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Subject: Re: Is Hiarcs 7.32 the best positional program?

Author: Jeroen van Dorp

Date: 07:27:05 12/12/00

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I am absolutely not disagreeing with you, because I both like Hiarcs 7.32 and RC
3, but I think there's something else to it than "being better positionally" for
Rebel.
I know too little about chess programming to give an answer to this, but I won't
stop wondering about it. Besides that, I never learned to keep my mouth shut, so
here it's open again.

I think the playing style of RC 3 (all Rebel engines) is not so much
"positionally the best" but "more suited to human play" and not so based on pure
brute force calculating tactics. In its responses it looks more to the way the
opponent's play should be disrupted.

In a way that *is* positional like for example by not always choosing the fasted
move to material gain, but disrupting a pawn formation, or locking in a king, or
immobilizing active pieces.

Yet I think "positionally" there's more value in Hiarcs 7.32 than in Rebel, just
because it had more chess knowledge built in.

A part of "chess knowledge" is "how to counter my opponent", which Rebel does
very well, but it's not all.

My two cents are that Hiarcs is a very good "positional" engine yet Rebel is the
most fun to play against.

Not a single bad word about Marc's fabulous work, yet it's the reason why I
value Rebel most, like you. On that we certainly agree.

Jeroen ;-}



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