The Secret Computer Tournament

Time out from studying tactics for a moment for a quick thought about computer Chess. Until the early 1990's computer Chess was seen as an interesting field of research, but the amused wisdom of the experts was that they'd never compete with human GM's. Then they started beating... Garry Kasparov.

Now they're generally regarded as all seeing all knowing iron monsters - which they are not. It is said a player's reputation can destroy his opponent before he even reaches the board, and computers do enjoy a large psychological advantage over their human opposition (for a start, they don't have a psychology to upset!). Humans play noticeably differently against machines, simple example - Kramnik 'forgetting' he'd left mate-in-1 on the board in his match against Fritz, a mistake he'd make against no human player.

So how do we determine a computer's true playing strength with respect to human GM's, that is, have them play humans without their 'unfair' psychological edge? Here is an idea for a tournament I thought about to address that problem. There are some obvious flaws, but it's just an idea...

Arrange a tournament with players of the same supposed strength as the computer. Before the tournament begins, one of the players is selected to be the computer - the other participants know this will happen, but only the selected player is told. It is the task of this player to act out playing their games while they are secretly fed their moves from the Chess engine.

At the end of each round each player will be required to guess who the computer is (this could make an interesting competition for the spectators too). At the end of the tournament additional points can be awarded for making the most correct guesses, and also for players who beat the machine in their individual game. This adds an element of poker to the event, for example a player would be allowed to nominate them self as the computer. It might also contribute to the discouragement of uncontested draws with the players being unsure who they need to beat for bonus points.