Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: Bionic vs Crafty, once again

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 07:52:02 01/23/99

Go up one level in this thread


On January 23, 1999 at 10:12:36, Djordje Vidanovic wrote:

>On January 23, 1999 at 00:07:11, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>
>>Isn't Bionic Impakt  Crafty?  Does anybody know what changes have been made to
>>the program in order to distinguish it from the original Crafty?
>>
>>bruce
>
>I have been asked by Frank Quisinsky to translate his statement regarding Bionic
>Impakt.  Here it is:
>
>"Persönlich habe ich mich beim Dutch Open 98 (Bionic Impakt wurde dritter)
>sehr lange mit Hans Secelle (Programmerer) unterhalten welcher mir
>versicherte, das Bionic kein Crafty ist. Bionic Impakt beruht zwar auf dem
>Source Code von Crafty (Version 9.26 und 15.20), jedoch wurde das Programm vor
>einem Jahr völlig neu überarbeitet. Ferner hat Hans seine eigenen entwickelten
>Ideen implementiert. Unter anderem sind die Bewertungsfunktionen, wie  z. B.
>Figurenfelder, Angriffsheuristiken, Bewertung an der Wurzel als auch das
>Eröffnungsbuch und dessen Zeitkontrollen von Bionic übernommen wurden.
>Persönlich schätzt Hans die taktischen Fähigkeiten gegenüber Crafty etwas
>schlechter und die positionellen etwas stärker ein. Als Beweis dient hier
>z.B. der LCT II Test welcher, völlig unterschiedliche Ergebnisse im Vergleich
>zu Crafty aufzeigt. Ich habe das überprüft und Bionic hat wirklich nichts
>mit Crafty gemeinsam."
>
>I spent lots of time with Hans Secelle during the Dutch Open 98 (Bionic placed
>third) trying to make sure that Bionic is not Crafty.  Bionic is based on
>Crafty's source code (versions 9.26 and 15.20) but the program was completely
>rewritten, which took a year.  Furthermore, Hans implemented his own, original
>ideas. Among others, the new evaluation functions such as piece squares, attack
>heuristics, root-evals, as well as the opening book and time controls that were
>taken over from Bionic [I presume the previous version of Bionic that had been
>around for quite some time, say since 1991, Dj.V.]. Hans estimates that the
>tactical abilities of Bionic are not on a par with Crafty, while its positional
>play is somewhat better. The LCTII test can be used as evidence for this, as it
>gives completely different scores when compared with Crafty.  I have checked
>this out and Crafty and Bionic have really nothing in common.
>
>Regards,
>Djordje


This is wrong.  The version of bionic that playedin the first 1/2 of the
Dutch tournament matched crafty _exactly_.  Every move of every game except
for 1 or 2.

But that isn't nearly so important as one key thing they 'get'... that being
a parallel search that no one else has.  Which gives them a 2x-3x speed boost
over everyone else.  So to say 'it isn't crafty' is baloney.  A few eval changes
don't make a new program.  I've also pointed out that anybody that takes the
crafty source is _required_ to make that source public as part of the freeware
project.   They've never done this.  IE I'd like to see a source version
released that will _exactly_ match the Dutch tourney moves.  _then_ we could
_know_ what is different.  They were going to do this, supposedly.  But nothing
has been done.




This page took 0.02 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.