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Subject: Re: Crafty not that strong / Crafty not that weak / crafty ... <anything>

Author: Jerry Adams

Date: 05:20:57 04/25/00

Go up one level in this thread


On April 24, 2000 at 21:11:33, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On April 24, 2000 at 19:09:36, Mark Young wrote:
>
>>On April 24, 2000 at 16:40:39, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>I am not quite sure what drives this sort of discussion, but I would like to
>>>suggest a few things to reduce traffic on CCC:
>>
>>I have a good idea what drives this about Crafty...money. When you pay $X for a
>>"top of the line chess program". You expect it to *Trash* Crafty and the other
>>freebee programs. This just is not the case anymore with Crafty, even when
>>crafty is run a single CPU. What a difference a year or so can make.
>>
>>Get ready for more BOB as you climb the SSDF list with better Crafty versions.
>>Some may see crafty as a threat to computer Chess, but for people that want
>>"Bigger, Better, Cheaper" the gains by crafty are only a plus to drive
>>commercail computer chess ratings even higher at a much faster pace.
>
>
>I don't mind discussion or even criticism. I just hate to see it absolutely
>_dominate_ CCC like it does from time to time...  IE I have a crafty mailing
>list that is a good place to discuss crafty in pseudo-private.  But at least
>if someone joins that list (it has about 1500 members last time I checked
>right after we moved it from John Perry's machine) they know they will see a
>lot of traffic, but it will be all crafty-related.



  False Modesty perhaps??  It is difficult to believe that you would not Be
Overjoyed that crafty is getting the attention that it is, especially among your
own colleagues.
>
>CCC really ought not be YACF (Yet Another Crafty Forum)...
>
>Still IMHO...
>
>
>
>>
>>I wonder BOB..., if you keep making Crafty better and still charge nothing for
>>it, will Reno try and break you apart???
>>
>>>
>>>1.  If you don't like Crafty, don't use it.
>>>
>>>2.  If you do like Crafty, use it, but use it 'quietly' and avoid posting
>>>results here.  That only serves to incite those that don't like Crafty to
>>>higher levels.
>>>
>>>3.  If you want to complain about things that Crafty doesn't do well when
>>>compared to commercial programs, then by all means _write_ _your_ _own_
>>>program, and write it in such a way that it doesn't do the things you
>>>dislike.  It is far easier to 'put down' than to 'roll your own'.
>>>
>>>4.  If you want to point out things that Crafty does well when compared to
>>>commercial programs, then see #2 above.
>>>
>>>The crafty-lovers aren't going to convince the crafty-haters of anything.  The
>>>crafty-haters are not going to convince the crafty-lovers of anything.  The
>>>discussions simply drag on and on without ever solving a thing.
>>>
>>>If you have a program you know can throttle Crafty easily, drop by ICC or FICS
>>>or chess.net and demonstrate its ability.  Crafty is playing on all three
>>>servers, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, using identical hardware/book/tablebases
>>>and configurations.
>>>
>>>We have just reached a milestone on our ftp site, which I discovered about a
>>>week ago.  If you take every hostname that has ever downloaded a copy of crafty
>>>(I am only counting crafty downloads not tablebase downloads which might be for
>>>other programs of course), extract the hostnames, remove duplicates, the count
>>>is now over 500,000.  An amazing number.  And that counts about a dozen
>>>major ISP's as one site each (ie aol.com has a few hosts, each host looks like
>>>one download site when in fact, it could be hundreds of different users.)
>>>
>>>The point of that is that there are plenty of people that are interested in
>>>using the program, interested in helping make it better, or interested in
>>>suggesting new features which I have included whenever there is time and the
>>>feature is reasonable.  The 'negative' discussions don't change my mind about
>>>what I am doing, so they are effectively pointless.
>>>
>>>I would personally like to see CCC have much more about 'computer chess' and
>>>much less about "crafty is ....".  It is somewhat out of control, IMHO, and is
>>>serving no useful purpose of any kind...
>>>
>>>Just an opinion of course, as always...



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