Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 16:54:47 02/13/04
Go up one level in this thread
On February 13, 2004 at 19:49:22, Dann Corbit wrote: >On February 13, 2004 at 11:22:45, Kurt Utzinger wrote: > >>On February 13, 2004 at 10:13:26, Peter Fendrich wrote: >> >>>On February 13, 2004 at 00:28:13, Paul Doire wrote: >>> >>>>Hi All, >>>> >>>>I am interested in knowing the strengths of all who post here. >>>>Whether it is USCF or FIDE.To import chess knowledge into chess programs >>>>seems to require the programmer to be strong or at minimum, their resources to >>>>be strong. Who dares to tell...and dares to tell of those who will not tell. >>>>Some human analysis we see would carry more weight knowing the strength of the >>>>analyst. Do you dare to tell? >>>> >>>>Regards, >>>>Paul >>> >>>I'm quite convinced that the correlation between being a strong chess player and >>>a strong chess programmer is not very high. It's far more important to be a good >>>programmer than a good chess player in order to produce a strong chess program. >>>Of course the programmer must have rather good knowledge about different chess >>>elements but that is not at all the same as being strong in OTB play. I even >>>believe that a very strong OTB player might have some troubles to lower his >>>level of play to the level of an evaluation function in a chess program... >>>/Peter >> >> Hi Peter >> I think you are just right ... in particular as far as your last >> sentence is concerned. And furthermore: a very strong OTB player >> would most probably be have the tendency to write a [too] perfect >> chess program and this does not work. >> Kurt But then again, Hans Berliner did pretty well. Chris Whittington is a pretty good chess player, as well as Vincent. Both of them have produced chess programs of commercial grade. Considering the hundreds of people who have tried to write a chess program, I think that the data says it is helpful to know a lot about chess. Kind of common sense when you think about it. Of course, the intersection of chess knowledge and programming knowledge is what is going to count the most. And I also think that you can transplant the information for either skill from books, but that would not work as well as just knowing it to start with. Dr. Hyatt is a pretty fair chess player as I recall (about 2000 I think). I think that some of the other chess programmers are also likely to be fairly strong. I suspect that there are no chess programs in the top 25 with a programmer who's Elo would be under 1000 if carefully measured. If nothing else, writing a chess program will teach you to be a better chess player. You have to learn structural things and tactical things to write a decent program. Similarly, I suspect that a genius chess player who can't program a lick will also have a very hard time to come up with something decent. Generally speaking, the really good chess programmers tend to be exceptionally smart people. That sort of person tends to be above average at anything mental that they try.
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