. This early computer faces off against some of the greatest human minds, challenging the notion of genius with its formidable calculating power. But don‚At be fooled‚Aîthe machine is not infallible. It can be deceived, make errors, and most intriguingly, it can learn! Join us on this thrilling journey through the intersection of technology and human intellect. (summary by phil c and the publisher)
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Part one of The sixty four Square Madhouse. This is
a librevox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit librevox dot org.
Recording by Phil Schinevert Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This story was
(00:21):
first published in Worlds of IF Science Fiction May nineteen
sixty two. The sixty four Square Madhouse by fritzliber Part
one silently so as not to shock anyone with illusions
about well dressed young women. Sandra Lee Graeling cursed the
(00:45):
day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there
would be all sorts of human interest stories to be
picked up at the first International Grand Master Chess Tournament,
in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Not that
there weren't enough humans around, it was the interest that
(01:06):
was in doubt. The large hall was crammed with energetic,
dark suited men, of whom a disproportionately large number were bald,
wore glasses, were faintly, untidy and indefinably shabby, had Slavic
or Scandinavian features, and talked foreign languages. They yacked interminably.
(01:27):
The only ones who didn't were scurrying individuals with the
eager's zombie look of officials. Chess sets were everywhere, big
ones on tables, still bigger diagram type electric ones on walls,
small pekin sets dragged from side pockets and manipulated rapidly
as part of the conversational ritual, and still smaller folding
(01:51):
sets in which the pieces were the tiny magnetized discs
used for playing in free fall. There were signs featuring
largely mysterious combinations of letters fid wbm uscf ussf USSR,
(02:13):
and UNESCO. Sandra felt fairly sure about the last three.
The mini clocks bedside table size would have struck a
familiar note, except that they had little red flags and
wheels sprinkled over their faces, and they were all in
(02:33):
pairs two clocks to a case that Siamese twin clocks
should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as
a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to
interview the pilot pair writing the first American manned Chircom
Luna satellite, and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made
(02:56):
the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra, much further
out of the world, overheard scraps of conversation in reasonably
intelligible English were not particularly helpful samples. They say, the
machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barizac
system and Indian defenses and the Dragon formation if anyone
(03:20):
pushes the King pawn Ah. In that case, the Russians
have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations and they'll
gang up on the machine at adjournments. What can one
New Jersey computer do against four Russian grand masters? I
heard the Russians have been programmed with hypnotic cramming and
(03:43):
some no briefing. But Ben had a nervous breakdown. Why
the machine hasn't even a Hopterneer or an intercolleesiate one.
It'll over its head be playing yes, but maybe like
Kappa at San Sebastian or Morphie or Willie Angler at
New York, the Russians will look like putzers. Have you
(04:06):
studied the scores of the match between moon Base and
chircum Terra not worth the trouble. The play was feeble,
barely expert rating. Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew
absolutely nothing about the game of chess, a point that
she had slid over in conferring with the powers of
(04:27):
the space mirror, but that now had begun to weigh
on her. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed to
walk out this minute, find a quiet bar, and get
pie eyed in an evil ladylike way. Perhaps Mademoiselle would
like a drink here, darned Tuton, she would, Sander replied
(04:49):
in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the
person who had read her thoughts. It was a small, sprightly,
elderly man who looked like a somewhat thin down Peter Lorrie.
There was that same impression of the happy slavic elf.
What was left of his white hair was cut very short,
(05:09):
making a silvery nap. His pence nez had quite thick lenses,
but in sharp contrast to the sombrely clad men around them,
he was wearing a pearl gray suit of almost exactly
the same shade as Sandra's, a circumstance that created for
her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators. Hey, wait
(05:32):
a minute, she protested, just the same. He had already
taken her arm and was piloting her toward the nearest
flight of low wide stairs. How did you know I
wanted a drink? I could see that Mademoiselle was having
difficulties swallowing, he replied, keeping them moving. Pardon me for
(05:54):
feasting my eyes on your lovely throat. I didn't suppose
they'd served drinks here, but of course they were already
mounting the stairs. What would chess be without coffee or schnapps? Okay,
lean on, Sandra said, you're the doctor. Doctor, he smiled wildly.
