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Subject: Re: CCC Retirement

Author: Miguel A. Ballicora

Date: 20:39:07 01/13/06

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On January 13, 2006 at 23:06:35, Zappa wrote:

>I stopped over to read CTF for a bit earlier today, and something hit me: I
>actually found interesting posts to read, and that I hadn't really been that
>interested in anything written at CCC for some time.  So I started thinking
>about this, and I started to realize that the composition of CCC has changed
>quite a bit over the last year or so.
>
>Back when I joined (feels like ages ago, even though its only a few years) there
>were basically 4 groups of people at CCC: the optimizers (headed by Gerd)
>posting on better methods to compute LSB and hardware and such things, the chess
>experts, who were primarily interested having the computer analyze their games
>and posted a lot of test positions, the authors (headed by the always-arguing
>Bob and Vincent) who talked about search methods and eval tricks, and the
>testers, who ran matches and posted the results.  Somehow over the past year the
>composition of the forum has shifted dramatically towards the testers, and
>lately I feel that a good 50% of the posts here have been "I ran a tournament
>with some engines under Y conditions",  "Great work X, you're a cool dude", "No,
>X is an idiot, because he used conditions Y! What a tool!".
>
>I personally was never that interested in test results;  I joined for the other
>types of posts, and they have simply disappeared.  Bob has posted about 10 times
>in the past year.  Ditto for Vincent.  GCP only posts to correct idiocies.  Gerd
>barely posts any more.  Fierz is gone.  Fabien is gone.  Bruce is gone.  About
>the only people left over from the halcyon days of yore are Gunther and Tord.
>And two people do not a forum make.
>
>I am not sure why CCC has changed as it has.  I have always resented the Deep
>Blue team for insinuating that computer chess was solved in 1995, but has it
>been solved in 2006? I haven't really heard of any new engines.   When I look at
>the participants list for CCT8, every single engine played there last year.  I
>know its still early, but are there simply no new engine authors?  And if so,
>why?  Has it become too easy?  Is everyone only interested in cloning Fruit now?
> Or do people feel that CC is simply solved now?  A laptop with Fritz can beat
>GMs nowadays.  I posted earlier that I felt that the big ideas of the 90s
>(mobility, null move) had basically been worked to death and that computer

And this happen when I was thinking of coming back to CC. Could you elaborate a
little bit why you think that mobility is an idea of the 90's? And why you think
it has been beaten to death?

I never participated in CCT, if I do it in the next, will you stay? :-)

Miguel



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