Author: Ed Schröder
Date: 11:07:26 07/26/00
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On July 26, 2000 at 07:31:12, Dave Gomboc wrote: >You can believe any of the scholarly sources of information with Hsu and/or >other members of the DB team on it, like IEEE Micro for instance, or the paper >from an AAAI workshop last year. Or, you can believe the web page. It's your >call, Ed. > >Dave Okay... I get the point. Here is what I mean with all those contradictions between the IBM pages and other papers, statements and I will be detailed. This forum is about playing strength mainly, 90%? more..? For this reason only DB is a hot topic even after 3 years. It is about WHO is the STRONGEST. That is the MAIN question here and you can taste in almost every posting. We want to know which program is the best TODAY. This topic for instance started right after the Dortmund event, "is DJ stronger than DB" and off we went... another new endless DB discussion. New DB discussions will happen again and again until the question WHO is the strongest TODAY will be answered. Not really something to look forward when candidate number one is not present anymore. Now what bothers me is the following: PRELUDE: in this posting "IBM" stands for the whole DB team, Hsu and co included. 198x - 1995: DT/DB dominates computer chess against 386/486/6502 machines. 1995: DT lost the world championship in Hong Kong (just 3.5 out of 5) 1991: DT doing 7 million nodes (source IBM) 1995: DT doing 7 million nodes (source IBM) DT doing 2 million nodes (source Hsu) 1996: IBM claims 100 million nodes. 100 million nodes fixed a huge image problem IBM had because of the loss of last year. It did the trick at least in my mind. Surely Hong Kong was a mistake and it would never happen again. So there was no question about it who was the strongest. Note that our minds are feed with information that comes from a commercial source and this information is still playing a huge role here in CCC even today trying to answer the question, WHO is the strongest. Who can beat 100 million nodes a second? Answer: none and this dominated our minds, even today. Until last year I had no single reason to doubt the numbers (or any other information) that came from IBM and took everything for granted that came from IBM. Today I doubt the jump from 2 million to 100 million. IBM had a very good reason. Image was on steak after the Hong Kong debacle. IBM's answer: 100 million. Problem solved. Most of us happily fell asleep. Now I am not the person to start conspiracy theories but this one touches the soul and existence of CCC which is playing strength and WHO is the STRONGEST. IBM has proven being a sloppy partner when the topic is giving right information. I like to mention all the contradictions as pointed out in the previous postings of the last days. I also like to point to the habit of IBM to come up with explanations every time they lose or make a bad move. The last example of this are the 6 games of DB-JR in Paderborn last year. The furious answer came a few months later high lighted as follows, literally: "Ed Schröder has misused this opportunity at will, to make false advertisement for his program". The story is pointed out on: http://www.rebel.nl/reb-css.htm Note this page needs an update as at the time I gave the case a rest. In email with Hsu one of the authors of Deep Blue it became clear to me that at least one of the main items of their defence (Deep Blue Junior thinking only 1 second per move) was not true as Hsu admitted that Deep Blue Junior at least used "panic time" when Deep Blue Junior found itself in trouble. Apparently this confession came because in the discussion I kept my point straight up having seen Deep Blue Junior thinking 10-15 seconds frequently, having witnesses of that too. I still keep my point straight up Deep Blue Junior using it's time control in the same way as any other chess program playing blitz. After that confession I stopped believing the whole story Deep Blue Junior just being a DEMO program of 2200 elo. Every time the machine loses it is something else. Saying first "one second" as a main point of your defence and take it back later doesn't sound good. Furthermore the documentation that came with the program (nor on the screen) did not mention any of the playing strength restrictions as pointed out by Hsu in the CSS article (see the URL above) so we took the thing for real otherwise we would not have touched the machine. I take these 6 games for real coming close to DB-JR real playing strength. These 6 games were played out of curiosity. The opportunity was there to learn something about the machine and we were expecting to be beaten badly by the monster. The opposite happened leaving Christophe, the spectators and myself in astonishment behind. There is also no doubt in my mind any other strong (amateur) program could beat the Deep Blue Junior in Paderborn. I don't want any credit for these games. This is just for the sake of the truth. Note: I have nothing against Hsu in fact I removed the 6 games from the Rebel Home Page on request of Hsu. Not that I was in agreement with that but I did it out of respect for him and his achievements and the joy his program has given me and the whole chess community. For me 2 points are most crucial: a) 2M (1995) to 100M (1996) real or not. b) Paderborn 1999 (DEMO program or not) These 2 questions IMO are touching the heart and soul to make up your mind about WHO is the strongest TODAY. Again IMO. Ed
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