Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 16:25:10 09/26/03
Go up one level in this thread
On September 26, 2003 at 17:46:06, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>On September 26, 2003 at 16:49:22, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On September 25, 2003 at 23:02:20, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>
>>>On September 25, 2003 at 12:53:42, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>
>>>>On September 25, 2003 at 09:41:05, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On September 25, 2003 at 09:15:09, José de Jesús García Ruvalcaba wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>On September 25, 2003 at 08:26:21, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>ICGA asked me to Call for participation in the world championship 2003.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>So far only 3 programs subscribed to join the world championship computerchess.
>>>>>>>DIEP is one of them, i guess Brutus the other one.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>And there three types of people: those who can count and those who can not.
>>>>>>José (:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>P.S. Good luck and lots of fun the world championship!
>>>>>
>>>>>Ah just had email from Stefan, they all didn't know you had to register 'so
>>>>>soon'.
>>>>>
>>>>>Usually world champs most things get organized at the tournament day itself,
>>>>>i remember especially the paniccing phase 1 short before the world champs
>>>>>started in October 1997, Paris :)
>>>>>
>>>>>Not a single organizer there from the home organisation (so not ICGA) spoke a
>>>>>word English (and my english isn't that good either, for sure in 1997 it was
>>>>>horror & co too), Dutch or German and my French is horrible, so i just sat
>>>>>down at a chair, installed my computer and just guessed what the hand movements
>>>>>of the home organisation meant.
>>>>>
>>>>>They must have guessed in advance to only receive French speaking participants,
>>>>>a normal assumption for French organisers :)
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>That's really unfair. The 1997 World Championship organization in Paris was
>>>>great. Remember that we were playing not in some obscure university hall, we
>>>>were playing in the "Palais de la Bourse".
>>>
>>>There were good things and bad things. i bet it was great for french speaking.
>>>
>>>bad was all the neonazi demonstrations and the real long waiting times to just
>>>get past the 2 security checks each time.
>>>
>>>bad was not having any internet there or any other contacts to the outside
>>>world, i would not be able to imagine in 2003 to be without internet.
>>>
>>>publicity was real bad of the tournament.
>>>
>>>nothing online. really nothing. i remember thorsten czub phoning during the
>>>rounds to the outside world at his mobile phone the results, otherwise they
>>>wouldn't even know the results.
>>>
>>>So publicity was non existing.
>>>
>>>Considering the huge staff of frenchmen running in panic mode around during the
>>>whole tournament that was really a bloody shame, but what we would call here
>>>'typical french chaosmanagement' :)
>>>
>>>Bad was that it took so long to just get outside of the building to just get 1
>>>small bread for example.
>>>
>>>Good was that each morning when walking to the tournament hall i could order for
>>>if i remember well 6 franc or something a big fresh bread at a breadshop. That
>>>tasted real good!
>>>
>>>bad was fact that there was still too many world titles then. There were just 3
>>>competitors if i remember well for the professional world title. Virtual chess,
>>>CSTal and Fritz.
>>>
>>>Good was that after a few days there was very cheap drinks IN the tournament
>>>hall supplied by organisation.
>>>
>>>Good was that it was possible to walk around without problems in the tournament
>>>hall, in 2001 maastricht for example i found the location a bloody shame. They
>>>corrected that great in 2002 though in Maastricht.
>>
>>
>>
>>OK, so in short the good parts were the french bread and free drinks and that it
>>was possible to walk during the rounds.
>>
>>If you like the french bread you should try our chess programs. Some of them
>>would give you a good run for the money. ;)
>
>Well meeting each culture at a world champs is real important and leaves an
>impression that lasts forever.
>
>But the french bread,.... everyone must try it :)
>
>But the Tiger, well perhaps it plays me to french bread, so let's not try it too
>soon :)
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>The main problem I remember there was AMD. They sponsored the event and provided
>>>
>>>Oh the hardware, well Kallisto was sponsored a PII300 by intel. Kallisto however
>>>was still 16 bits and way faster (like 50% or some insane big diff) on the
>>>233Mhz K7 that Jan Louwman had managed to get too.
>>>
>>>So officially Kallisto ran on that PII300 but in reality diep ran at it. You
>>>couldn't get that cpu in any shop at that time.
>>>
>>>When i entered with that machine the tournament hall i was amazed to see that
>>>half the tournament was carrying a PII300 with him :)
>>>
>>>The toledo2000 programmer was not understanding that his DOS just went up to
>>>64MB hashtables instead of the full 128MB that he had on the PII300 machine :)
>>>
>>>But i guess the real bad thing from world champs 1997 in my memory is fact that
>>>only search depth mattered there really, assuming a debugged program. I lost
>>>game after game thanks to simple tactical errors. 8 ply search for a few moves
>>>and DANG opponent starts smiling "i win a piece!".
>>
>>
>>
>>Ah well, so that can be put in the "good" column I guess: you discovered there
>>that in chess your are helpless if your opponent outsearches you significantly,
>>and that you'd better debug your program before the start of the tournament.
