Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 18:53:53 12/20/01
Go up one level in this thread
On December 20, 2001 at 17:07:05, Peter Berger wrote:
>On December 20, 2001 at 14:04:24, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>120-150 amateur Winboard chess engines, 90%-95% of them being essentially
>>partial Crafty clones (I mean using the same techniques, or only a subset of the
>>same techniques).
>
>How do you know? Some Harry Potter trick ? Alorama.
You just have to read the questions asked here by people writing new engines.
It's all about very classic stuffs. Alpha beta, move ordering, hash tables...
Nothing new.
All these questions can be asked by: "look into Crafty source code, copy,
paste".
>>I know you love these engines, but I fail to see what they are doing for the
>>general audience interest.
>>
>
>Well - where did support of tablebases come from ? Book learning ?
>
>Or let's talk about the GUI and the features : are all the commercial providing
>better stuff than what you can get for free ?
>
>>They are great achievements by the programmers, and I would not deny that. I
>>know how a programmer feels when its engine works and starts winning games. I
>>have felt the same several years ago, so I know they are proud and they are
>>rightly so.
>>
>>But I view them essentially as personal achievements. They will be a
>>contribution to computer chess only if their author keeps on developping them
>>for 5 to 10 more years and if they manage to achieve major performance boosts
>>with NEW techniques.
>>
>
>I think you are right with most of the very new developments. But there is a lot
>in the amateur world that is original and not done by commercials so far. I know
>about some things in Patzer for example or some things in Yace - and this is
>only what _I_ know as a user ( it is safe to assume that we are talking about a
>_very_ small subset of the real thing here) . I could try to babble about some
>things done by Gerrit Reubold in Bringer, too.
That's great and I did not want to belittle these efforts.
>Why isn't it enough to be at the top ? Is it really necessary to discard the
>efforts of others who can only afford to spend so much less time in their
>work ?
My point is that I think that the human brain works on chess in a significantly
different way than what "classic" chess programs do (and mine is included).
I have this idea since a very long time, and I have tried to work on this. To
say the truth, I failed. My program is extremely selective, but nowhere near
what the human brain is able to do.
I think it's a pity to see these young guys just writing Crafty clones instead
of trying to tackle this very interesting problem. In this sentence "Crafty"
means for me "an excellent academic chess engine".
But naturally there is more glory in quickly writing a classical chess engine
that works and, thanks to the improvements in hardware speed, is going to beat
the strongest chess player of the university after one month of two of
developpement.
You say I'm at the top. Okay, I'm at the top of what?
I'm at the top in the field of people writing sophisticated calculators able to
play chess.
Sure it requires some technological skills, time, devotion and energy.
But this is a dead end. The future of computing is not here. IA is not here.
I'm sorry to see so many people following this path which, in my opinion,
belongs to the past. It has been a glorious time, I still love it, but the
future is not here.
Christophe
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