(06:15):
You know I like being called that. Then the name
is yours, as long as you want it, Doc. Meanwhile,
the happy little man was edging them into the first
of a small cluster of tables, where a dark suited,
jabbering trio was just rising. He snapped his fingers and
(06:35):
hissed through his teeth. A white aproned waiter materialized. For myself,
black coffee, he said, For Mademoiselle, rhine wine and seltzer.
That'd go fine. Sandra leaned back confidentially. Doc, I was
having trouble swallowing well just about everything here, he nodded.
(06:57):
You were not the first to be shocked and horrified
by chess, he assured her. It is a curse of
the intellect. It is a game for lunatics, or else
it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful
young lady to this sixty four square madhouse. Sandra briefly
told him her story and her predicament. By the time
(07:20):
they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed
the other. You have one great advantage, he told her.
You'll know nothing whatsoever of chess, so you will be
able to write about it understandably for your readers. He
swallowed half his demitoss and smacked his lips. As for
(07:43):
the machine, you do know, I suppose that it is
not a humanoid metal robot walking about, clanking and squeaking
like a late medieval night in armor. Yes, Doc, But
Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question. Wait, he lifted
a finger. I think I know what you're going to ask.
(08:06):
You want to know why if the machine works at all,
it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins, and
then there is no contest, right, Sandra grinn and nodded.
Doc's ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as
the bubbly, mildly a stringent mixture she was sipping. He
(08:27):
removed his pence nez besides the bridge of his nose,
and replace them if you had, he said, a billion computers,
all as fast as the machine. It would take them
all the time there ever will be in the universe
just to play through all the possible games of chess,
(08:49):
not to mention the time needed to classify those games
into branching families of wins for white, wins for Black,
and draws, and the additional time required to trace out
the chains of key moves leading all ways to wins.
So the machine can't play chess like God. What the
machine can do is examine all the likely lines of
(09:12):
play for about eight moves ahead, that is, four moves
each for white and black, and then decide which is
the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces,
working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position, and so on.
That sounds like the way a man would play a game,
(09:33):
Sandra observed, look ahead a little way and try to
make a plan, you know, like getting out trumps and
bridge are setting up a finesse exactly, Doc beamed at
her approvingly. The machine is like a man, a rather
peculiar and not exactly pleasant man, A man who always
(09:56):
abides by sound principles, who is a incapable of flights
of genius, but who never makes a mistake. You see,
you are finding human interest already, even in the machine,
Sandra nodded. Does a human chess player, a grand master,
(10:16):
I mean, ever look eight moves ahead in a game?
Most assuredly he does. In crucial situations, say where there's
a chance of winning at once by trapping the enemy king,
he examines many more moves ahead than that thirty or forty.
Even the machine is probably programmed to recognize such situations
(10:41):
and do something of the same sort, though we can't
be sure from the information world business machines has released.
But in most chess positions the possibilities are so very
nearly unlimited that even a grand master can only look
a very few moves ahead, and must rely on his
(11:02):
judgment and experience and artistry. The equivalent of those in
the machine is the directions fed into it before it
plays a game. You mean the programming. Indeed, yes, the
programming is the crux of the problem of the chess
playing computer. The first practical model, reported by Bernstein and
(11:25):
Roberts of IBM in nineteen fifty eight, and which looked
four moves ahead, was programmed so that it had a greedy,
worried tendency to grab it enemy pieces and to retreat
its own whenever they were attacked. It had a personality
like that of a certain kind of chess playing dub.
A dull brained would pusher afraid to take the slightest
(11:49):
risk of losing material, but a dub who could all
most always beat an utter novice. The WBM machine here
in the hall operates about a million times as fast.
Don't ask me how, I'm no physicist, but it depends
on the new transistors and something they call hypervelocity, which
(12:12):
in turn depends on keeping parts of the machine at
a temperature near absolute zero. However, the result is that
the machine can see eight moves ahead, and is capable
of being programmed much more craftily. A million times as
fast as the first machine. You say, doc, and yet
(12:33):
it only sees twice as many moves ahead. Sandra objected.
