Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Crafty CCT6 notes

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 10:39:41 02/02/04

Go up one level in this thread


On February 02, 2004 at 13:16:46, Tord Romstad wrote:

>On February 02, 2004 at 11:00:08, Robert Hyatt wrote:
>
>>On February 02, 2004 at 10:48:10, Tord Romstad wrote:
>>
>>>This raises the obvious question:  What do Shredder and Hiarcs do to
>>>achieve the bus pushing effect without having a massive hardware advantage?
>>>How are they able to outsearch strong and (NPS-wise) much faster programs
>>>like Crafty?  They do forward pruning, of course, but I wish I had a better
>>>idea of precisely what tricks they use.  One of the many reasons I look
>>>forward to the Palm OS version of Hiarcs is that I will finally have the
>>>chance to play with the engine myself and see if I can figure out some of
>>>its secrets.
>>
>>I hope you manage.  :)  As to what they do, I don't know.  But I can certainly
>>say with some authority that it works pretty well.  :)  But it is more than
>>search alone.  IE Shredder seems to have a significant "feel" for a position as
>>well.  IE in several Crafty games yesterday, someone would fire up shredder to
>>see what it thought.  One such case was where Crafty had +1.0, and Fritz was
>>saying "0.0".  Shredder weighed in with +1.0.  And this was all about a
>>king-side pawn majority in the Crafty-Hiarcs game.  Hiarcs fits the same mold,
>>IMHO.  IE it was at about -1.0 at that same point.  So doing a good evaluation
>>_and_ having a good search, is impressive.
>
>I think the two are often interrelated.  It is easier to do reasonably
>safe forward pruning with a good evaluation function, IME.
>
>>Perhaps one day someone will figure out their "tricks".  Or someone else will
>>develop them again, and avoid the "go commercial" tendency and really produce
>>some improvements in computer chess overall.
>
>The probability that I ever (re)invent something really interesting and
>effective is very small, but if it happens I will of course not go
>commercial or keep my findings secret forever.  However, it could happen
>that I will wait a month or two to report about my ideas if I find them
>shortly before the next CCT.   :-)
>
>Tord

That's the way "we" always did it.  IE I, or Ken, or Dave Slate, or someone else
would show up with something new, but we'd talk about it during the event when
there was no real chance for anyone else to implement it until the tournament
was over.  :)

Then we had to find something new for the next year, of course. :)




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.