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Subject: Re: On the Voyager Issue, briefly -- to Bob Hyatt

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 12:16:47 02/17/99

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On February 17, 1999 at 14:57:38, James Robertson wrote:

>On February 17, 1999 at 13:58:38, Vincent Diepeveen wrote:
>
>>On February 17, 1999 at 13:41:33, Will Singleton wrote:
>>
>>>
>>>On February 17, 1999 at 08:18:01, Djordje Vidanovic wrote:
>>>
>>>>Bob,
>>>>
>>>>I read your report carefully. The story is over for me.  I know where I am now,
>>>>and what I have been doing.  About my doubts -- yes, I did have them but there
>>>>was that different style of play, my good faith and a rationally based
>>>>conviction that the author is a brillant person.  For all I know the author IS a
>>>>brilliant person.  However, I have enough evidence now to form my opinion about
>>>>those early versions of Voyager -- R=3, some eval changes (e. g. bishops getting
>>>>more bonus vs. knights than you assigned), plus some other Voyager specific
>>>>changes which I will not mention now as the author is still, I think, working on
>>>>the program (hopefully making a wholly new product).  Bob, thanks for doing what
>>>>I thought you should surely do -- presenting evidence.  From now on, the version
>>>>playing on ICC (a terrific blitz player otherwise) will be labelled as Voyager,
>>>>by Robert Hyatt, modified by G. Mueller.  I do intend to run it more when I have
>>>>time, as I truly believe it to be one of the best blitzers on the Net.
>>>>
>>>>There are some other points that I have raised in the discussions with Dan Homan
>>>>and Jeremiah Pennery that I think are worth further elucidation. Perhaps later
>>>>at some point.
>>>>
>>>>Regards,
>>>>Djordje
>>>
>>>
>>>Looking at the results of testing posted on your website, it appears that Mr.
>>>Mueller has done something pretty remarkable; that is, he has found significant
>>>grounds for improvement in a program that has been under development for years
>>>by RH.  What, exactly, are the changes that have improved it?  For a program
>>>that beats Crafty on equal hardware in *every* single match (as you state), I
>>>think people would be extremely interested to know how he did it.  This could be
>>>very exciting.
>>>
>>>Would it be possible to post or otherwise publish the parts of the code that
>>>were changed, so that we may share in this great achievement?
>>>
>>>Re your new labeling of MagusX, etc, I don't know if Bob wrote a program called
>>>Voyager.  I thought it was Crafty.  Other people have modified versions running,
>>>and to my knowledge they retain the Crafty name.  Maybe I'm wrong about that,
>>>don't know.
>>
>>I don't think so that voyager is improved compared to crafty.
>>
>>It uses R=3 and some alpha beta dependant extensions, and a good book.
>>
>>That is: at blitz it seems a little faster because of this R=3, however
>>i'm sure that at a slow match it will not perform better than crafty.
>>It shows *exactly* the same scores and mainlines after say 12 or 13 ply
>>search.
>
>Would it help Crafty to find out how much time it has left, if it is less than
>say, 15 seconds, set R=3, otherwise R=2?
>
>James
>


Sounds risky, because you would change the search in the middle of something,
and then would have to compare some scores computed with R=3 to some with
R=2.  And they don't compare very well...




>>
>>I doubt whether some alfabeta dependant extensions which solve some
>>problems quicker will *ever* make a program play better in a 3 mins a move
>>match at reasonable hardware.
>>
>>>Will



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