Author: Uri Blass
Date: 02:26:04 08/30/02
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On August 30, 2002 at 03:41:57, Dave Gomboc wrote: >>>> I think >>>>the amateur programs have an advantage here in that there are no commercial >>>>distractions to the development of their engines. >>> >>>I think the professionals have an advantage since they get to work on computer >>>chess 40 hours a week or more. >> >>I think that this assumption is wrong. >>I know that Amir Ban has a full time job not in chess programming. >> >>Uri > >Obviously I can't speak for Amir (but perhaps he'll do so himself? :-), but my >guessing would be that this is compensated for by: > >a) there are two authors, not one. So even though both have other work, time >does get put into the program because there's two people who contribute time to >it. > >b) they know GMs! :-) Any sort of feedback that they get is bound to be >valuable in some way over the long haul, even if it doesn't arrive consistently >and/or the ideas aren't easily implementable. > >Against the latter, though, Junior was already pretty good before they received >much in the way of GM comments. > > >More generally, I believe that professionals simply work harder at (identifying >and) solving the problems of their engine. An amateur might do things one way >because they are interested in doing so. They may not bother to change >something even though they know they could probably get a slight improvement if >they did. This is exactly the case for Junior and Fritz and they simply do not care about small improvement that they can get. They know that there are positions when the program cannot see simple tactics but they do not care to fix it. There are positions when Junior cannot see simple tactics and Amir ban knows about it but he did not fix it at least not in Junior7(some years after he got the information). There are positions when Fritz cannot see simple mate because of null move pruning. I also know that not seeing simple tactic may be relevant in rare cases for games but they do not fix it by having some verification search against zunzwangs and it is possible to have verficiation search(yace does it). I am sure that it is possible to have verification search in a productive way and to fix the problem of Junior in a productive way and I do not believe that the best that programs can do is to be blind in some situations. Uri
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