There is a geometrical progression involved there, he told her
with a smile. Believe me, eight moves ahead is a
lot of moves when you remember that the machine is
errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh and
(12:56):
blood chest masters have lost games by blunders they could
have dight by looking only one or two moves ahead.
The machine will make no such oversights. Once again, you
see you have the human factor in this case working
for the machine. Sauvily, I have been looking all placed
(13:17):
for you. A stocky, bullfaced man with a great bristling
shock of black, gray flecked hair had halted abruptly by
their table. He bent over doc and began to whisper
explosively in a guttural foreign tongue. Sandra's gaze traveled beyond
the balustrade now that she could look down at it.
(13:38):
The central hall seemed less confusedly crowded. In the middle.
Toward the far end were five small tables, spaced rather
wildly apart and with a chessboard and men at one
of the Siamese clocks. Set out on each To either
side of the hall were tiers of temporary seats, about
half of them occupied. There were at least as many
(14:01):
more people still wondering about. On the four wall was
a big electric scoreboard, and also above the corresponding tables,
five large, dully glassy chessboards, the white squares in light gray,
the black squares in dark. One of the five wall
chessboards was considerably larger than the other four, the one
(14:25):
above the machine. Sandra looked with quickening interest at the
console of the machine, a bank of keys and some
half dozen panels of rows and rows of tiny telltale lights,
all dark. At the moment, A thick red velvet cord
on little brass standards ran around the machine at a
(14:46):
distance of about ten feet. Inside the cord were only
a few gray, smocked men. Two of them had just
laid a black cable to the nearest chess table and
were attaching it to the Siamese clock. Sandra tried to
think of a being who always checked everything, but only
(15:06):
within limits beyond which his thoughts never ventured, and who
never made a mistake. Miss Grayling, may I present to you,
Igor Johndorf. She turned back quickly with a smile and
a nod. I should tell you, Igor, Doc continued that
Miss Greyleing represents a large and influential Midwestern newspaper. Perhaps
(15:30):
you have a message for her readers. The shock headed
man's eyes flashed. I most certainly do. At that moment,
the waiter arrived with a second coffee and wine, and
seltzer Gandorf seized Doc's new demitos, drained it, set it
back on the tray with a flourish, and drew himself up.
(15:53):
Tell your readers, Miss Grilling, he proclaimed, fiercely, arching his
eyebrows at her and actually slapping his chest, that I
Egor Jandorf will defeat the machine by the living force
of my human personality. Hmm. Already I have offered to
play it an informal game blind folded, I, who have
(16:18):
played fifty blind fold games simultaneously. Its owners refuse me.
I have challenged it also to a few games of
rapid transit, and offer no true grandmaster would dare ignore?
Again they refuse me. I predict that the machine will
(16:38):
play like a great oath, at least against me. Repeat, I,
Egor Jandorf, by the living force of my human personality,
will defeat the machine. Do you have that you can
remember it? Oh? Yes, Sandra assured him. But there are
(17:00):
some other questions I want very much to ask you,
mister Jendorf. I am sorry, Miss Grayling, but I must
clear my mind now. In ten minutes, they throught the
clocks while Sandra arranged for an interview with Jendorf. After
the day's playing session, Doc re ordered his coffee. One
(17:23):
expectat of Johndorf, he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug,
when the shock headed man was gone. At least he
didn't take your wine and seltzer, or did he One
tip I have for you. Don't call a chess master mister,
call him master. They eat it up. Gee, Doc, I
(17:45):
don't know how to thank you for everything. I hope
I haven't offended miss Master Johndorf, so that he doesn't.
Don't worry about that. Wild horses couldn't keep John Dorf
away from a press interview. You know, his rapid transit
challenge was cunning. That's a minor variety of chess where
(18:07):
each player gets only ten seconds to make a move,
which I don't suppose would give the machine time to
look three moves ahead. Chess players would say that the
machine has a very slow sight of the board. This
tournament is being played at the usual international rate of
fifteen moves an hour, and is that why they've got
(18:29):
all those crazy clocks? Sandra interrupted, Oh, yes, chess clocks
measure the time each player takes in making his moves.
