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Subject: Re: Vincent Diepeveen

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 19:10:15 09/27/03

Go up one level in this thread


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. ;)
>
>
>
>
>
>>>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.
>
>You could have discovered that at home, but well. Wisdom is wisdom.
>
>
>
>
>
>>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.

Note that as usual, Vincenct is just like a Christmas turkey.  Full of
crap.

If you look at _any_ quote of mine in the past, you see "if all else is
equal, search depth is a killer."


>
>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...
>

Probably nothing, other than "if you flap your arms you _still_ can't
fly".  :)






>
>
>
>
>>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?

Stupid == any program except "diep".

Haven't you figured that out yet??


>
>
>
>
>
>>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.
>
>
>
>
>
>>> 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...
>
>
>
>
>    Christophe



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