Author: John Merlino
Date: 13:12:29 06/18/02
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On June 18, 2002 at 15:44:45, Russell Reagan wrote: >I'd like to know a few things about Chessmaster, and in particular about >Chessmaster 9000. > >First, who all works on Chessmaster, and what role does John Merlino take? I >assumed he was the author of Chessmaster, but he mentioned Johan in another >post, so apparently there is a team working on it? There are MANY people who work on Chessmaster (although this is probably the smallest development team since Chessmaster 3000). - The author of the chess engine (The King) is Johan de Koning. - Officially, I am the lead programmer of Chessmaster for the PC, but I also have a few other responsibilities. - Ben Ceschi is the 3D programmer, although he can (and does) work on other portions of the code (basically, when I don't have enough time). - Jeff Griffeath is the Art Director. - Jan Sleeper is the 3D artist. - Terry Coleman is the Producer, and his responsibilities are too numerous to list here. - We also get content from several sources. For the next version, we have our usual update from Josh Waitzkin, this time being a course on "The Psychology of Competition". We also have an endgame quiz by GM Larry Evans. All of the previously released material from Bruce Pandolfini will be in CM9000, but there is no new content from him this time around. - There are also about a dozen testers who have been working on the program for about five weeks already. And many other people also contribute to the product as a whole.... >Second, (probably more directed at John) how do you think Chessmaster 9000 will >compare to the other top commercial engines? It seems that in the past, TheKing >has always been a step behind the top engines, and while still very strong, it >never seemed to be on top. Of course it could be that I just never saw any >tourament results where TheKing won over other top engines. I would say that The King is in the "top echelon", along with probably a half-dozen other engines, meaning that any of them could beat any of the others in an N-game match on any given day. >In any case, the >results that John has posted from CM9000 so far have been pretty impressive. It >seems to find things that other engines do not, and it seems to find them very >fast. I'm sure you aren't going to tell us exactly what you're doing, but what >is the main contributer to the apparent increase in playing strength of the new >CM9000? Extentions? Some new pruning method? First of all, it is generally known that The King is probably the best engine at finding mates (both in terms of speed and finding the shortest mate). So, if the results from CM9000 that you have been seeing are mate problems, then The King is already excellent at them. Although I really don't know any of the details regarding the improvements, here are some of the things Johan wrote in his update file for the new engine: - King safety enhanced with check vulnerability. - Deep check extensions removed. - Internal Iterative Deepening implemented. - Skipped lazy evaluation in far endgame. - Added feel of drawishness for narrow pawn formations. jm
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