Author: Dana Turnmire
Date: 22:51:20 10/11/02
In "The Mammouth Book Of Chess" page 485 FM Graham Burgess says the following under the article entitled "Selective Search": "A process used by most chess computer programs to enable them to cut off the analysis of obviously inferior continuations, to leave more processor time to analyse the critical variations. Precisely how this is done is one of the main tests of the programmer's skill." He goes on: "How the computer's analytical tree is pruned is a major factor in determining its style. For instance Fritz gives priority to moves that carry a strong threat, making it a very dangerous player when there are forcing variations, but relatively weak when not a great deal is happening in a position. Genius, on the other hand, uses an armoury of chess understanding provided by its programmer, Richard Lang. The result is that it can come up with some very subtle ideas, but at the expense of some of the raw power in tactical shoot-outs." This would explain why Genius has not done that well in some computer/computer tournaments and why Fritz seems to stay on top. I'm not a programmer but have always wondered how some programs come up with entirely different solutions for the same positions. Bottom line is it seems that a program that uses an "armoury of chess understanding" would do better in a match with a strong master as opposed to a program similar to Fritz. Just thought this was an interesting article.
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