Author: David Rientjes
Date: 09:40:31 10/05/01
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On October 05, 2001 at 03:17:36, derrick gatewood wrote: >Well, the computer account that is in question there is Compablanca. I just >really hate people taking credit for other people's programs. To me, this is >the same as if you cheated using a program to get a high rating to make yourself >look good in the eyes of other chess players. This will be my only post to this message forum and I will not check on the acceptance of this message or any comments made in response. I am the author of Compablanca, the chess engine which the original poster, Mr. Gatewood, is speaking about. Compablanca runs on chess.net and currently has a 2607 blitz rating; it has played 447 blitz games so you can conclude yourself whether or not you believe the rating to be accurate. Compablanca's formula is setup to play humans only in lightning, blitz, standard, or wild matches with certain time controls placed on them (for example, an 18 minute time limit for standard). There are rating requirements in place which restrict users that will not benefit its rating from playing long games against it -- a requirement most computer maintainers place on their computers. When computers play against much lower rated players, they have the increased risk of disconnecting during the match and often "forfeiting" the match by chess.net's disconnect policy. The blitz rating restriction is for users rated 2150 and above. This means five or six players not involved in tournaments, open to accepting matches, and accepting of match requests from computers, have the opportunity to play it at any given time. There are hundreds of users who will pass Compablanca's formula. Compablanca is currently in v1.2. It was started about five or six weeks ago by myself. To be completely honest with everyone here, the most difficult part was not the chess logic itself, but rather the socket code which connects it to the chess.net server and keeps it connected even when excessively idle (as it waits for matches during slow times). I was lucky to have written an Internet Relay Chat bot a few years ago for the Undernet IRC network (www.undernet.org) in which I could borrow the socket code that helped out tremendously. I often tell people on chess.net that Compablanca does not have "books" like other computers do. Compablanca has a set number of openings which it follows but usually after move 10 (or whenever an opponent deverts from an opening), it's on its own. Compablanca uses a list of priorities which it attempts to maintain which start as follows: 1. prevent a checkmate or a positional advantage in which a checkmate may become possible; 2. exploit a checkmate or a positional advantage on the opponent and disregard material advantage possibilites; Following that, there are a list of priorities for positional advantages, material advantages, promoting of pawns, king usage, etc. The list of priorities is obviously not discussed by myself since that would open Compablanca up to be exploited if someone were to know this list. There have been several human users who have had material advantage of three or four pawns against it and have even gone on to checkmate it (a national master comes to mind who checkmated it in less than 40 moves). Compablanca is often vulnerable when playing someone who is capable of making very precise and important moves in comparison to other players who can make one or two slight move errors which open Compablanca's FOA (field of attack) and allows him to eventually go on to win. Compablanca has not only been beaten in standard matches, but also in wild matches, and pawns only matches (where a computer would normally dominate). Compablanca is not open to matches from other computers since it would obviously suffer great vulnerability. Compablanca was created within the past five or six weeks (the first week being the most work-filled) by a single person. Other engines like Crafty, Fritz, etc. (engines I have very little experience with myself) have been worked on for years by a team of people. The disadvantage to Compablanca is evident. My hope for Compablanca was that it would provide the users of chess.net with a powerful engine in which they may play against to improve their chess games. Rating restrictions are a new thing (about a week old) to prevent inevitable problems in which Compablanca would forfeit for lagging too much or disconnecting. Up to last week, all users were open to play against it. Again, my goal is not to promote myself as a great programmer or a great chess player by any means. My goal is to provide good chess players with a tool to possibly improve their chess games. I don't care to spend my time promoting it or bragging about its successes. Remember, I will not be back to this message board to view the responses to this message or check-up on future debates about Compablanca (which I whole-heartedly welcome) or any other chess engine. I was only invited here once by the original author and was told to "defend myself". I don't believe I need to defend myself in any way since very few people know I wrote the engine and everyone else seems to enjoy playing against it more than debating whether a single person actually wrote it or not. David Rientjes
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