Author: George Sobala
Date: 04:15:28 05/05/03
AN ENGINE / PERSONALITY FOR THE STRONG AMATEUR Well I've been running Deep Sjeng (author Gian-Carlo Pascutto) using my custom "redshift" personality on ICC for some time now. This personality: - was designed with blitz in mind - was designed to be a fun opponent for humans only - has a wildly unbalanced perception of the value of king attack - often sacs a pawn for initiative in the opening as a matter of course - treats minor pieces as battering rams for the opposing king - will make rook and even queen sacs in return for an attack and initiative - regularly produces spectacular mating attacks - runs at an average ICC rating of 2350 on a 450MHz K6-2 - gets obliterated by weaker comps, but that's not the point I recently polled some of its most frequents opponents as to what they thought of it and there anonymised replies are shown below, together with their record against redshift. (These are all the replies I got, by the way). (Rating ~1650, 0/26): I really liked the style of play. It gave me the illusion that I had a fighting chance. It's my favorite comp to play. Thx. (Rating ~1900, 27.5/184): I like its style of play very much. It will sacrifice pieces to rip open your kings positions, and forces you to make very precise defensive moves, under time pressure. Most games I get a "winning" position, but it's difficult to convert under time pressure. I think this engine has helped my chess skills considerably, because everyone has read a book on checkmates, and attacks, but no one has read about defense, and this engine forces you to play good defense and to work out of bad positions. Basically the main, reason why I like it is because I feel that I have the chance to win every game, whereas if I play the run of the mill 2400 computer, it usually grinds me down easily, computer style which is very frustrating. Thanks.. (Rating ~1600, 0/94): I have played redshift many times and I thank you for making that opportunity available to me - I have enjoyed it greatly (in fact I should have won our most recent game...). I like the style of play because it gives me an opportunity to create a winning (if not won) position. To then try to actually win is a great learning experience. Thanks again and please message me for any more input if I can help. (Rating ~2050, 8.5/67): beatable but irritating :) (Rating ~2200, 14.5/48): For me the engine is fantastic because it improves my technique. It is like you stated that you can have good or won positions. But then it becomes extremely dangerous. For me to play a machine of 3300 ICC points does not make any sense. But to play an engine around 2400 to 2500 is extremely interesting. Keep on the good work! If you want to play against it you can either join ICC (it plays anybody registered - but I DON'T want a load of engine matches), or buy Deep Sjeng from http://www.lokasoft.nl and use the following personality: ===================================== # Deep Sjeng 1.0 personality style=offensive pawn=80 bishop=100 knight=100 rook=100 queen=80 bishop pair=100 mobility=275 attraction=275 pawnstructure=50 passed pawns=150 kingsafety=275 piece placement=275 maximum depth=20 strength=100 selectivity=4 extra tactics=True limit extensions=True lazy evaluation=False futility pruning=True forward pruning=True singular extensions=True nullmove=dynamic tactical search=always =============================================== This wasn't exactly rocket science, and my adjustments of the parameters were crude (to say the least!), but it seems to have had a good result.
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