>
>it was tested in 1997 with 1000 games auto232 by Jan Louwman. Without that i bet
>it would have crashed like so many others :)
>
>Well crashing is part of the fun...
>
>Nowadays some find it bad to crash, but it's part of life.
>
>Ask the winners of the previous 2 world champs. I remember they crashed last 18
>games they played there around 30 times?
>
>>You could have discovered that at home, but well. Wisdom is wisdom.
>
>You don't want to miss the fun 500 processors are going to give in that respect.
I think I'm going to miss it, because I couldn't care less about it.
>In fact i might get 1 or 2 testruns at 500 processors for 1 hour or so.
>
>Coming monday morning very early i will have 1 such testruns (those get
>scheduled automatically but because the machine is never empty some
>administrator must clean by hand the whole machine and let this run, so
>practically it only happens when they have maintenance at the machine) so that's
>very interesting.
>
>Some countrymen of yours can't in fact wait for that output. Expected
>efficiencyspeedup is a bit less than 37.3%, so you can do the match with 125GB
>hashtables at 1 position from
>
>Nataf - Svidler (Fressinet)
>
>As you know i managed to help Nataf in FIDE world champs by 'psychologically
>motivating' him.
>
>Hopefully this 500 processor run helps too:
> http://www.nao-cc.com/naocc/index.html
>
>That is what it will analyze some line that is in the 'psychological' interest
>of my friend :)
>
>>>In RGCC at the time some people like Bruce and Bob just posted their believe
>>>that search depth mattered and the rest was not important at all, especially a
>>>good evaluation wouldn't matter at all.
>>>
>>>Well how they were proven wrong later of course.
>>
>>
>>
>>As far as I know nothing has been proved, either way, in this area.
>
>That is not real true.
>
>Please delete your current evaluation function and replace it with tiger 1.0
>evaluation functions, preprocessing etc.
>
>Just make the search the same like it is now and go compare.
>
>I bet that it will not kick any commercial engine that tiger 1.0 when compared
>to the current version.
You are going to see the result of a similar experimental design in a few weeks.
>>The strength of computers at chess comes from a combination of good search
>>techniques and reasonable evaluation, with some emphasis still today on search.
>>Don't forget what you have learned in 1997...
>
>No that's not true. You *can* get another 5 ply easily by using a dumber
>evaluation function type Cilkchess.
>
>To quote Peter Gillgasch: "everything gives a cutoff in that case".
>
>What is more important, that 5 ply extra or some big penalties for king safety
>(to just give exampe of what cilkchess didn't have).
>
>It got like 17 ply without problems world champs 1999, but it was not impressive
>at all.
>
>Some programs it outsearched 8 plies.
>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>I remember Ernst running around the tournament hall crying loud that he hit 1
>>>million nodes a second.
>>>
>>>A statement done by Peter Gillgasch over the email (he has programmed the
>>>darkthought in alpha assembly, i guess he knew more from it than Heinz still
>>>does) was very correct, and still stands in 2003: "darkthought can search so
>>>deep thanks to a very simple reason; it is positional so stupid that nearly
>>>*everything* gives a beta cutoff to it".
>>
>>
>>
>>So stupid that a bunch of programs were helpless against it.
>
>>What is your definition of stupidity? Achieving effectiveness with means that
>>are not to your taste?
>
>Right, as a real chess player i definitely appreciate that definition.
As a scientist I have a little problem with it.
Too much anthropomorphism is a sure way to be blind to the beauty of the
universe.
Christophe
>>>In 1999 i joined with a diep version which was very dumb in endgame and i was
>>>really amazed to see search depths of 20 ply in endgame there when running at
>>>bob's quad xeon 400Mhz with a 400MB hashtable (which was real big to me in
>>>1999). Only end 2000 and especially 2001 and right now i'm improving endgame
>>>quite a lot, still ran behind there :)
>>>
>>>>computers, but there were not enough for everybody and some of them were
>>>>apparently defective (The K6-233MHz was new at the time and I remember Amir Ban
>>>>had been provided with a defective one and had to switch machines after
>>>>detecting a problem).
>>>
>>>>BTW I won't go to Graz.
>>>
>>>I can understand. Will you join dutch champs though?
>>
>>
>>
>>YES. I'll not be there in person but Jeroen is going to come.
>>We have a title to defend.
>
>Cool!
>
>
>>
>>
>>>> I guess the organizers wanted to prevent any computer
>>>>overheating problem by organizing the tournament in November in Austria? :)
>>>
>>>Well a tournament near the end of the year has something magic always. When it's
>>>in the middle of the summer you always miss the summer completely. Working in
>>>your room last minute, or being put in a room that's hot because the machines
>>>heat up the room bigtime and outside temperature also is usually very hot.
>>>
>>>Thanks to that you miss a part of the summer completely and the sun already
>>>shines here so little :)
>>
>>
>>
>>Sun all year long here...
>
>Perhaps i'm more motivated to work hard in order to see the sun :)
>
>>
>>
>> Christophe
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