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Subject: Re: Support 4 single chip chess v Kramnik

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 08:45:30 04/19/01

Go up one level in this thread


On April 19, 2001 at 05:22:46, Bertil Eklund wrote:

>On April 18, 2001 at 20:26:36, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On April 18, 2001 at 18:11:28, Chessfun wrote:
>>
>>>On April 17, 2001 at 15:12:19, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>
>>>>On April 17, 2001 at 13:54:59, Chessfun wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On April 17, 2001 at 13:40:44, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On April 17, 2001 at 10:25:33, Mogens Larsen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>On April 17, 2001 at 09:57:40, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Supposed _I_ set up a tournament to choose the program to play?  And then
>>>>>>>>suppose _I_ said "if you want in, send me $50,000 to enter your program."??
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Would you enter even if you _knew_ Rebel xx was the best in the world?  And
>>>>>>>>risk that kind of money to get in knowing that one game can be lost due to a
>>>>>>>>bad book line or bug?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>Charging an entry fee is a bit of a joke, IMHO.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>It means the deeper your pockets, the better your chances...
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Well, at least there's a refund for those that don't make it :-).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Seriously, can anyone blaim SMK for not handing over $5000 and Shredder to a
>>>>>>>third party for this socalled qualifier? I think not.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>Mogens.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>Let's try a different approach.  Let _me_ handle the qualification tournament.
>>>>>>Here are my rules:
>>>>>
>>>>>Making posts as above "is a bit of a joke, IMHO" since you clearly hadn't
>>>>>even bothered reading the current rules well enough to know the $5,000.00
>>>>>was refunded to losing programs.
>>>>
>>>>What makes you conclude that?  I can read perfectly well.  But I would not
>>>>send $5,000.00 in no matter what, because I try to spend my money more wisely
>>>>than that.
>>>
>>>
>>>You wrote "risk that kind of money" as in if the program lost the money
>>>was forfeit. That wasn't the case as already posted by Bertil.
>>>No you change that to sending the money in..
>>
>>Do you get it back under _any_ circumstance?  No.  So you pay it and take
>>a chance on getting it back.   That is the classic definition of "risk" in
>>my Webster's...  Since there is a circumstance where I won't get it back.
>>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>>Any publicly released chess program can enter.  Including patches.  So Rebel
>>>>>>could enter 2 programs since Ed has (I think) released the original rebel plus
>>>>>>a patch this year.  I get to enter all 19 released versions of Crafty.  If those
>>>>>>are the only two entries, care to bet who is going to win?  Statistically one
>>>>>>of my 19 versions will win even if all are worse than either of Ed's two
>>>>>>versions.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>This is what has happened if you include Deep Shredder, Deep Fritz, and Deep
>>>>>>Junior.  A trivia question:  Which chess distributor has the best chance of
>>>>>>winning that event?  :)
>>>>>>
>>>>>>It is called "stacking the deck in your favor."
>>>>>
>>>>>Hogwash. Tell that to Amir Ban. In your case above tell me that Amir
>>>>>wouldn't want to win as much as Stefan and that his odds of doing so
>>>>>are greater due to your "stacking the deck in your favor." theory.
>>>>
>>>>No.  But the "distributor" certainly has a big interest in having one of
>>>>"Its" engines as the competitor.  So it is not "hogwash" at all.  It is
>>>>plain marketing, front-to-back...
>>>
>>>
>>>The distributor does yes. But how does the distributor stck the deck
>>>when the choices are made by two independant people?
>>
>>By having _two_ of his programs in the contest to _one_ from the opponents...
>>
>>Two programs have a greater probability of winning than one.
>>
>>IE we simply play 'high card wins'.  But I get two cards each time and you
>>get one.  Who wins the most?
>
>Hi!
>
>And you are sure that Chessbase is the distributor of Junior7 (X)?
>
>Bertil

Probably. They do not have their own interface so they have little
chance of selling otherwise.

I do not know what Weiner offers but i do not even want to know it,
it's going to be very little probably.

What chessbase offers is a peanut of course. You can only get great programs
when programmers can fulltime work at it. Programmers earn when
working in a company around 50k$ to 100k$ if living in USA
a year if they're good. To make a chess
program strong you are a good programmer anyway, very little people can
make a chessprogram anyway.

When Friedel talked about diep as engine under chessbase (that's
quite some time ago so i do not know whether they pay more nowadays,
but as far as i heart not a penny more) he was talking about 5000 or 10000
dmark, about 4000 us$ today (dollar is high now).

Considering the thousands of hours work that are put in an engine on
average, that's like 1 us$ an hour.

So from that i can't even internet as i pay a dollar an hour for
internet already.

I'm not sure how many countries there are on this world where a
programmer earns 1us$ an hour. Add to that that the sales of an engine
are probably (my own estimate) like 1/100 of what fritz sells
as it's so easy to copy a few unprotected .dll and .eng files
(whereas the fritz engine if loaded always begs for cdrom here,
then i must locate that cdrom first etc, in short why is fritz
better protected anyway? More users use it so more trouble. More logical
would be to protect the programs and not fritz, unless is perhaps
has to do with smart marketing?).

Now Weiner is not a hair better from business viewpoint i've heart
from rumours, i'll not write what i heart
about whether he pays programmers at all, but let's refer to the paper
i got at world champs 1999 from Ossi Weiner. There was stated that the best
'amateur' engine would get 20000 DMARK. Yet despite that many engines
are running under Ossi Weiner software i never have seen announcement on his
homepage who received that 20000 dmark... ...i don't need to mention that
Ossi never answerred some emails where i asked whether already an engine
was selected (i emailed in the year 2000) ...and even worse i didn't
hear a word from collegue programmers.

And sure for so much programming 20k isn't much...

Amazingly many programmers keep accepting those low offers. How do you
compete with an easily copyable gambit tiger 2 (read my own definition
of what free is in this context) for chessbase?

Note i do not know what they paid Christophe to spread a simplistic
copyable gambit tiger 2 engine. it is non of my business and i would
sure not post it here if i knew.

But if Amir and Christophe got what i think they have gotten, then
i would fall laughing from my chair.

Doing nothing in some kind of burocracy job with loads of sparetime
here probably earns already better...

In the meantime the circle has again been completed as in the meantime
the interface of chessbase keeps improving... ...where f5.32 compared
to other games (non-chess) looked designed by a child, though having
a lot of functionality, nowadays the interface is really good. Hard
to make for *any* good graphics programmer. Not to mention a non-grpahics
programmer like me, Ban, Donninger, Theron and the list can go on.

Then i still didn't talk about the problems of making a good commercial
interface for a chessprogram, as those words 'good commercial interface'
are completely different from pushing a few buttons in delphi or java.

I'm still working on mine. It works cool now, but i have still loads
of work ahead as i can't of course release an interface which is having
similar functionality to interfaces of a few years ago!

Add to that that the average chessprogrammer is very lazy and you know
they never are going to have their own interface, so the circle is
round and they get back to those who offered them a
peanut (from my viewpoint for the work invested).

Now to my big surprise we get chessbase or chessbase against kramnik!

Best regards,
Vincent
















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