Author: Stephen Ham
Date: 15:55:45 06/04/99
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Dear Paul, Yes, I believe you and I are thinking about much the same thing. Still, I meant to communicate more, but I may be causing confusion due to my ignorance of computer hardware/software. Regarding opening books, some people said that small opening books are not a handicap. That astounds me! For example, it seems on average the CM programs left the opening book by move 8. Since the other programs were still in theirs after twice that number of moves, that means that CM had to find "book" moves for at least another 8 moves. Since the other programs had yet to expend any time, CM in a 40/2 time frame (3 minutes/move) thus used 24 minutes or 20% of all it's alloted time for the entire game just to get to the point where the other programs start to calculate. Therefore the point I'm trying to make is that it seems to me CM's small opening book handicaps itself by having to find the correct opening moves (not easy to do reliably) AND by having at least 20% less time to calculate for the game than its opponent. Since it's results were excellent in the tournaments, it seems to me this program must be a superior to the others. What other program can match up with Hiarcs, Fritz, Junior, and MCP while also taking a 20% time handicap? What other program is willing to do that AND have to find it's own opeing moves very early on? The fact that CM did play with what I perceive as 2 handicaps and still got excellent results suggests CM superiority to me. In summary, if my assumptions are correct, then CM programs would be the best ones to use when trying to understand complex positions. They may not be much fun for an OTB master to play with because the master would have to wait for the program to find it's opening moves while a human opponent would blitz through the opening. However, if used to educate ourselves about chess in general or research middlegame positions, this may be a superior program to Hiarcs, Fritz, etc. Is my logic correct?
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