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Subject: Re: Engines, weak "by default"

Author: Mike Hood

Date: 07:14:36 05/05/05

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On May 05, 2005 at 08:04:37, Uri Blass wrote:

>On May 05, 2005 at 06:01:02, Mike Hood wrote:
>
>>On May 04, 2005 at 11:16:55, Uri Blass wrote:
>>
>>>On May 04, 2005 at 09:09:25, Robert Hollay wrote:
>>>
>>>>  I'd like to download some freeware engines, which are weaker
>>>>by default (say 1200-1600 ELO), with WB or UCI interfaces, but have
>>>>an interesting or "human-like" playing style.
>>>>  Yes, there is a plenty of links to free engines on chess sites,
>>>>but I have small bandwith, so cannot download and try out each ...
>>>>
>>>>Thanks in advance for any help or suggestion!
>>>>
>>>>Robert
>>>
>>>Why do you need weak by default?
>>>
>>>It is possible to change the personality of Movei to make it weak.
>>>I guess that if you change the piece square table of Movei to tell it that a
>>>queen is less than a pawn and that knights have negative value it will do the
>>>trick(I never tried it but people who are interested in doing it  can do it).
>>>
>>>Uri
>>
>>Uri, the question is "How can I make an engine beatable without making it play
>>stupid?" There are a few answers to this question:
>>
>>1) Write an engine which has a weak evaluation algorithm, for instance by not
>>giving it much positional information. (I think this is what Robert was looking
>>for).
>>
>>2) Make slight changes to piece values. For instance, change a Knight's value to
>>2 (instead of 3) to encourage the computer to make spectacular looking but often
>>unsuccessful sacrifice exchanges. Changing a Queen's value from 9 to less than 1
>>would be too drastic.
>
>considering the fact that you talk about weak level of 1200-1600 I think that
>changing the queen value to less than 1 may not be too drastic.
>
>I guess that players with rating of 1200 may lose even if they get queen for
>knight advantage if they face good defence and a computer that does good search
>will not give them an easy way.
>
>Uri

You may be right about 1200. It is very low. My own rating is between 1500 and
1600, so I appreciate weak but not stupid play. I like an opponent that I can
beat, but I have to work hard to do it.



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