When a player makes a move, he presses a button
that shuts his clock off and turns the opponents on.
If a player uses too much time, he loses as
surely as if he were checkmated. Now, since the machine
(18:53):
will almost certainly be programmed to take an equal amount
of time on successive moves, a rate of fifteen moves
in our means it will have four minutes they move,
and it will need every second of them. Incidentally, it
was typical Jandorf Bravado to make a point of a
(19:13):
blindfolded challenge, just as if the machine weren't playing blindfold itself.
Or is the machine blindfold How do you think of it, Gosh,
I don't know, say Doc, is it really true that
Master Jandorf has played fifty games at once blindfolded. I
(19:34):
can't believe that. Of course not, Doc assured her. It
was only forty nine, and he lost two of those
and drew five. Chandorf always exaggerates. It's in his blood.
He's one of the Russians, isn't he, Sandra asked Igor.
(19:55):
Doc chuckled. Not exactly, he said, gently, here's a originally
a pole and now he has Argentina citizenship. You have
a program, don't you. Sandra started to hunt through her pocketbook,
but just then two lists of names lit up on
the big electric scoreboard. The players William Engler USA, Bella Grabo, Hungary,
(20:24):
Ivan jol Ussr, Igor, John DARF Argentina, Doctor s Krocotawer France, Vasilli,
Lesmoff uss R, The Machine USA, programmed by Simon Grat,
Maxim Shirick USSR, Moses Shurewski USA, Mikhail wa Binnick USSR,
(20:54):
Tournament director, doctor Jan Vanderhoff. First round pairings Shrewsky versus
serk Jal versus Angler, John Dorf versus Vot, Binnick, Leismore
versus Krakataur, Grabo versus Machine. End of Part one
Part one of The sixty four Square Madhouse. This is
a librevox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
For more information or to volunteer, please visit librevox dot org.
Recording by Phil Schinevert Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This story was
(00:21):
first published in Worlds of IF Science Fiction May nineteen
sixty two. The sixty four Square Madhouse by fritzliber Part
one silently so as not to shock anyone with illusions
about well dressed young women. Sandra Lee Graeling cursed the
(00:45):
day she had persuaded the Chicago Space Mirror that there
would be all sorts of human interest stories to be
picked up at the first International Grand Master Chess Tournament,
in which an electronic computing machine was entered. Not that
there weren't enough humans around, it was the interest that
(01:06):
was in doubt. The large hall was crammed with energetic,
dark suited men, of whom a disproportionately large number were bald,
wore glasses, were faintly, untidy and indefinably shabby, had Slavic
or Scandinavian features, and talked foreign languages. They yacked interminably.
(01:27):
The only ones who didn't were scurrying individuals with the
eager's zombie look of officials. Chess sets were everywhere, big
ones on tables, still bigger diagram type electric ones on walls,
small pekin sets dragged from side pockets and manipulated rapidly
as part of the conversational ritual, and still smaller folding
(01:51):
sets in which the pieces were the tiny magnetized discs
used for playing in free fall. There were signs featuring
largely mysterious combinations of letters fid wbm uscf ussf USSR,
(02:13):
and UNESCO. Sandra felt fairly sure about the last three.
The mini clocks bedside table size would have struck a
familiar note, except that they had little red flags and
wheels sprinkled over their faces, and they were all in
(02:33):
pairs two clocks to a case that Siamese twin clocks
should be essential to a chess tournament struck Sandra as
a particularly maddening circumstance. Her last assignment had been to
interview the pilot pair writing the first American manned Chircom
Luna satellite, and the five alternate pairs who hadn't made
(02:56):
the flight. This tournament hall seemed to Sandra, much further
out of the world, overheard scraps of conversation in reasonably
intelligible English were not particularly helpful samples. They say, the
machine has been programmed to play nothing but pure Barizac
system and Indian defenses and the Dragon formation if anyone
(03:20):
pushes the King pawn Ah. In that case, the Russians
have come with ten trunkfuls of prepared variations and they'll
gang up on the machine at adjournments. What can one
New Jersey computer do against four Russian grand masters? I
heard the Russians have been programmed with hypnotic cramming and
(03:43):
some no briefing. But Ben had a nervous breakdown. Why
the machine hasn't even a Hopterneer or an intercolleesiate one.
