Author: Don Dailey
Date: 15:22:30 06/19/98
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On June 19, 1998 at 13:53:11, Bruce Moreland wrote: > >On June 19, 1998 at 12:23:56, Ed Schröder wrote: > >>#5. Killer books have a bad name because the work (beating the opponent) >>is not done by the chess program itself (the engine) but by the work of >>a human at home. > >The reason I don't like them is that the program is no longer general purpose. > >Some people consider whether to buy programs based upon their performance in >computer vs computer competitions. > >This is not a very good reason to choose one program over another, but when the >programs have been tuned to play well against each other, it's even worse. > >You expect that if you buy something rated 2600 that it will play better >*against you* than something rated 2500, and a killer book might get the rating >delta without playing at all better against the customer/opponent. > >I think that the average person should buy programs based upon playing style, >strength against humans, and features, not necessarily in that order. > >bruce I don't like the killer books for pretty much the same reason. Although I've often argued that the book is an integral part of the program, I am much more interested in how a program plays a variety of positions once it has to calculate on its own. A mediocre program with a killer book is not very interesting. I think for practical reasons it's something we probably have to live with. It would be interesting to find a technique to take advantage of the programs that use killer books. This would be the ultimate cure. But I cannot think of any reasonable way to do this. - Don
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