Topalov is at it again

Hello faithful readers.  I know that I have been neglecting you, but the Olympics have been on.  What’s more, we are entering politcal party convention season.  Needless to say, I don’t have much time at the computer.  But, as you all know, one of my favorite things to do is to point out the many ways that people suck.  I just read an interview with chess grandmaster Veselin Topalov.  Topalov is one of the World’s top chess players, yet he still manages to be a bozo.  Perhaps you have heard of “Toilet Gate.”  In a championship match GM Topalov accused GM Kramnik of using the bathroom too often.  BO ZO.  You can read about it on the above-linked Wikipedia article.

Anyway, Topalov is at it again.  Let me quote him.  Regarding competing against computers (as if this were still an issue) Topalov said: “The problem for man is time. In a game with unlimited time per move, man will still win.”  This is just absurd.  Firstly, what the hell does “unlimited time” mean?  I think a computer will definitely win in that case because its human opponent will eventually perish.  That small detail aside, computers are better at chess than humans.  Period.  It’s a fact.  Take any human on the planet, match him up with a copy of Rybka 3 (for example) run on a laptop you can get at Best Buy, and the computer will win.

It still seems hard for humans to get over the fact that computers can beat them at chess.  I don’t know why they can’t get over it; it’s just another reason why people suck, I guess (the fact that they can’t get over it, not the fact they lose to computers).  As Noam Chomsky said, a computer beating a human at chess is about as interesting as a bulldozer winning a weightlifting competition.  I can’t do better than that.

I think that Rybka should take Topalov up on this challenge.  Of course, you can’t have unlimited time controls, but something could be worked out.  How about we let Topalov play white in all the games, give him as much time as he wants and limit the computer’s next move to the amount of time Topalov took.  I’d like to see Grandmaster Topalov claim that the computer was cheating in the toilet.  B O Z O.