Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Chess knowledge (eg: SOS)

Author: ujecrh

Date: 10:36:56 03/30/00



It is surprising to see that different people can get a really different feeling
about a given program (no blame, it is probably very difficult to evaluate
positional understanding of an engine). For instance, look at the two following
summaries:

----------------
from WCCC pages:
SOS
Rudolf Huber
SOS is a program which focuses on calculating speed rather than programmed
chess knowledge. Since its author is not a chess player, the strength of the
program has to come from its speed to calculate the variations. Up to now SOS
has never won against a program which calculates faster, however there are not
too many of them. Still, the author believes that the above mentioned apprach to
computer chess delivers the best playing strength per programming effort ratio.
----------------
from Franks's chess pages:
SOS plays a very positional and agressive chess game, which makes it an
interesting new addition to the winboard engines. The comprehensive amount of
chessknowledge is used efficiently. In games at tournament time control it can
beat anyone. A new favourite of mine.
----------------

Maybe it was two slightly different versions but it is still surprising. I used
to think that the main gap between commercial chess engines and amateur ones was
the amount of chess knowledge put into it (with some exception among commercial
engines that are known as really fast searchers). Is that still true or is there
any amateur engine that contains heavy chess knowledge ?

Ujecrh



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.