Author: James Robertson
Date: 12:40:47 10/20/98
Go up one level in this thread
On October 20, 1998 at 14:03:52, William H Rogers wrote: >It was written years ago by some of the leading chess experts that the day >would >come when improvement in chess programs would come to a stop, as the men who >wrote the programs were only looking for faster machines to improve their >programs. I don't think this is true; right now, that is legitimate reasoning, if your goal is to beat grandmasters. Eventually the hardware will outcompete grandmasters, and the simplest program will have excellent play. But, once you do cross the gm level, and your opponents are no longer humans, what good is a faster machine if everyone else has one just as fast? Then, programming skill is imperative. >The left out opening books (mega sizes), and end games, etc.. >What I propose would be to set some limits on programs, at least in competition >to the following examples; not to say that these are the final numbers. > >All programs would be limited to say 10 moves deep in their opening books and >end game books limited to maybe 4 pieces left on the board for each size. >Thinking on the opponents time is allowed as that is a major part of the chess >programs thinking. Another idea is to limit the moves to a certain ply depth. >This would make all programs more equal as to machine speed. Setting programs to a limited ply depth is a bad idea, as then it becomes advantageous to stuff as much position knowledge into your program as possible because time doesn't matter. The reason Crafty is better than my program is that it thinks several ply deeper in the same amount of time; if both programs thought the same depth, mine would take longer, but it would have no disadvantage, and a programmers work in such fields as null moves are useless, as why not avoid the risk at all and just take longer searching without them? > >In my opinion, if and when, ideas of this nature are set as a standard, we will >once again see major chess improvements in programming and that is what it is >suppost to be all about. >Even if a single person sets these perimeters, if they can, the true strenght of >the programs can be really realized. > >This is just one man's opinion, but I think it is a starting point. This is just my opinion too..... James
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.