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Subject: Re: u2600 Club ICC Rating List - Mar 22

Author: jonathan Baxter

Date: 14:50:09 03/22/99

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On March 22, 1999 at 11:38:37, Will Singleton wrote:

>Under 2600 Club
>Mar 22 1999
>
>Program      ICC Blitz  Change   Games     Platform    Author
>
>TDChess          2679    +102     216      P/400       Jon Baxter
>ZChess           2576      -1       5      K6/266      Franck Zibi
>PostModernist    2560     +20      44      K6/300      Andrew Williams
>Rajah            2531     +50      76      P/166       V. Manohararajah
>Rookie           2514                      P/360       Marcel van Kervinck
>LambChop         2453     -21      28      P/133       Pete McKenzie
>Amateur          2450     +58      67      Mac/300     Will Singleton
>EXchess          2446    +114      21      Cel/400     Dan Homan
>BugChess         2405                      P/450       Erik van het Hof
>Grok             2353     -55      21      K6/300      Peter Kappler
>Hossa            2351    -205     287      P/350       Steffen Jakob
>InmiChess        2292     +14       8      Cyrix/233   Werner Inmann
>Pedestrian       2195                      P/450       Peter Kasinski
>
>
> ICC account names that differ from the program name:
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Blik (Rookie), zchess1 (Zchess).
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Changes
>
>Stobor and XXXX-2 to inactive, EXchess to active.
>
>
>Notable
>
>New highs were scored by TDChess (2711) and PostModernist (2603).
>
>Top spot goes to TDChess, which currently sits at 2679 (as of this morning),
>and may very well be our first graduate.  Excellent job, Jon!


Its worth pointing out that I have not touched the code except in trivial ways
for a long while (last major change was a few weeks ago where a "very nifty
idea" for detecting trapped pieces cheaply was tried and discarded because it
didn't work very well). So nearly all of the improvement in TDChess can be
attributed to the book learning (it's not learning its evaluation function at
present: that's constant). TDchess has no hand-coded openings---they are all
learnt.

Some may have already noticed that TDChess is wedded to some rather dubious
looking variations of the center-counter defense as black (there are those who
consider "dubious" too mild an adjective :). This is probably because it plays a
lot against various versions of Crafty and Crafty can't seem to find really
strong moves for white in these positions, so TDChess actually wins a lot of
these games. However, over the last one or two days, TDChess has started to
change its mind and currently prefers 1... e6 in response to 1. e4. Only took
nearly 30,000 learning positions to be added to the brain for this to happen!
I suspect a serious of standard games where it searched a lot deeper swayed the
balance.

However, the nice thing is that if TDChess does finally switch away for good
from 1... d5 then it will know exactly why it is doing it.

If you are interested, TDChess now lists the longest continuous brain variation
in its finger notes, the total number of brain positions and the brain position
it is currently "mulling" (researching).


Cheers,

Jon

>Most active was Hossa, with 287 blitz games played.
>
>I notice that several members (active and inactive) will be competing at
>Paderborn.  They are LambChop, Stobor, XXXX-2, and Gromit.  One would
>hope that McKenzie will bring something faster than a P133. :)  Good luck
>to all!
>
>
>u2600 Position of the Week
>
>This comes from a standard game played on ICC this week between TDChess and
>crafty450.  TDChess found a good move, which I don't believe would have
>been found at blitz time controls.  A good human player might be tempted
>to play it right off the bat, but a program needs proof.
>
>See how long it takes yours to find the winning move.  Also, see if you can
>guess the move before your program finds it.
>
>2r4k/3q1pp1/1rn4p/p1R5/P2p1B2/5QP1/P4P1P/2R3K1 w - -



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