It'll over its head be playing yes, but maybe like
Kappa at San Sebastian or Morphie or Willie Angler at
New York, the Russians will look like putzers. Have you
(04:06):
studied the scores of the match between moon Base and
chircum Terra not worth the trouble. The play was feeble,
barely expert rating. Sandra's chief difficulty was that she knew
absolutely nothing about the game of chess, a point that
she had slid over in conferring with the powers of
(04:27):
the space mirror, but that now had begun to weigh
on her. How wonderful it would be, she dreamed to
walk out this minute, find a quiet bar, and get
pie eyed in an evil ladylike way. Perhaps Mademoiselle would
like a drink here, darned Tuton, she would, Sander replied
(04:49):
in a rush, and then looked down apprehensively at the
person who had read her thoughts. It was a small, sprightly,
elderly man who looked like a somewhat thin down Peter Lorrie.
There was that same impression of the happy slavic elf.
What was left of his white hair was cut very short,
(05:09):
making a silvery nap. His pence nez had quite thick lenses,
but in sharp contrast to the sombrely clad men around them,
he was wearing a pearl gray suit of almost exactly
the same shade as Sandra's, a circumstance that created for
her the illusion that they were fellow conspirators. Hey, wait
(05:32):
a minute, she protested, just the same. He had already
taken her arm and was piloting her toward the nearest
flight of low wide stairs. How did you know I
wanted a drink? I could see that Mademoiselle was having
difficulties swallowing, he replied, keeping them moving. Pardon me for
(05:54):
feasting my eyes on your lovely throat. I didn't suppose
they'd served drinks here, but of course they were already
mounting the stairs. What would chess be without coffee or schnapps? Okay,
lean on, Sandra said, you're the doctor. Doctor, he smiled wildly.
(06:15):
You know I like being called that. Then the name
is yours, as long as you want it, Doc. Meanwhile,
the happy little man was edging them into the first
of a small cluster of tables, where a dark suited,
jabbering trio was just rising. He snapped his fingers and
(06:35):
hissed through his teeth. A white aproned waiter materialized. For myself,
black coffee, he said, For Mademoiselle, rhine wine and seltzer.
That'd go fine. Sandra leaned back confidentially. Doc, I was
having trouble swallowing well just about everything here, he nodded.
(06:57):
You were not the first to be shocked and horrified
by chess, he assured her. It is a curse of
the intellect. It is a game for lunatics, or else
it creates them. But what brings a sane and beautiful
young lady to this sixty four square madhouse. Sandra briefly
told him her story and her predicament. By the time
(07:20):
they were served, Doc had absorbed the one and assessed
the other. You have one great advantage, he told her.
You'll know nothing whatsoever of chess, so you will be
able to write about it understandably for your readers. He
swallowed half his demitoss and smacked his lips. As for
(07:43):
the machine, you do know, I suppose that it is
not a humanoid metal robot walking about, clanking and squeaking
like a late medieval night in armor. Yes, Doc, But
Sandra found difficulty in phrasing the question. Wait, he lifted
a finger. I think I know what you're going to ask.
(08:06):
You want to know why if the machine works at all,
it doesn't work perfectly, so that it always wins, and
then there is no contest, right, Sandra grinn and nodded.
Doc's ability to interpret her mind was as comforting as
the bubbly, mildly a stringent mixture she was sipping. He
(08:27):
removed his pence nez besides the bridge of his nose,
and replace them if you had, he said, a billion computers,
all as fast as the machine. It would take them
all the time there ever will be in the universe
just to play through all the possible games of chess,
(08:49):
not to mention the time needed to classify those games
into branching families of wins for white, wins for Black,
and draws, and the additional time required to trace out
the chains of key moves leading all ways to wins.
