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Subject: Re: How would Hitech do against Crafty and others?

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 12:43:22 01/17/01

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On January 17, 2001 at 13:30:05, Uri Blass wrote:

>On January 17, 2001 at 10:35:01, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On January 17, 2001 at 01:57:41, Joshua Lee wrote:
>>
>>>Is Hitech still around and if so this is a match i would like to see.
>>
>>
>>You will likely get several opinions.  I will add one that has a lot of
>>basis in experience.
>>
>>1.  No idea if HiTech is still active.  I would suspect not, but I am not
>>sure.
>>
>>2.  HiTech was very strong.  It had a reasonable evaluation, a good search
>>that included Hsu's singular extensions (full implementation that was written
>>by Murray Campbell) and so forth.  Its only shortcoming is its speed, when
>>compared to today's programs.
>
>The evaluation of programs get better every year when Hitech does not improve.

That doesn't mean very much.  IE suppose it was much better to _start_ with.
Then even today it might be better than the micros.  I don't know a lot about
it as I was never very interested.  But the author was definitely a world-class
chess player that knew what he was doing.



>
>I tend to believe that the evaluation of the best programs of today is better
>than the evaluation of something that was build many years ago.\

I don't.  I _still_ know of things in the Cray Blitz eval that I can't afford
to do today due to hardware issues.  IE it knew a _lot_ more about king safety
than Crafty does, because it knew how many pieces were attacking squares, how
close those squares were to the king, how many pieces were lined up in a row
attacking a square in battery, etc...




>
>  It searched about 150K nodes per second,
>>which back in the 80's was very fast.  Today it would be outgunned pretty
>>seriously, although the singular extensions would cover some of that up..
>
>I doubt if the singular extensions of it are better than other extensions of
>chess programs of today.

That is open to conjecture.  They are better than the simple out of check and
recapture extensions I use, for example.  You will see a SE version of Crafty
one day, so that you can compare...



>
>>
>>I don't think it would beat any of today's top programs in an extended match,
>>but in a single game or two it would be a _very_ dangerous opponent.
>
>I agree that in a single game or two everything can happen even if the
>difference is 300-400 elo.
>
>Uri


And the difference between HiTech and today's programs is _not_ 300-400
elo.  It is not even 200. Hitech Reached beyond 2450 USCF, which is certainly
beyond 2400 FIDE.  I don't believe we have a 2600 FIDE program around today,
no matter what the hardware, with the possible exception of Deep Blue itself.





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