Hi Stan,
Stan Arts wrote:Tony Thomas wrote:I feel the same way as well Kirill. All the ones that are attacking him are player haters, have some sportsman spirit people.
Sportsmanship is not:
Having a boatrace, most participants build the boat entirely themselves and as means of propulsion most start off with a sail because it's not so easy to ironcast a motor, etc. But another participant, not quite in the spirit of the race, starts off with a ready made 4000 BHP catamaran powerboat (with some rough edges still, it's quite new), that he tweaks and irons out the rough edges a little bit so he has 4050 BHP.
Quite an achievement.
Very sportive.
Stan
Ps. The crowd however is deeply amazed, "4050 BHP! He must be a genius!"
I totally agree here with you except that his achievement was a bit bigger, when you start with 4000 BHP he made 4400 BHP out of it and of course that IS remarkable.
I had several discussions with Thomas here and there, finally he knows that he had a very bad start, but he apologized several times and as Richard in another thread already pointed out: there is nothing wrong with Toga based on fruit and a lot of people have fun with it, simply because it IS a huge contribution by Thomas to the chess comunity. Also in our discussions Thomas agreed that he would not like to take part at competitions like WCCC, IPCCC etc. because he knows that his starting point was way different from those that wrote something original. In fact, as far as I understood him he knows that taking part in such events would be against sportsmanship.
To speculate now about what Thomas may had done when it wouldn't be discovered is crap. It was discovered. Period. So in fact I made my freedom with Toga based on Fruit and Thomas.
Thomas decission to give permission to GridChess for participating at WCCC was maybe a bit shortsighted but I don't know the complete circomstances. In my opinion the scandal is not that he gave permission, the scandal is that ICGA allows this, because it is pretty clear when you read Bobs statement that at least Bob is no team member.
So it is the ICGA which should be tought some lessons about sportsmanship. But I do not have much hope... They need 12 participants for their sold 11 rounds tournaments. So no chance that they will make any decissions just because of sportsmanship. Only money counts rest seems to be unimportant.
But to get back to this thread: a) Thomas still reads here, so isn't completely away, b) as far as I know his decission to quit computerchess (or better I would say to make a brake...
has nothing to do with us or critics from some people (by the way, where was he really attacked ?) - he got father and that is the best reason to stop a bit with computerchess. But as I pointed out elsewhere: he is infected by the computerchess virus, he will come back, believe me.
Greets, Thomas
