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Subject: CCC Retirement

Author: Zappa

Date: 20:06:35 01/13/06


I stopped over to read CTF for a bit earlier today, and something hit me: I
actually found interesting posts to read, and that I hadn't really been that
interested in anything written at CCC for some time.  So I started thinking
about this, and I started to realize that the composition of CCC has changed
quite a bit over the last year or so.

Back when I joined (feels like ages ago, even though its only a few years) there
were basically 4 groups of people at CCC: the optimizers (headed by Gerd)
posting on better methods to compute LSB and hardware and such things, the chess
experts, who were primarily interested having the computer analyze their games
and posted a lot of test positions, the authors (headed by the always-arguing
Bob and Vincent) who talked about search methods and eval tricks, and the
testers, who ran matches and posted the results.  Somehow over the past year the
composition of the forum has shifted dramatically towards the testers, and
lately I feel that a good 50% of the posts here have been "I ran a tournament
with some engines under Y conditions",  "Great work X, you're a cool dude", "No,
X is an idiot, because he used conditions Y! What a tool!".

I personally was never that interested in test results;  I joined for the other
types of posts, and they have simply disappeared.  Bob has posted about 10 times
in the past year.  Ditto for Vincent.  GCP only posts to correct idiocies.  Gerd
barely posts any more.  Fierz is gone.  Fabien is gone.  Bruce is gone.  About
the only people left over from the halcyon days of yore are Gunther and Tord.
And two people do not a forum make.

I am not sure why CCC has changed as it has.  I have always resented the Deep
Blue team for insinuating that computer chess was solved in 1995, but has it
been solved in 2006? I haven't really heard of any new engines.   When I look at
the participants list for CCT8, every single engine played there last year.  I
know its still early, but are there simply no new engine authors?  And if so,
why?  Has it become too easy?  Is everyone only interested in cloning Fruit now?
 Or do people feel that CC is simply solved now?  A laptop with Fritz can beat
GMs nowadays.  I posted earlier that I felt that the big ideas of the 90s
(mobility, null move) had basically been worked to death and that computer chess
was in sore need of new ideas.  Perhaps we just _don't need_ new ideas, and all
that is left is a gentle refinement of the old ones.  I don't know.

I know that about 10,000 people will say "but RYBKA!", so let me preemptively
answer them: Rybka's strength is tactical, not positional.  Take a look at Marc
Lacrosse's post.  I do not say this to derogate Rybka - I don't know what he is
doing in search, but it must be pretty amazing - but I have never viewed tactics
as the primary problem in computer chess.  As computers get faster, the tactics
will take care of themselves naturally.

Anyway, I don't really know what the future of computer chess will be, but I do
know that I personally will probably not be reading CCC much in the future, and
I guess I'm arrogant enough to make a big post out of it.  I'm not leaving out
of disgust at bad treatment or anything, so I might stop by from time to time
(perhaps at Torino), but I won't be reading this forum regularly any more.

Good luck to all,

anthony



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