So the machine can't play chess like God. What the
machine can do is examine all the likely lines of
(09:12):
play for about eight moves ahead, that is, four moves
each for white and black, and then decide which is
the best move on the basis of capturing enemy pieces,
working toward checkmate, establishing a powerful central position, and so on.
That sounds like the way a man would play a game,
(09:33):
Sandra observed, look ahead a little way and try to
make a plan, you know, like getting out trumps and
bridge are setting up a finesse exactly, Doc beamed at
her approvingly. The machine is like a man, a rather
peculiar and not exactly pleasant man, A man who always
(09:56):
abides by sound principles, who is a incapable of flights
of genius, but who never makes a mistake. You see,
you are finding human interest already, even in the machine,
Sandra nodded. Does a human chess player, a grand master,
(10:16):
I mean, ever look eight moves ahead in a game?
Most assuredly he does. In crucial situations, say where there's
a chance of winning at once by trapping the enemy king,
he examines many more moves ahead than that thirty or forty.
Even the machine is probably programmed to recognize such situations
(10:41):
and do something of the same sort, though we can't
be sure from the information world business machines has released.
But in most chess positions the possibilities are so very
nearly unlimited that even a grand master can only look
a very few moves ahead, and must rely on his
(11:02):
judgment and experience and artistry. The equivalent of those in
the machine is the directions fed into it before it
plays a game. You mean the programming. Indeed, yes, the
programming is the crux of the problem of the chess
playing computer. The first practical model, reported by Bernstein and
(11:25):
Roberts of IBM in nineteen fifty eight, and which looked
four moves ahead, was programmed so that it had a greedy,
worried tendency to grab it enemy pieces and to retreat
its own whenever they were attacked. It had a personality
like that of a certain kind of chess playing dub.
A dull brained would pusher afraid to take the slightest
(11:49):
risk of losing material, but a dub who could all
most always beat an utter novice. The WBM machine here
in the hall operates about a million times as fast.
Don't ask me how, I'm no physicist, but it depends
on the new transistors and something they call hypervelocity, which
(12:12):
in turn depends on keeping parts of the machine at
a temperature near absolute zero. However, the result is that
the machine can see eight moves ahead, and is capable
of being programmed much more craftily. A million times as
fast as the first machine. You say, doc, and yet
(12:33):
it only sees twice as many moves ahead. Sandra objected.
There is a geometrical progression involved there, he told her
with a smile. Believe me, eight moves ahead is a
lot of moves when you remember that the machine is
errorlessly examining every one of thousands of variations. Flesh and
(12:56):
blood chest masters have lost games by blunders they could
have dight by looking only one or two moves ahead.
The machine will make no such oversights. Once again, you
see you have the human factor in this case working
for the machine. Sauvily, I have been looking all placed
(13:17):
for you. A stocky, bullfaced man with a great bristling
shock of black, gray flecked hair had halted abruptly by
their table. He bent over doc and began to whisper
explosively in a guttural foreign tongue. Sandra's gaze traveled beyond
the balustrade now that she could look down at it.
(13:38):
The central hall seemed less confusedly crowded. In the middle.
Toward the far end were five small tables, spaced rather
wildly apart and with a chessboard and men at one
of the Siamese clocks. Set out on each To either
side of the hall were tiers of temporary seats, about
half of them occupied. There were at least as many
(14:01):
more people still wondering about. On the four wall was
a big electric scoreboard, and also above the corresponding tables,
five large, dully glassy chessboards, the white squares in light gray,
the black squares in dark. One of the five wall
chessboards was considerably larger than the other four, the one
(14:25):
above the machine. Sandra looked with quickening interest at the
console of the machine, a bank of keys and some
half dozen panels of rows and rows of tiny telltale lights,
all dark. At the moment, A thick red velvet cord
on little brass standards ran around the machine at a
(14:46):
distance of about ten feet. Inside the cord were only
a few gray, smocked men. Two of them had just
laid a black cable to the nearest chess table and
were attaching it to the Siamese clock. Sandra tried to
think of a being who always checked everything, but only
(15:06):
within limits beyond which his thoughts never ventured, and who
never made a mistake. Miss Grayling, may I present to you,
Igor Johndorf. She turned back quickly with a smile and
a nod. I should tell you, Igor, Doc continued that
Miss Greyleing represents a large and influential Midwestern newspaper. Perhaps
(15:30):
you have a message for her readers. The shock headed
man's eyes flashed. I most certainly do. At that moment,
the waiter arrived with a second coffee and wine, and
seltzer Gandorf seized Doc's new demitos, drained it, set it
back on the tray with a flourish, and drew himself up.
