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From: barmar@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU (Barry Margolin)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: Followup to 'His was the most human
Message-ID: <1233@mit-eddie.MIT.EDU>
Date: Sun, 9-Mar-86 17:52:30 EST
Article-I.D.: mit-eddi.1233
Posted: Sun Mar  9 17:52:30 1986
Date-Received: Wed, 12-Mar-86 22:00:32 EST
References: <1661@mtgzz.UUCP> <24900126@uiucdcs>
Reply-To: barmar@eddie.UUCP (Barry Margolin)
Organization: MIT EECS Dept.
Lines: 28

In article <24900126@uiucdcs> mcewan@uiucdcs.CS.UIUC.EDU writes:
>> How about in Charlie X when Captain Kirk beats Spock. Spock says something
>> like "Your illogical manner of playing chess sometimes has it's advantages".
>
>Hasn't anyone else noticed that this statement is idiotic? If Kirk won, how
>can his play be described as "illogical"?

Have you ever played a game and tried to lose while the other player is
playing normally?  I often do this when playing games against the
computer, just for variety.  It's remarkable how well you can do when
trying to do poorly.  The problem is that the other player makes
decisions predicated on the assumption that you will be playing
logically.  When a player is building a move tree in his mind, he
generally only expands certain branches, and makes his move based on
that pruned tree; if the opponent decides to follow one of the other,
less promising branches, the player's original move may turn out to be
less than optimal.

A good way to confound a logical player is to make completely random
moves.  The logic involved in strategic game playing generally involves
predicting the other player's moves; this is quite difficult if the
other player is random.  Kirk's play was probably not random, but he
probably guessed every now and then, which was enough to throw Spock's
strategy off.
-- 
    Barry Margolin
    ARPA: barmar@MIT-Multics
    UUCP: ..!genrad!mit-eddie!barmar