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Subject: Re: Effect of tablebases on programs' performance

Author: Bruce Moreland

Date: 15:59:22 05/28/01

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On May 28, 2001 at 17:51:47, Ed Schröder wrote:

>Pointless discussion.
>
>You use alpha-beta in your program, you did not invent it, still you use it.
>
>Take it out and your program will drop with 700 elo points doing only 4-5 ply
>searches instead of 11-13 ply searches.
>
>Will you remove alpha-beta?
>
>I guess not.
>
>Just take everything what is offered for free that makes your program
>stronger. That is your job :)

If you show up in Holland for the next WCCC, with "RebelX" and "RebelY", they
will only let you play with one of these.

When Hitech and Deep Blue showed up at the 1995 WCCC, there was some discussion
because Murray Campbell was involved in both the projects.

This issue has also come up with regard to Crafty & Gunda (Jakara 1996), Virtual
Chess and Frenchess (Hong Kong 1995), some program and Socrates (Paris 1999),
and a couple of German programs at Paderborn 1995.

The idea is that they don't want the tournament to turn into a battle between
Richard's best five programs, and your best five program's and Frans' best five
programs.

If you take something significant enough and put it in your program, you have
gained a co-author.  The co-author should not be able to have ten programs in
the tournament.

It's not a matter of who invented the stuff.  It's a matter of who wrote it and
what else he wrote that's competing in the same tournament.

I'll take for instance you and Christophe.  If you want to share ideas I can't
believe that anyone would tell you that you can't, but if you start editing each
other's source code, I think you run into this multiple authorship issue.  Once
you start writing engine code for each other, you are a team, and that means one
entry, in my opinion.

I feel the same way about opening books.  The opening book is a very tough
problem, and I think that the author of the opening book should be considered a
co-author of the chess program.  I don't think that something that selects moves
for you should be considered a trivial part of the interface, for instance.

bruce



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