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Subject: Re: When will a deep Blue equivalent Be commercially Available?

Author: Amir Ban

Date: 14:08:12 11/08/98

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On November 07, 1998 at 17:04:22, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>I don't believe so, no.  Based on 10+ years of experience in watching older
>and slower versions of deep thought absolutely shred micro programs, and
>factoring in the 100-fold improvement (at least) in the speed of DB over
>the older Deep Thought, I'd think that there might not be a better commercial
>program for even longer if my suspicion that doubling in speed every 18 months
>turns out to be true..  I don't see how it can continue...  and without that
>performance boost, micros vs db would be totally hopeless...

Bob,

Those 10+ years ended in 1993 or so, the last time that Deep Thought played and
won against a micro. As you well know, post-1993 versions of Deep Blue played
very few games against micros and won none of them.

In 1993 the top micros were rated about 2300 (according to SSDF, the top four
are rated 2322, 2302, 2292, 2288), so dominating them doesn't prove superiority
over today's top programs. What's more, if yout play over old DT/DB games, it
seems to get into serious trouble in every other game it plays, but gets away
with it. There was a game it played as white against Zarkov in ACM (1992, I
think), which it made every attempt to lose, but Zarkov apparently didn't want
to win. Playing over this game, you realize it is lost not only against the top
programs of today, but even against the middle of the pack. I also wonder how
many of today's top programs would fail to exploit DB-Prototype's bad opening
against Star Socrates.

I think as late as 1995 (DB Prototype, Hong-Kong), DT/DB had such serious flaws
in its evaluation and search (as Fritz showed), that I seriously doubt it could
equal today's top programs. About the later two DB versions that played
Kasparov, they were obviously stronger, but never played a single game against a
micro.

Amir




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