Author: Gerd Isenberg
Date: 09:15:35 01/09/04
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On January 09, 2004 at 08:40:53, Tord Romstad wrote: >On January 09, 2004 at 07:03:23, martin fierz wrote: > >>don't do it! even if this happened to be faster - which i don't think - having >>readable code is much more important IMO. i believe most chess programs are >>limited by bugs in their playing strength, not by speed. 10% more speed is worth >>a handful of elo at best, not spending time on studying obfuscated code and not >>having bugs is worth much more than that! > >Yeah, bugs are arguably the most important factor at all. I found a really >horrible one last night: > >In my passed pawn evaluation, I increase the passed pawn bonus considerably >if it has reached the 6th or 7th rank and the static exchange evaluator >decides that the pawn can safely advance. Or rather, that was what I thought >I did. It turned out that I did precisely the opposite: I gave the passed >pawns a bonus for *not* being able to advance. > >The really amazing thing is that this bug must have been in my engine for >a really long time (at least half a year, I think), and I haven't even >suspected that something was wrong until now. I wonder how many points >this bug has cost me in various tournaments ... > >Tord I remember Chrilly Donninger's statement about the win with Nimzo-Guernica against Ed Schoeder's Gideon, WMCCC, Munich 93. Ed was amazed by Nimzo's endgame knowledge - which was caused by a similar passed pawn bug ;-)
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