Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 15:23:28 06/03/99
Dear Readers, Please forgive my message since I know next to nothing about computer hardware/software. Due to my ignorance, I'm more than a little intimidated to even be posting this. However, I just glanced at some of the tournament games archived at Shep's Computer Chess Site. Shep made note when different chess programs left their opening books. The CM 5500 and CM 5555 programs left their opening books after just a few moves, many moves before Hiarcs, Junior, Fritz, MCP, and others left theirs. Regardless, the CM programs scored exceptionally well in these tournaments. This suggests that the CM programs, all things being equal, must therefore be much stronger programs than the others since they had to "rediscover" chess opening theory already loaded into the other programs. As such, CM's alloted "thinking" time was consumed finding these opening moves. The other programs didn't expend any clock time until they left their opening books, thus giving these programs a huge time advantage for the remainder of the game. Therefore, the CM programs were handicapped with a smaller opening book and less time available once their adversary's opening lines were completed, yet the CM programs scored highly. Am I missing something here or is it not logical to assume that the CM programs are superior performing programs than Junior, Hiarcs, Fritz, MCP, etc? Finally, since program opening books confer an advantage/handicap depending upon their completeness/accuracy, would not the best test of software strength be to either have programs compete without their opening books or from the same middlegame position? Please let me know your thoughts and whether such a tournament has been done. Shep, does this sound like something you'd be willing to try?
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