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Subject: Re: the fastest chess engine still available free!

Author: Alessio Iacovoni

Date: 11:12:22 09/30/98

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On September 30, 1998 at 13:15:44, Komputer Korner wrote:

>On September 30, 1998 at 05:41:29, Alessio Iacovoni wrote:
>
>>On September 30, 1998 at 05:32:13, Danniel Corbit wrote:
>>
>>>On September 30, 1998 at 05:24:43, Jouni Uski wrote:
>>>>I still haven't found any faster chess engine than Fritz4.01. Fritz5 and
>>>>Nimzo98 come near, but can't beat Fritz4.01 in my P90. I have tested in about
>>>>700 test positions - this is no 10 - 30 positions result.
>>
>>This strenghtens my belief that there software improvements do not substantially
>>modify the strength of a chess engine (the fast ones especially), whereas
>>hardware improvements and books can. See my post "Why bother and buy new chess
>>software".
>
>Your belief is wrong. Positional evaluation and other software engine
>improvements increase at a small rate each year, but add up all the years of a
>program and the total is significant. As Bob says, his Crafty of today smashes
>his Crafty of 2 years ago on the same hardware. The same for other programs.
>Programs of 10 years ago do not stand a chance against todays programs on the
>same hardware.
>
>--
>Komputer Korner

Maybe I haven't expressed myself correctly... of course a program developed in
1998 is stronger than one dating back to 1990, or even closer in time. What I
meant to say is that we will reach a point, if we havent already, in which chess
programs, instilled with that chess knowlwedge that they were lacking in the
past, will not require anything else for improvement than sheer processing
speed. What programs in the bast were basically lacking was a better positional
understanding.. now they have that (see HIARCS and basically all of the other
ones.. including the so called "fast searchers" such as Crafty), plus they have
an outstanding  tactical capacity. So.. HOW ELSE can they be improved by
software? What I meant was that we have probably come at a point in which
"everything has already been done" and now the baton has to pass on to hardware
improvements...
I don't know if there have been any studies of this kind but could a progam like
Hiarcs.. or any of the strong ones that everybody has at home.. beat kasparov at
long times with a pentium XX "1000" or something of the sort and 100mb of mem
for hash tables?

Alessio Iacovoni



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