Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 12:58:39 09/12/05
Go up one level in this thread
On September 12, 2005 at 13:34:08, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>Dear Amir:
>You say:
>"....Of course playing strength is of utmost importance,
>more than any other measure of a chess program. This is obvious from the
>professional and academic point of view...."
>
>Yeah, right: from the academic and professional point of view.
>What about those that does not care a shit about the academic and profesional
>point of view?
>
>I can understand that you, a known and reputed programer, on of the very best,
>can be delighted for such things as "this engine plays now 12 points elo
>stronger than before". But believe me that, to me and many others, that we
>cannot care less. 2612 instead of 2600? So what? In the times of engines playing
>in the range between 1600 and 1800 I DID care and it was sound that I cared at
>all. Those 12 points made a difference. Better if 50. 50 points, in those years,
>were the difference between a really dumb engine uncapable to give fun and a
>decently strong engine capable of delivering the merchandise.
>
>Even in the times of 2000-2200 elo points engines or machines, the 50 points
>issue was important for players like me, no pro, not academics in the field of
>AI.
>
>Not now anymore.
>
>For us it is matter of better trainning facilities, better guis, more fun, more
>reasons to buy the thing. So no, I will not give you that break :-)
>
>There is much that can be done in this field and I do not care if chessbase will
>go into that because they evade a lose of Elo competitivity OR if they really
>are engaged on that for the reasons they say.
>
>I only ask you to consider this, totally different point of view, beyond the Elo
>points.
>
>And please, do not say to me that I just must go to Chessmaster and leave you
>all in peace with your professional machines.
The friendly sort of features that you speak of are not really even connected to
the engine very much.
There are lots of weak engines if you want to play them (and I genuinely enjoy
playing them from time to time).
If you want the best analysis, then a stronger engine is better than a weaker
one.
If you want a message like "You pushed your queen in front of that pawn, and it
is not a good idea to do that with no compensation" {and I do like messages like
that also, as long as they don't add things like "... you blubbering patzer..."
or "... you really ought to try another game. Have you considered checkers
against a three year old?") then those sorts of things do not really depend on
the engine much, but are a function of the GUI as it translates the analysis the
engine has performed.
"We think engine strength is not important anymore." is another way of saying
"We don't think we can compete on strength anymore."
"We want human-like play." is a pure cop-out because we can't really even define
that.
"We want it to play at reduced levels." is also a cop-out because there are lots
of engines that will make dumb mistakes if that is what you would prefer.
"We want it to play like a patzer in the same way as a human plays like a
patzer." is more hogwash. No two patzers are going to play the same way. One
guy doesn't understand king safety and another guy leaves hanging pieces. Both
of them are patzers but they don't play alike at all.
If you want weak engines, there is already a big basket of free ones.
If you want human like analysis, then ChessMaster has a nice model for that.
Other interface designers can copy their idea.
If you want good analysis, then you need the strongest engine. For those who do
not care about the best analysis, then any engine will do, I suppose.
And there will be some who want the strongest engine possible just for online
play to get a big rating at FICS or some other online game place. For these
people strength does matter. They will even buy $6000 computers just to have
the hottest hardware for that purpose.
At any rate, "We are no longer interested in strength" is a pure smokescreen.
You can bet if they won the WCCC hands down they would be blowing a trumpet and
beating a drum. The fact that they (to some degree) no longer compete shows
that they are afraid of losing.
I salute the commecial engines that had the guts to show up and compete at the
world championships (Shredder, Junior, Deep Sjeng) and give a golden raspberry
to those who hid in the weeds (Fritz, Hiarcs, ChessMaster, Chess Tiger {sorry
Christophe}) and a double golden raspberry to those that claimed improving
strength is a waste of time afterwards.
In the case of Hiarcs, ChessMaster {the King engine} and Chess Tiger, perhaps
the problem was no 'Deep' version and so they knew their goose was cooked before
the game started (who wants to give away 150 Elo before the starting gun
fires?). But Fritz has a deep version.
Anyway, I think that claims of "strength irrelevance" are disingenuous at best
and {conceivably} outright lies at worst. Furthermore, I do not think it will
fool discriminating buyers, who are the main audience of these advanced engines
anyway. Who wants to pay $75 for something that knows how to make "human like
mistakes" when I can download dozens of mistake prone engines for nothing?
But, as always, IMO-YMMV.
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