Mark Thompson wrote on Sat, Jun 21, 2003 05:12 PM UTC:
Encryption is plenty strong enough to keep the move-explanation secure --
after all, we even use it to send credit card numbers over the internet,
and there are more people willing to spend more time to get credit card
numbers than there are people who want to find out why you made a certain
move in a game. The objection you and other players have to recording
their reasoning is more potent. Personally I'd be glad to write
explanations of my moves, even for the sake of making sure I remember why
I made them when I return to an e-mail game, sometimes several days later;
and I often wish the great players in tournaments would make such notes
and share them after the game is finished.
But it still wouldn't prevent cheating: I've seen programs that will
provide reasoning behind the moves they make. It would be very good for
new and exotic games to have some system that would prevent this kind of
cheating, because it would make it possible to hold a 'high-stakes'
tournament with a cash prize (maybe $100) and attract larger numbers of
serious players, and so getting more games that worthy of serious study.
But tournaments with prizes would also encourage cheaters to Zillionize
the game in hope of winning through brute-force computation rather than by
gaining a real understanding of how the game should be played.
So I applaud the effort to find such a cheat-proof e-play system, but I
don't see much hope for it myself.