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Subject: Re: A chessplaying web applet question

Author: Adam Oellermann

Date: 09:23:40 09/05/01

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On September 05, 2001 at 11:35:26, Edward Seid wrote:

>A newbie question, so thanks for your patience.
>
>I'm thinking about programming a simple chessplaying program to NOT play on a
>chess server, but to play thru a web interface.  I was wondering which language
>would be most appropriate for such interactivity.  The first that came to mind
>was Java or Javascript.  But since I'm new to programming in general, something
>more Englishlike, like VB, would be desirable.
>
>The chessplaying program would be a much simplified version of real chess, based
>on the "pawn game" as described in Vol 1 of Lev Alburt's Comprehensive Chess
>Course.  No pieces, no 50 move rule, no 3 time repetition, no complicated pawn
>promotions... about the most complicated thing would be en passant.  I think
>that this game is completely solvable given the power of today's PCs and it
>would be interesting to know the truth.  I chose this project to complement my
>other chess education project, which should be up some time in 2002...the Hawaii
>Chess Project.
>
>Comments are greatly appreciated.  Since I'm totally new to programming, if some
>ambitious person wants to take on this project, that would be cool.
>Unfortunately, the pay is ZERO, just like mine, but you would have the
>satisfaction of knowing the ultimate truth of chess, or at least the game
>without pieces :)
>
>Thanks in advance for your feedback.
>
>Ed Seid
>Hawaii Chess Project (coming soon)

Hi Ed,

You might want to look at VB. A few VB chess engines have actually been
implemented - LarsenVB comes to mind, blitz rating around 1950 on FICS, with
source code available. You could wrap this in a web interface without very much
effort. I'm afraid you're probably not going to do much better than that without
thinking of a compiled language. I have a suspicion that solving the pawn game
may be intractable for a real-time search-based implementation; I expect that an
EGTB approach coupled with a searcher would get you to perfect real-time play
soonest.

I'd be very interested to hear the opinions of those who have worked on solving
non-trivial games before.

- Adam

PS: My first ever web-interface application was a Tic-Tac-Toe program, back when
CGI was brand new. It was also my first ever Minimax-type algorithm, doing a
straight 9-ply search to solve the game. My younger brother spent hours trying
to beat the thing, convinced in spite of my opinion that there must be a way to
beat it.



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