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Subject: Re: some questions about chess programs and money

Author: Uri Blass

Date: 14:50:35 04/07/03

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On April 07, 2003 at 17:22:00, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:

>On April 07, 2003 at 17:08:50, Uri Blass wrote:
>
>>On April 07, 2003 at 15:57:27, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On April 07, 2003 at 10:15:22, Steve Maughan wrote:
>>>
>>>>Uri,
>>>>
>>>>I'll have a bash,
>>>>
>>>>>How much money (s)he can get from it in the following cases:
>>>>>
>>>>>1)The program is at similiar level to Crafty
>>>>
>>>>Not much.  As a winboard engine (i.e. no GUI) then I'd expect you'd sell at most
>>>>50 copies.  The price is not that important as long as it is less than $20 per
>>>>copy. Basically on 'collectors' would buy it.
>>>>
>>>>>2)The program is at similiar level to Ruffian
>>>>
>>>>This is probably the Gandalf 4 scenario.  I'd expect you'd sell about 200 copies
>>>>(in total) as long as the price is $15 - $30
>>>>
>>>>>3)The program is at similiar level to Fritz8
>>>>
>>>>You will not have the brand equity of Fritz but I expect you'd sell about 500 to
>>>>1000 copies depending upon marketing.  I doubt the price point can be any more
>>>>than $25 - $35
>>>
>>>but how are you going to pay for those 10 hours you need for each person that
>>>buys your 'winboard' engine if it is without interface of its own?
>>>
>>>that's 10000 hours of helpdesk. no one can give helpdesk of 10k hours for just
>>>$30k a year.
>>>
>>>>>4)The program is 100 elo better than Fritz8
>>>
>>>>You'd need good marketing but I think you could sell 3000 copies at this
>>>>strength - I recon you could also get $50 a copy.  Of course if it was really
>>>>this strong your best bet would be to get someone like ChessBase to sell it.
>>>>Then I think you could sell 8000 copies at $45 i.e. quite serious money.
>>>
>>>isn't ruffian 100 points better than fritz8 when using same openingsbook?
>>>
>>>Please turn off learning in fritz (after each game delete book simply) and let
>>>it play at random. do same thing with ruffian. take care they use same PGN book.
>>
>>No need for pgn
>>You can play the nunn match under Fritz and use different positions than the
>>nunn positions.
>>
>>The difference between Ruffian and Fritz8 will be smaller than the difference in
>>the ssdf but I will be surprised if Ruffian discovered to be 100 elo better.
>>
>>I guess that Ruffian will be something like 50 elo weaker that means losing
>>450-350.
>>
>>Maybe somebody can do it because I do not have the time to do a fair match at
>>long time control between Ruffian and Fritz8.0.0.8 and I know your opinion about
>>blitz.
>>
>>opening positions can be chosen as all the possible 400 openings of 2 plies.
>>I hope that you do not claim that I chose these positions to help Fritz.
>>
>>If you do not like these positions I agree to different positions like random
>>800 positions from the games that programs got after 20 plies in the am/com
>>in WBEC.
>>>
>>>See who wins. my money on ruffian.
>>>
>>>ruffian is free engine.
>>>
>>>so that basically answers uri's question.
>>>
>>>A solution without interface never sells of course.
>>
>>The author of Ruffian never tried to sell it.
>
>No.
>
>I did do some serious matches ruffian versus others and it is not your -50
>points but +100 points, so you have no right to guess here wildly.

I read that the author of Ruffian claimed that he believes that Ruffian does not
earn more from time relative to other programs.

I tend to believe more the author of Ruffian and not you.
You already said in the past a lot of things that were proved to be wrong.

The last thing that I remember is about a drawn position when Diep
evaluated it as a win for black and yace on a slow hardware was right.

Uri



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