Chess: auxiliary income for supercomputer/mainframe owners

[earthpigg]

customers would pay to play over the net. either installed client software, or through a secure web connection.

paying more means either a more skilled opponent, an opponent that makes moves faster, or some combination of the two. you would be paying for CPU cycles, essentially. (paying because the computer COULD have been running weather calculations and whatnot.)

perhaps allow a 'personality' selection - since different players place different values on things like positioning in the center of the board and keeping the king safe.

this wouldn't be a mass market thing - it would be marketed at aspiring future grandmasters. all the games would be kept secret, so these guys can try things out without risking their ranking or revealing their latest style of play.

think this would be a tenable proposition?

[schauerlich]

Don't they already have internet chess against real people? Why would you want to play a computer instead?

[earthpigg]

Don't they already have internet chess against real people? Why would you want to play a computer instead?

as i understand it, people with very high ratings have a difficult time finding opponents that will pose a challenge, and playing a rated game against someone with a significantly lower rating is risky.

[Frak]

There are very, very few chess masters who can defeat a reasonably well planned Chess program on a normal computer. Using a super-computer is a bit of a stretch. We've come a long way since Big Blue.

[3rdalbum]

There are very, very few chess masters who can defeat a reasonably well planned Chess program on a normal computer. Using a super-computer is a bit of a stretch. We've come a long way since Big Blue.

Very cool idea though. 100 points for originality.

[earthpigg]

There are very, very few chess masters who can defeat a reasonably well planned Chess program on a normal computer. Using a super-computer is a bit of a stretch. We've come a long way since Big Blue.

Damn Moore's law!