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Subject: Re: some questions about chess programs and money

Author: Vincent Diepeveen

Date: 15:13:13 04/07/03

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On April 07, 2003 at 17:50:35, Uri Blass wrote:

>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

the only one who is continuesly disproving himself seems to be you though.



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