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Subject: Re: Book vs. Engine

Author: Russell Reagan

Date: 08:39:07 08/26/02

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On August 26, 2002 at 09:52:56, Matthias Gemuh wrote:

>A good engine should be the one doing the fighting.

Hmm...you seem to say a lot of things like this that are completely unsupported
by anything else you said. In other posts you talk about the "law". Are you
talking about the law in your country? The law of Moses? I have a feeling there
is no law anywhere stating anything about book limitations in computer chess
programs, yet you so passionately (religiously?) say things about how it's the
"law" or whatever.

>I hate to watch a game only to realize that the engine is also only watching and
>the game is actually played to a won/lost position by a book !!!!

Then don't watch. I think it's very closed minded to think that the calculation
of variations part of the engine is the only part that matters. Data is part of
a computer program just like instructions are. I don't think a program should be
penalized just because it's data lies in an external file. Why do you critisize
books (which are nothing more than data) but you do not critisize endgame
tablebases (data) or values for the pieces (data) or any other constant data
contained within the program? If I invent a way to precompute a solution to any
chess position and store my results in a file, then my engine uses that file to
get it's move, why is that different?

You assume that a chess program is structured in a particular way. You seem to
think that every chess program has a searching part (the "engine" as you call
it), the "book", and so on. What if someone comes up with a completely new
method or gets neural networks to work better and the program stores weights for
it's artificial neural network in a file? There are other questions that arise,
such as why is it ok to precompute moves and store them in RAM but not
precompute moves and store them in a file?

There are so many questions that arise from your wanting a limit on book moves,
and it's ridiculous. Different people have different goals in computer chess.
Some use it to better their own chess, some use it as a fun hobby, some use it
as an experimentation environment for AI experiments, and so on. Why should
someone who is doing an AI experiment on learning from ones mistakes be
penalized just because you think it's "all about the engine"?

The opportunities for what computer chess could do for various areas in life
shouldn't be limited just because some people have big books and you think it's
unfair or whatever. Some people are born with more money and never have to work
a day in their life. Some people have bigger books, some have better engines,
some are just smarter than others. It's not fair. Life isn't fair. The sooner
you accept it and spend your time worrying about something that matters, you'll
be a lot happier with your life.

Russell



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