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Subject: Re: Effect of tablebases on programs' performance

Author: Ed Schröder

Date: 22:39:29 05/28/01

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On May 28, 2001 at 18:59:22, Bruce Moreland wrote:

>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


I agree with you on the subjects "crafty clones" and "opening books". But
to the original discussion about TB's: it is just a piece of code every
programmer can write, it is there, it is working and saves a lot of
programming time. I don't see a problem as nothing creative is involved, just
raw programming how to access data. To get TB's to work you don't even have
to understand chess. By saying this I don't want to put Eugene's work down
on the contrary but I consider the invention and creation of TB's itself as
more important than how to access them.

Ed



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