I recently came across a blog post by one David Smerdon who’s apparently one of Australia’s few chess grandmasters. The man seems to have personal issues about some scientific findings that suggest men play more beautiful chess than women within the scope of mate-in-3 chess problems. (I play chess too and find such technology to be fascinating, by the way). Smerdon starts off by chastising the researcher for using the title, “PhD” after his name as follows.

Despite my general rule of distrust for anything written by someone who feels the need to write “PhD” after their name

Well, I have a PhD too and it’s quite common and customary to do in official or scientific reports and articles. Imagine the hypocrisy of this given that Smerdon proudly uses “GM” in front of his name (or queer handle, “smurfo”) on that blog post and presumably many other places as well. Besides, he’s clearly not qualified to do scientific research himself. For a chess grandmaster, he also seems to have little knowledge of the workings of the Elo rating system too. For instance, he admonishes the research as follows.

Of course, every chess rating system only gives the expected score in a game, and says nothing at all about the chances of winning. Not a great start, but an easy mistake to make and so, excuses made, I moved on.

If Smerdon was not so busy guzzling so much coffee during the writing of his post, perhaps he might have checked with even Wikipedia and found that the chances of winning can indeed be estimated based on the Elo ratings. Presumably his math skills are nothing to write home about either. He then attempts to capitalize on a typo error in the slides of the research to undermine the researcher’s credibility further. Ironic, considering he also misspelled the very name of the computer program used in the research:

Ah, but here Iqbal preemptively counters with that often-used and curiously vague ‘get out of jail free’ card: Chesthica has been “experimentally validated”!

It’s called, “Chesthetica”, Smerdon. Following this point, he criticizes the results produced by said computer program not because he actually read or understood the peer-reviewed IEEE Transactions journal article and PhD thesis upon which said validation is based but simply because he cannot stomach the idea that perhaps men and women are not equally good at everything (intellectual?). Smerdon, like a white knight (pun intended), appears to be coming to the defense of all female chess players in the world whose collective honor he thinks has been insulted by the claim that their play may not be as beautiful as that of men in some cases. I would have expected more class and respect from someone brandishing the title of “grandmaster” (of anything).

Smerdon then claims he actually read the full paper and tries to pick it apart but having read it myself, I can confirm that Smerdon has a very poor understanding of computer science and artificial intelligence, specifically. Fortunately, I found this article which explains his errors in understanding, without pointing out Smerdon directly but clearly referencing his “arguments” and addressing them more elaborately than I care to here. It is quite long and most people probably wouldn’t have the patience to read it all but I recommend you do if you are interested in the facts from someone who actually has the qualifications to back their claims. Chess “grandmasters”, by the way, are not scientists or researchers and Smerdon is probably the bottom of the barrel in that regard as well, even though he obviously has a penchant for writing (crap). In summary, as I implied earlier, this statement of Smerdon’s sums up his true motive in writing his rebuttal.

All I can say to such shrewd perceptions is: thank God we have men.

He is obviously one of those guys – and we’ve all encountered them – who thinks he’s the savior and protector of women and will lash out at other men whom he even thinks are insulting them. This type of man is also known as a “mangina”, “simp” or “white knight”; a set of derogatory terms to describe a foolish man who can’t really think for himself and who acts more on instinct than reason when it comes to women, by the way. Smerdon, if you’re reading this, please shut up about the things you don’t understand and stop spreading misinformation about artificial intelligence research because you really aren’t qualified to talk about it. Even at chess, I’m sure computers can beat you every single time.