Yet another electronic device to ban... Apple Watch

apple.com/watch/?cid=wwa-us-kwm-watch-com

Since it can receive phone calls and access apps, looks like this needs to be banned in many tournaments that do that sort of thing.
I wonder what happens when Apple makes underwear that can function as a phone… will it ever end :slight_smile:

Michael Atkins

Mike,
It only makes calls via an iPhone. I’m not sure how useful a cheating method it would be to make a call via your watch during a game.
Mike

But its ability to receive texts and phone calls certainly puts it in the electronic device category. The Apple site has a picture of a text on a watch…

Mike

When people start getting Borg implants…

I’d rather have a Houdini implant myself :slight_smile:

I draw a very bright line at my underwear ringing – or vibrating. :imp:

Mike,
It has to be within Bluetooth range of an iPhone. It doesn’t directly connect to the cell network. Note that receiving texts on your watch has been possible for many years. What about the Pebble?
Mike

Another smartwatch, the Samsung Gear S (samsung.com/us/mobile/wearab … 750VZWAVZW) actually has it’s own cellular/data connection so it doesn’t need to be within range of a cell phone.

It seems to me these devices fall under the appropriately nebulous term “electronic communication devices,” so I don’t believe any specific rules action is necessary.

cf. rule 20N.

-Matt

Wow talk about a difficult ‘sale’ to the HSA provider.

Rob Jones

Here is a photo of chess on the Apple Watch.

Enjoy.

Another thing to check for at registration and during the games. From what I have seen of this watch in publicity, it looks like it has a slightly larger face than most other watches. That permits it to have images and text for the user to see. Expect android users to soon have access to a number of watches that they can use. These watches will have faces that are similar to other watches making it difficult to determine its electronic capacity. They will, as usual, be better than Apple products. With continuing miniaturization of chips, having a watch that is 2700+ strength may not be far off.

Sometime in the middle '80’s, a player in a tournament, when we still allowed programs to enter, accused the computer chess people of trying to kill the game of chess, not improve our appreciation of the game. He said that all of the work on algorithms, the user of more powerful chips, and emphasis on speed of calculation was not designed to improve the understanding of chess decision making, but to break the game. At the time, he predicted that tournament chess had, at best, only 20 or 30 years of life left. After that, computers would be too strong and accessible. We laughed at the time, because most programs were too weak and computers were way too expensive for the general public. Not laughing anymore.

I think the best solution, if you suspect that your opponent has a 2700+ chess app on his watch, is to have an app on your watch that allows you to seize control of his watch and feed him subtly dumb moves to make. :wink:

It is quite possible that chess may, at some time in the not-too-distant future, become a solved game, like tic-tac-toe. But if that happens, I suspect that chess as we know it will simply be replaced with an enhanced version of the game that will be much more difficult for both humans and computers to solve (perhaps something akin to the three-dimensional chess that appears from time to time in Star Trek?).

Bob