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Subject: Re: Who is the strongest OTB chess player at CCC?

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 17:00:53 02/13/04

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On February 13, 2004 at 11:05:45, Uri Blass wrote:

>On February 13, 2004 at 10:55:11, Tord Romstad wrote:
>
>>On February 13, 2004 at 10:13:26, Peter Fendrich wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>I agree that being a good chess player is not necessary in order to write a
>>strong chess program, but I think that being a good programmer is also not
>>nearly as important as most people believe.  I think it is possible to get
>>very far with mediocre programming skills.
>>
>>Tord
>
>The question is what is the definition of being a good programmer.
>You consider yourself as not good programmer but other people may consider you
>as a good programmer.

I think you must be pretty smart to succeed.  If you are not a great programmer
and not a great chess player, those difficulties can be overcome with time and
effort.  The amount of effort needed will be proportional to the intelligence of
the programmer.  So I think someone with an IQ of 100 could write a good chess
program, but it would take years and years.  Someone with an IQ of 150 could
write one much faster (given the same knowledge base and volume of data that had
to be learned).

It's going to be like any other mental activity.
1.  How smart you are
2.  How much you already know about chess
3.  How much you already know about programming
4.  How much effort you apply to the problem and learning domain knowledge

Are all going to be important.
Someone who is
1.  Stupid
2.  Ignorant about chess
3.  Ignorant about programming
4.  Lazy in effort

Is not going to succeed.

The most important thing will be to write good algorithms.  But you have to have
enough knowledge added so that the program won't play like an idiot.  If you
tell your program to do nothing but count wood, 19 plies won't be enough to beat
anyone.



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