(15:53):
Tell your readers, Miss Grilling, he proclaimed, fiercely, arching his
eyebrows at her and actually slapping his chest, that I
Egor Jandorf will defeat the machine by the living force
of my human personality. Hmm. Already I have offered to
play it an informal game blind folded, I, who have
(16:18):
played fifty blind fold games simultaneously. Its owners refuse me.
I have challenged it also to a few games of
rapid transit, and offer no true grandmaster would dare ignore?
Again they refuse me. I predict that the machine will
(16:38):
play like a great oath, at least against me. Repeat, I,
Egor Jandorf, by the living force of my human personality,
will defeat the machine. Do you have that you can
remember it? Oh? Yes, Sandra assured him. But there are
(17:00):
some other questions I want very much to ask you,
mister Jendorf. I am sorry, Miss Grayling, but I must
clear my mind now. In ten minutes, they throught the
clocks while Sandra arranged for an interview with Jendorf. After
the day's playing session, Doc re ordered his coffee. One
(17:23):
expectat of Johndorf, he explained to Sandra with a philosophic shrug,
when the shock headed man was gone. At least he
didn't take your wine and seltzer, or did he One
tip I have for you. Don't call a chess master mister,
call him master. They eat it up. Gee, Doc, I
(17:45):
don't know how to thank you for everything. I hope
I haven't offended miss Master Johndorf, so that he doesn't.
Don't worry about that. Wild horses couldn't keep John Dorf
away from a press interview. You know, his rapid transit
challenge was cunning. That's a minor variety of chess where
(18:07):
each player gets only ten seconds to make a move,
which I don't suppose would give the machine time to
look three moves ahead. Chess players would say that the
machine has a very slow sight of the board. This
tournament is being played at the usual international rate of
fifteen moves an hour, and is that why they've got
(18:29):
all those crazy clocks? Sandra interrupted, Oh, yes, chess clocks
measure the time each player takes in making his moves.
When a player makes a move, he presses a button
that shuts his clock off and turns the opponents on.
If a player uses too much time, he loses as
surely as if he were checkmated. Now, since the machine
(18:53):
will almost certainly be programmed to take an equal amount
of time on successive moves, a rate of fifteen moves
in our means it will have four minutes they move,
and it will need every second of them. Incidentally, it
was typical Jandorf Bravado to make a point of a
(19:13):
blindfolded challenge, just as if the machine weren't playing blindfold itself.
Or is the machine blindfold How do you think of it, Gosh,
I don't know, say Doc, is it really true that
Master Jandorf has played fifty games at once blindfolded. I
(19:34):
can't believe that. Of course not, Doc assured her. It
was only forty nine, and he lost two of those
and drew five. Chandorf always exaggerates. It's in his blood.
He's one of the Russians, isn't he, Sandra asked Igor.
(19:55):
Doc chuckled. Not exactly, he said, gently, here's a originally
a pole and now he has Argentina citizenship. You have
a program, don't you. Sandra started to hunt through her pocketbook,
but just then two lists of names lit up on
the big electric scoreboard. The players William Engler USA, Bella Grabo, Hungary,
(20:24):
Ivan jol Ussr, Igor, John DARF Argentina, Doctor s Krocotawer France, Vasilli,
Lesmoff uss R, The Machine USA, programmed by Simon Grat,
Maxim Shirick USSR, Moses Shurewski USA, Mikhail wa Binnick USSR,
(20:54):
Tournament director, doctor Jan Vanderhoff. First round pairings Shrewsky versus
serk Jal versus Angler, John Dorf versus Vot, Binnick, Leismore
versus Krakataur, Grabo versus Machine. End of Part one
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