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Subject: Re: Mig's article on 2005 WCCC, plus short interview with A. Cozzie

Author: Dann Corbit

Date: 19:17:06 09/09/05

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On September 09, 2005 at 21:02:36, Mig Greengard wrote:

>Convinced of what? It's a goal, not a conclusion, and there aren't any examples
>yet that I'm aware of. If a human-like training partner can be devised that, as
>a consequence, also plays a little weaker against other computers, that would be
>a worthy achievement. Current programs cannot be dumbed down in a human-like way

Chad's Chess:
http://members.fortunecity.com/clairesbro/chess/index.htm
and Golem:
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Chaos/9481/

Play a nice, dumbed down version of chess.  Very human-like (including
blunders).

>and are of marginal utility in instruction. I.e., they can show you why a move
>is bad, but they can't tell you why. Nor can they tell you why a move is good.

That is not a function of the engine, that is a function of the interface
(interpretation of the engine's information).

ChessMaster has a very nice interface to give human-like chess instruction about
a given move.  Maybe ChessBase should copy their idea.

>If, on the other hand, ChessBase remained as obsessed about bashing other comps
>as they have been in the past, this would detract their considerable resources
>from the more worthwhile goal (commercially and practically) of making a
>smarter, more amateur-friendly engine.

Smarter and more amateur-friendly are mutually exclusive.

It is always better to have a smarter engine.  Consider (for example) a
hypothetical 4000 Elo chess engine.

"What good is that?"

You might ask.  Well, let that engine analyze your games at 5 seconds per move
and it may tell you what an inferior engine would tell you after thinking about
each move for 5 hours.
Suppose that you want to analyze a given opening (say -- the Orangutan) and look
for novelties.  The stronger the engine, the better the answers.
Suppose that you just want to sell more chess engines to people.  You can put
"World champion" on the box if you win it.  You can put "SSDF Champion" on the
box if you win that.
Stronger is better.  An engine that is rated 2750 on the SSDF is not as good as
an engine rated 2850.  The stronger engine will give better answers to all of
your chess questions.

If you want to be able to beat a chess engine, don't try the professional
engines unless you are Kasparov, Kamsky, Kramnik, Karpov, or some other chess
genius with a name that begins with 'K'.
Instead, get a patzer of an engine from Leo's list:
http://wbec-ridderkerk.nl/
Click on "Rating List" to size up the competition.
Click on "Engine Info" to find the engines you are interested in.

If you "patzerize" an engine, it is going to give you crappy answers.  If you
"monsterize" an engine it is not going to play like a patzer.  So get monster
chess engines to play monster chess, and get patzer engines to play patzer
chess.

IMO-YMMV.



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