Author: Dan Homan
Date: 16:33:11 05/29/02
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On May 28, 2002 at 14:47:17, K. Burcham wrote: > > >I have been curious about what motivates chess programmers. What do they really >want from their creation? > >1. Money >2. Number one on SSDF list >3. To Win most games against human GM >4. To gain more Fans >5. To be looked at as number one programmer >6. Attention & fame >7. Only to beat their last version >8. could care less about any of the above---just a casual hobby > None of these things are a big deal for me. I got started on labor day weekend in 1996 (I think), my wife (then girlfriend) told me I was never going to write a chess program, and that was all it took to get me started. I had been talking about doing it for a while. I was drawn to it because it seemed like a challenging thing to do, but that also made it seem daunting, so I put it off. Anyway, I got started that weekend. The thing played chess a several hours later, selecting its moves at random. A few days later I had cobbled together what amounted to a 3-ply search -- it was very rough, basically just one giant seach function with spagetti-like code. Next, a wonderful thing happened! I found a bit of code on the web with the negamax recursive search algorithm. It was on a very nice webpage, complete with an explanation of how it worked. It also had an explanation of the much more efficient alpha-beta version of the algorithm. I was hooked! Here, in a very simple algorithm was the key to great chess. That moment I began to realize that a simple recipe could outperform 99.9% of all human beings at (what is thought to be) a highly intellectual game. Of course, a good chess program is much more complicated than just the alpha-beta algorithm, but even the best chess program is no more than a recipe that the computer chip follows to the letter. That realization is what got me hooked. I liked the idea of human intelligence being outpreformed by a recipe. I was fascinated by this, and wanted to make my own recipe as strong as possible. Sounds quirky, I know, but there it is. Also, chess is great game. I don't think I would have been hooked by a program to design a better electricity distribution network than a human can. - Dan
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