Author: David B Weller
Date: 02:53:24 01/06/05
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Hi Eric, Thanks. BTW, that should say GES_134, but I never changed the name until after the tourney Anyway, it seems I am forever finding logical bugs in my code - which sometimes makes significant improvements. If I had it to do over, I would try and dicipline myself to use much debugging code and tools and be sure the first time through, that everything always did what I thought it did. Mobility. As I watched GES lose against Fruit[over and over], it occured to me that Fabien used mobility [even said it was a marked improvement, iirc] so I started looking for that. Low and behold, what Fruit was doing to Ges was literally robbing it of all 'motion'. - It makes sense, if your pieces have no moves, then they cant have a best move iether! So I added a relatively cheap and easy mobility term [which btw hasnt been tweaked at all] and POW! GES_134 Prof. Hyatt once commented that it wasnt clear to him, whether mobility was a cause or effect - and I guess I kinda just took his word for it, but I think it turns out to be one of the things that makes Fruit so strong. I am beginning to think of it this way: A chess program with mobility term, is like a Rubics cube with well 'warn' parts. The 'wear' doesnt help solve the puzzle, but makes it easier for the user to turn the sides. OTOH, an engine that neglects mobility, is like a new cube which is always giving you trouble to turn. The engine seems to lack the ability to freely 'rearrange' its pieces to fit the ever changing circumstances. Fluidity was a term that came to my mind. -David http://home.comcast.net/~opraus
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