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Subject: Re: I think that woodpusher is the surprise of the tournament

Author: John Hamlen

Date: 23:54:02 07/12/04

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Hi Uri,

Many thanks for the kind words for Woodpusher.

I was quite shocked when Mark Winands contacted me just before the tournament
and asked if I could bring Woodpusher in order to make an even number of
competitors. (I was originally entered in just the Go tournament). "But I
haven't touched the program since 1997", I protested. "Don't worry", he said,
"you might not come last".

Surprisingly, he was right, and it turned out to be a very interesting
experiment. I'm planning to jot down a few of my impressions about how things
have moved on in the intervening 7 years in a note for the ICGA Journal and/or
Eric Hallsworth's excellent Selective Search Newsletter.

You are right, the only modifications were: 1) a large negative contempt factor
of 1 pawn as I went to Tel-Aviv with the target of snatching a draw in one of
the games, and 2) A larger transposition table, because of the much faster
hardware (2.8GHz vs. 166MHz).

However, I also think the program was rather lucky. If we played out the whole
tournament again, it could easily end up with just 1 or 1.5 points. Anyway, I'll
save that sort of analysis for the article...

It was a great pleasure meeting you and Movei in Israel, good luck with its
development.

Best wishes,
John



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