Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 19:31:38 05/18/02
This is a notice for the "Chess Analysis Project, Phase II" This is not a commercial announcement but (rather) an announcement of a research project which is to begin in earnest before June 1st. Tools have been developed to have chess engines analyze data in the mode of a "screen saver" so that processing happens as a background task. Data which is produced will be sent automatically over the internet to servers which collect and coordinate the projects. There will be a number of interesting projects proposed and you are free to suggest your own project ideas. Q1: What will be needed from those who wish to participate? A1: There will be two sorts of roles in the Chess Analysis Project, Phase II. There will be captains, who run a server on their machine and collect the data for a project. They will have to set up the project which requires a small amount of effort (probably less than one hour for capable sorts of persons). They may also have to interact from time to time with the workers. The workers simply sign on to a project and the program installs with complete ease. They don't have to do anything at all except connect to the internet once in a while in order to send the current batch of work to the captain's machine and send out new work assignments [which happens automatically]. The work assignments are automatically calculated by the program -- there are no manual steps that require human intervention for the captains either, unless some decision is made to change things. So in short, the responsibility of a captain is to set up a project and collect the data. The responsibility of a worker is just to install the tool. Q2: What is the status of the data for the Chess Analysis Project, Phase II? A2: Like the original Chess Analysis Project, the data will become public domain, available for any use. The CAP members will have earlier access to the data than non-members. You can modify the data for your own purposes, give it away, or sell it -- it does not matter. It will be publicly owned by everyone. Q3: How does one become a captain? A3: You will need to request that status. You will also need to be someone known and trusted. It would be very frustrating for CAP members to work for some months providing data and then discover that the one collecting it has decided to keep it for themselves or something of a cynical nature like that. Hence, prior CAP members with a good track record will receive first opportunity. Then others with a good reputation will be included. A good performance as a worker over some time would certainly be a qualifying factor. Q4: What will be the scale of the Chess Analysis Project, Phase II? A4: Initially, we will start small, in case the system needs some minor modifications due to unforeseen circumstances. At the very first pass, only 20 volunteers will be needed. Then we will increase to 100. After the system is operating smoothly, there is no reason it cannot expand to tens of thousands of units like the SETI project or the GIMPS search. If you do not want to receive any more of these messages, please tell me and I will remove your name from the list. I will not turn anyone's name to any organization which might use it for spamming purposes, and so you can be assured that I will try to keep the names private. You will notice that none of the names appear in the "To:" or "CC:" lists because all messages are sent by blind carbon copy. Q5: What engines can be used to analyze? A5: Crafty can be used (like before). It has also been extensively tested with Chess Tiger (I have Chess Assistant 6.1). So if you have the Chess Tiger professional program, that can also be used. There has been some preliminary testing with other Winboard, MCI, and UCI engines, but we are not ready to begin with those yet. Probably, the best engine to use is Chess Tiger (strongest and most thoroughly tested) but not everyone has a copy and it is not free. Crafty is freely available and also produces good analysis results. Other engines will be added as testing raises the confidence to a level where we can expect things to operate smoothly. If you are a chess engine author and you would like to include your engine in the project, you might look at allowing your engine to process standard EPD records in a manner like that possible with Crafty.
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