Author: Timothy J. Frohlick
Date: 15:55:48 06/03/99
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On June 03, 1999 at 18:23:28, Stephen Ham wrote: >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? You may be on to something. CM6000 is outstanding at Random chess. It regularly cleans my clock. CM6000 seems to stand up better on its own. However, chess is best played by knowledge-intensive programs if it is to compete against guys like Kasparov. It is a little bit like using "smart weapons" that home in on the target rather than using 10,000 dumb weapons. CM6000 is by no means stupid but it is not the final or best solution to chess. Deeper Blue would probably beat all the micro pc programs by 100 to 1. It had both intensive knowledge and fantastic speed. Tim Frohlick
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