Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 06:17:07 03/17/02
Go up one level in this thread
On March 17, 2002 at 02:13:22, Uri Blass wrote:
>On March 16, 2002 at 22:29:26, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On March 16, 2002 at 15:01:04, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On March 16, 2002 at 14:34:13, Jorge Pichard wrote:
>>>
>>>>On March 16, 2002 at 14:26:20, Jorge Pichard wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>In the first game Chess Tiger 14.9 was playing without using its Turbo Mode, in
>>>>>which it enables it to think on its opponent time to move. Now I activated Turbo
>>>>>Mode, but I am still playing Using my handspring at 32 Mhz without using
>>>>>Afterburner or Fastcpu. This time the Tiger was hungry and decided to grab a
>>>>>Gaviota for lunch.
>>>>
>>>>PS: Gaviota is playing the ending terrible, but nextgame I will continue vs Gnu
>>>>Chess v5.02 Est rating of 2225.
>>>
>>>Some details:
>>>
>>>Gaviota is estimated to have rating of 2170 when GNU chess5.03 is estimated to
>>>have rating of 2150
>>>see http://f11.parsimony.net/forum16635/messages/23352.htm
>>>
>>>I do not know GNUchess5.02 but I doubt if it is better than Gaviota.
>>>
>>>Gnu chess played in the 3th division based on the history pages of Leo when
>>>gaviota scored clearly better than GNUchess.
>>>
>>>I admit that it was not GNUchess5.02 but I do not know if there is a big
>>>difference between 5.00 and 5.02
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>I think that it may be more interesting to see programs of CCC memebers and not
>>>GNUchess.
>>>
>>>possible candidate is Averno
>>>
>>>The author of faile also posted in the past(faile is clearly weaker than
>>>gaviota)
>>>
>>>My program may be also a candidate
>>>
>>>Today I believe that it is only in similar level to faile but I plan to do it
>>>stronger and it is going to be available in april.
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>
>>
>>It is interesting to see the progress of somebody who has been suggesting
>>improvements to programmers for a long time, and has eventually decided to try
>>them himself.
>>
>>I'm glad to see that you are writing your own chess program. I'm sure it will
>>have some unique features, and that's good. I would recommend you to reinvent
>>the wheel and not create yet another Crafty clone. It will not be a waste of
>>time. It is how things were in the eighties, and it was a great time for
>>computer chess.
>>
>>My best wishes to... Huh... Have you chosen a name for your chess program?
>>
>>
>>
>> Christophe
>
>
>Movei is the name of it.
>
>The latest tested version has only a piece square table evaluation with no book
>and no hash table.
>
>The piece square table is only changed in the endgame.
That's good enough as a first step. You can build a reasonably strong chess
program with PSTs. It gives you a reasonably good evaluation (assumig your PSTs
are OK) and you can focus earlier on most important things.
>It can be improved by better order of moves and it can be also improved by
>better extension and pruning rules(it is using only some futility pruning today
>and it does not use partial extensions)
Chess Tiger does not use fractional extensions either. I just use more detailed
rules for extensions and I decide to extend or not. That's 1 or 0.
> but inspite of all the problems the
>latest version could beat Faile with no book 6-4 in a match(time control was 1
>minute/40 moves,2 minutes/40 moves...5 minutes/40 moves)
>
>It also lost 8.5-1.5 in a match against GNUchess5.03 in the same conditions.
>hardware was one pIII800.
>
>I believe that Faile and Gnuchess used hash tables in the matches(I told them no
>instruction about it but usually programs with hash tables use some hash tables
>by the default option)
Some advices for you:
1) play fast games, manually, preferably on slow hardware. So the mistakes of
your program do not get hidden in very long PVs and you can more easily
understand what went wrong.
2) Select an opponent only slightly stronger than your program. If your opponent
is too strong you learn almost nothing because both your evaluation and search
get badly beaten. You are just disgusted by the result and do not know what to
do. When you have improved, change to a stronger opponent.
3) You'll soon discover that whatever you add in your evaluation, if your
opponent oursearches you there is nothing you can do: you lose. You will
probably have to spend months or even years improving your search algorithms in
order to avoid this. That's why I think that a PST program is OK to start with.
Don't make the mistake to try to add special cases in your evaluation in order
to cover your search's deficiencies. If you want you can add terms to evaluate
the tactical pressure on each side (couting the number of attacks for example),
but these terms must be kept general. Don't add code like "if black rook in a8
and black king in e8 and white knight on c7 then add penalty to black score".
That does not work.
4) Don't try to fix a weakness as soon as you discover it. Just say "that's
life". Fix it only if it happens over and over again. Generally, start by fixing
the most obvious and big mistakes. Don't try to stuff in high level knowledge
too early in your developpement. You can't run if you do not even know how to
walk. This point is the reason why I believe that being a very strong chess
player is a handicap for a chess programmer (at least in the begining).
5) Make a backup of your sources at least every day. Use an automatic utility or
a batch file to compress all your *.c and *.h to another directory on your hard
disk every time you boot your computer. The name of the compressed file must be
different every day, so you can on demand retrieve last month's source if
necessary. I currently have on my hard disk the last 502 versions of Chess
Tiger, the oldest being 2 years old. It takes 144Mb of disk space. I have
written an utility that does that. It runs in a DOS box and calls PKZIP to do
the compression job. I can send it to you if you have some use for it.
6) Don't follow my advices. Do it your way for a while, then read these advices
again. Their meaning should become obvious then, and some of them might not even
apply to you. :)
7) Good luck!
Christophe
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