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Subject: Re: Fritz 9 And The Rules Of Chess (or some people just don't listen....

Author: Chris Conkie

Date: 13:47:01 09/30/05

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On September 30, 2005 at 16:20:25, James T. Walker wrote:

>First of all I think this whole thread is silly.  Here are some things to
>consider anyway.

Not really, but please continue anyway......

>1. I see nothing wrong with an engine trying to analyze an illegal position.  It
>has nothing to do with chess but the fact that it tries should be OK.  (Why not)
>

It depends wether you think of a chess engine as being a seperate entity or not.
If it is not, it is a plugin not a chess engine.

>2.  Why do you try to blame the Fritz 9 engine when it may be something
>overlooked in the Chessbase 8 program which just now shows up when using Fritz
>9?  Can you prove it's the Fritz 9 engine at fault if it works OK in the GUI
>it's designed for?

Yes we can prove this and have done so many times over.

>3. You get what you deserve when buying from Chessbase anyway.

True.

>All of their programs are known to be buggy.

Also very true.

>Past experience has taught me that they don't care anyway.

You are spot on.

>That's why I stopped sending them bug reports.

That is why the title of the original post is what it is.

>4. So where's the beef?  :)

The specific beef about Fritz 9 is that if Fritz 9 is a chess engine, it should
behave like one. It should know the fundamental rules for a start. It's not too
much to ask.

Besides that we use the positions to detect unsavoury theft of others work.

The last thing that someone who copies an engine and passes it off as their own
thinks about, is the board initialisation code.

If an engine misunderstands the rules in exactly the same way as another engine,
it is a very helpful pointer towards said engines origin, as thins is what is
normally programmed in first i.e. how the pieces move and what they cannot do.

For example.....should an engine calculate on a position when the position is
already in check and it is the side to move? Should an engine consider taking a
king? Should an engine take a king and then continue to play on as though
nothing happened?

We don't think so. You have to draw the line somewhere......

We draw it here.

[d] r4rk1/b7/8/8/8/8/B7/R3K2R w KQ - 0 1

Esc 1.16:
   1	00:00	           4	4	+36.56	Bxg8
   2	00:00	          72	72	+34.41	Bxg8 Bf2+ Kd2
   3	00:00	         451	451	+34.41	Bxg8 Bf2+ Kd2 Rxa1
   4	00:00	       1.633	1.633	+34.17	Bxg8 Bf2+ Kd2 Rxa1 Rh2
   5	00:00	       6.668	666.800	+33.48	Bxg8 Bf2+ Ke2 Rxa1 Bd5 Rxh1
   6	00:00	      22.318	743.933	+30.76	Bxg8 Bf2+ Ke2 Rxa1 Bd5 Re1+ Kd3 Rd1+ Kc4
   7	00:00	      90.563	823.300	+30.65	Bxg8 Rf1+ Ke2 Re1+ Kd3 Rd8+ Bd5
   8	00:01	     321.362	783.809	+7.11	Bxg8 Rf1+ Kd2 Rd8+ Kc2 Rc1+ Rhxc1 Rc8+ Kb3
Rb8+ Ka3 Rxg8
   9	00:01	     960.040	793.421	+0.72	Bxg8 Rf1+ Ke2 Re1+ Kd3 Rd8+ Kc4 Rc1+ Raxc1
Rc8+ Kb3 Rxg8
  10	00:04	   2.611.554	759.172	+0.70	Bxg8 Rf1+ Ke2 Re1+ Kd3 Rd8+ Kc4 Rc1+ Raxc1
Rxg8 Rcd1 Be3 Rhe1 Rc8+ Kb5

We would rather not be able to look inside engines in this way, but while we are
able, we use this to supply bug reports where appropriate and detect plagarism
as well

Hope this explains a little.

:)

Chris





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