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Subject: What is Fritz good for?

Author: Rolf Tueschen

Date: 05:39:59 01/10/06

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If I tend to fall into every PR trick then you are bound to stay immovilized in
sort of self-created ice-block. In general you are right down your message. From
the perspective of tester. But again, here you are wrong:

1) Fritz has no knowledge or better said it doesnt allow to attain the reqired
knowledge

-- this is wrong. with Fritz you have the famous training possibilities and en
plus you just order the appropriate DVD for your training plans and then you
work through that material with the brilliant interface of Fritz. I prefer that
a company plays with open cards rather than would blind me with false promisses.
On the base of todays hardware you cant offer a chessprogram that contains in
itself all the chess knowledge that a human chessplayer needs.

2) Fritz fails low and before that it shows a ZERO score but it has no idea what
is in the position

-- this is wrong. if Fritz doesnt see something in the position then there is
nothing in it for a certain depth. Period. If you the say, yes, but if Fritz
could look deeper THEN it would see something then I would agree but I would
cobject that this is a common problem for all chess machines. Of course the best
machine is the one that has solved chess...

-- alone the idea to say that a program has "no idea" is nonsense because tht
happens all the time in chess. every standpoint could find a superior player
with a better, higher standpoint. This isnt something litarian, this is just how
sports works. A lay, someone with less than 1900 Elo knows "something" but he
doesnt know it properly and also he cannot apply his knowledge himself if he
plays chess. And yes, it is true that a 1600 player/lay could have a better
technical understanding about Fritz than Kasparov - in certain aspects,
sometimes. No doubt about it. But this doesnt prove anything. Nobody has ever
claimed that a superior player is ALWAYS correct 100%.

-- did YOU test ALL the amateur programs? if not - then why do you concentrate
on FRITZ? Isnt it YOU who is fixed on Fritz? Perhaps you could find a promissing
new entry down in the ranks of 250th place among the amateurs. Why dont you find
it? Why dont you test it? Because you want to have the same proceduring as last
year? Because you want to react like the Fritz Turk on ChessBase? Like a robot?
Do you really want to claim that thousands of chessplayers who use Fritz are
wrong and you are right??

3) You dont become tired to repeat on and on this nonsense about your belonging
into computerchess while I dont belong because I "only" criticise things and if
neccessary persons.

-- this is completely wrong. we both come from chess but I was really playing
chess in teams and tournaments while you already entered CC when you were a
young kid. The you concentrated yourself on testing and tweaking chess programs.
Always near to a chess programmer. This is a valuable job but in that time you
didnt play chess yourself. But I used the chess programs when they became
stronger for playing against them and for analysing my own games with them. Of
course you publish your daily results when you hold a tournament. That is fine.
But I cant give a fundamental commentary on computerchess as a whole on a daily
basis. This is why you think that I dont belong at all. But this is plain
nonsense. I belong but on a different level. I come from chess and have
different interests than you. I dont operate chess programs and drink tea in
such environments. All over the globe. I sit at home and use my chess tools for
my own chess. Since it isnt master chess I dont talk about it on a daily base. I
have a high education in statistics and therefore I enter from time to time
these testing debates. Of course you do the testing but you dont know the
background of the testing methods. No problem about that but it's plain nonsense
to claim that you therefore are IN and I am OUT. You simply cant win the debate
with such a nonsense claim.

I dont want to spoil YOUR preferences, it's good to have such an inspired tester
like you. But if you go on tangents and want to conclude that such hobby testing
experiences could replace whole university studies - and in a certain
perspective this is TRUE if certain details are concerned!! - then this is just
nonsense. Perhaps I know less details about some engines and their parameters
but the overall in general isnt a book with secret language for me.

The point is that with ALL what you say you hit a certain true aspect but what
you dont realise is that it's only one aspect and NOT the whole as such. And
such a whole is even MORE than ALL the aspects. So you couldnt win if you added
more aspects just for a change. Testing requires some little, easy to
understand, points. If they are not there, then it's not proper testing. But of
course for home passtimes it's still sufficiently interesting. I would NEVER
belittle such activities. But you should be happy that here in CCC we have
people who know something about the requirements of testing and sometimes you
just should learn from them if you begin to go into propaganda mode pro or
contra something.



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