Author: Ralf Elvsén
Date: 15:49:15 10/05/00
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On October 05, 2000 at 16:47:03, Stephen Ham wrote: >Dear Ralf, > >I think this is meantioned at the website, but agree that some things are not >easy to find when you want them. So I'll give you the answer from my point of >view. > >My answer is this: I want the computer chess engines to be able to perform at >their optimal levels. Franklin Campbell and Don Maddox (ChessBase USA) found >that the computer chess engines teamed with fast Pentium III computers would >reach a certain ply depth after 17-20 hours. To reach the next ply depth may >require nearly twice that time and would thus tie up the computer operator's >computer for 100% of the day, so they would never be able to use their computer. > >The solution was that Franklin Campbell of the ICCF agreed that he would start >the chess engine when he was done with his computer in the evening. He would >leave it running over-night and also while he was at work the next day. He would >only stop the computer when he got home from work and then needed to use it to >read/post e-mails etc. The primary choice of the chess engine was the move >played. Then the process cycle would begin again for the next move. > >The result means two things to me: 1) the chess engine thus had 17-20 hours of >calculation time, and 2) I had a new move waiting for me every day, so I had to >respond quicly myself, in order not to get too far behind. > >Ralf, I hope this answers you question to your satisfaction. Thanks for your >interest. > >Stephen As I said, I have a follow-up question, or a comment rather, that I have been thinking about in connection to your games. Sometimes a program "fails low". What it basically means is that it realizes that the move it has considered to play for a long time now suddenly doesn't look so good anymore. Say, e.g. it has searched for 17 hours and finished depth 20 and found that 1. Bxh7 is a great move. Then it starts at depth 21 and soon realizes that the move isn't as good as it thought. What a program does in this situation in a normal game is to "resolve" the situation: just how bad is the move, and if it stinks, it allocates more time than normal to find a move that is good enough (just like a human would do). But if it in analysis mode and used for a correspondence type game and is interupted, it is out of control. The ideal situation would be that a red warning light would be on: "I'm failing low! I wouldn't play this as yet unresolved move." So it is possible that an unknowing operator could force a program to play a move which would not have been played in a normal game. I have been thinking about this for a while and have a suggestion for a solution, but I would like to get some more imput from others: is this a problem or just my imagination? Ralf
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