Author: Pat King
Date: 06:13:59 03/11/99
Go up one level in this thread
Welcome to a fun but frustrating hobby. I was in your shoes about 10 years ago, and am just getting together a reasonable program (I'm not that bad a programmer, just a matter of available time). Based on that experience, I would say DON'T START FROM SCRATCH. Specific recommendations: 1) BOARD REPRESENTATION: Include 0x88 concept. Combines easy and fast. You'll see endless arguments on here on whether it's "best" however. 2) SEARCH: Alpha-Beta (minimax is easy to understand but hopelessly slow, the other choices don't buy you much more speed) 3) HASH TABLES from the start. Time and again I see posts about adding hash tables after they get everything else working, but then you have to change everything to accomodate hash tables anyway. My current effort simply won't run without hash tables, and I think it's a "good thing". And hash tables are the biggest speed-up you can get, once you realize that at depths as shallow as 3, half the positions are repeated! Good luck, you'll need it! Pat
This page took 0 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.