Author: Shaley
Date: 01:47:00 09/02/05
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On September 01, 2005 at 21:22:34, A. Cozzie wrote: >A few things: > >1. This may surprise you, but I have never said Zappa was the best thing since >sliced bread. I've said that I think its WCCC performance was very strong, but >lets face it: its only 11 games. To be honest, I just feel that Zappa on my >quad with Erdo's tournament lines can hang with any program/book out there. It >might win, it might lose, but it won't get crushed. Your programme did nicely at WCCC 2005, so my congratulations of a job well done! But I don't agree with you in all respects.I don't know any good chess playing programme to get crushed. They may make some slight positional mistakes which would make their life harder through the game and lost in the endgame in the end, but they never get crushed, is it Fritz, Shredder or Hiarcs. All programmes are tactically strong and see the tactics well too. It is strategy that is their weakest part. >2. I really don't care about equal hardware strength. I've put months of >effort into making Zappa run well on my quad, and a lot of money into buy >hardware and trying to find sponsors. So has Bob. So has Vincent. So has >Stefan. So has Chrilly. If your program can't run on big hardware, its because >you didn't make the effort. If single cpu is your game, I won't stop you. But >its not mine. All right, you don't care. But the chess community cares. I don't know if you care for chess community, it's up to you anyway. If we scrutinize markets for chess playing programmes like Zappa, what can we see? Titled OTB players use Chessbase 9 and Fritz 8 (now surely 9)mostly to prepare for games (inventing crushing novelties in openings)or analyse the games with a good commenting tool installed in CB Fritz. So this is Fritz's market and the situation will hardly change for some time to come. Because Fritz is a brand mark, Fritz is cool and Fritz is... what GM mates use. So IM or GM chess community is hardly to be going to become your market. Young children or junior chess players who only learn to play sound chess are not also your market. They'd prefer Chessmaster 10 or Fritz 8/9 with good embedded training options. So what's going to be the market for Zappa or Shredder? Obviously, it's correspondence chess community, as using computer assistance has become quite popular in CC these days. And most of CC players use one processor Pentium machines, much less fast than you used in Reikjavik. Therefore, I think you should account for that fact when promoting Zappa. The recent results Eduard Nemeth has posted give us more or less indication of Zappa's strength on the public standard hardware. It stands to reason, though. Zappa was likely to be optimised for AMD quad systems. Some people even say that, if it weren't for a superpowerful hardware, Zappa 2.0b wouldn't have got that successful in WCCC. But, if you want your programme to gain commercial success, you should orient on that market sector, in the first turn. >3. Leo isn't getting a copy of Zappa 2.0 for the next edition because no one is >going to get a copy until the GUI is ready. It really shouldn't be much longer. >As soon as Zappa 2.0 is released, Leo can buy a copy and update WBEC, or he can >tell me he bought a copy while pirating it and update it for WBEC. Possibly he >can get a free copy from Vincent. Its up to him whether or not to do it. > Of course, it seemed as a joke to say that of Leo. But you could give him Zappa 2.0 free of charge, if just to see how high it could be rated on a public standard system. >4. You seem to have a had a serious chip on your shoulder regarding Zappa and I >really don't know why. Are you still upset that you were tricked by Erdo? You >tricked him in the Blitz tournament, so I would think that would satisfy your >taste for revent. I have never posted anything derogatory about Fruit - I have >only respect for Fabien and his program. I just don't understand what I have >done to deserve this persecution. > >anthony I don't know why you think Zappa has been criticized so hatredly here. This is a new player in computer chess market, so people are naturally expressing their view about it, more objective than not. And it's got due respect, by the way. The WCCC victory congratulations posts were pretty numerous, too. Let me thank you once again for a good software product and wish you great success in improving it ever more! Regards, Alexander
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