Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 18:53:47 12/20/01
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On December 20, 2001 at 21:31:41, Christophe Theron wrote: [snip] >I do not deny that some Winboard engine might be promising. > >But celebrating the fact that we have 120-150 Winboard engines means nothing to >me. That is a strange thing. It shows to me, there are a huge number of people interested in computer chess, and that the interest is growing rapidly. In 1992, there were only two Winboard engines that I knew of (maybe there were others, but only Crafty and GnuChess were ones that I knew about). Here, nine years later we are seeing exponential growth. Doesn't that seem exciting to you? At one time there was a young man named Christophe Theron who decided to write a chess engine (of all things!). And that turned out pretty well. Some of these amateurs will do just as well. There is a purpose for every engine. If you are tired of beating after beating, play Golem for a while and you will feel a lot better. Some engines try interesting new ideas. At some point, we will get real innovation from them. Maybe it will be Golem. Who knows? The ones I am most interested in are the ones that publish the source code. After all, I can't learn much from closed boxes. The others are essentially free sparring partners. Of course, anyone who decides to publish what they are doing is also very interesting to me. I learn something from every source code that I examine. Your charge that most programs are crafty clones shows that you have not really looked at many programs (as you have stated before -- now I believe you for sure). I see ideas branch off from everywhere. Clones will never prosper. They look good for a while because of some clever little tweak. But the cloners don't really understand all of the plumbing like the authors do. So they soon get left in the dust looking foolish. A possible exception might be a clone of an ultra simple program that builds up more advanced techniques over time. In that case, the underlying skeleton will be understood and the framework can be enhanced. But to start with a Crafty or advanced engine will eventually lead to frustration, I think. If you are going to build a world beater, it will have to be from scratch. At the same time, the basic ideas will be largely gathered from others willing to teach.
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