Mondo wrote:

Yes it was a draw by three fold repetition.

The Rules of Chess mandate that a claim has to be made to this effect.

The final decision to
allow the win by Shredder despite the bug that allowed the repetition,
is completely wrong. The game should have been drawn.

The program (and, then, on behalf of the program, the operator) must
claim the draw. As I understand, the Johnny program detected the
threefold repetition. It could just be status information on the screen,
in much the same way as it "detects" being in check. The question is
whether this constitutes a "claim" by the program, which should then be
executed by the human operator.

This is not a black-and-white type situation. The rules should be more
clear on what constitutes a "claim". For example, they could stipulate
that if a program "claims", it should show a certain phrase, and refuse
to play on.

The organizers are showing some dubious ethics, by allowing human
intervention to decide a silicon match.

They would equally be blamed if they judged the game a draw. In that
case, too, human intervention would decide a silicon match.

The only good that can come out of this is that the rules will be
clearer in the next tournament.`

If your program is buggy then you should suffer the consequences of
your faulty programming.

The contest is not about who has the buggiest software. The tournament
director would be unethical indeed if this consideration would play any
role in his decision.

Regards,
Sidney