Author: Gerd Isenberg
Date: 10:14:50 01/14/06
Go up one level in this thread
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 chess
>was in sore need of new ideas. Perhaps we just _don't need_ new ideas, and all
>that is left is a gentle refinement of the old ones. I don't know.
>
>I know that about 10,000 people will say "but RYBKA!", so let me preemptively
>answer them: Rybka's strength is tactical, not positional. Take a look at Marc
>Lacrosse's post. I do not say this to derogate Rybka - I don't know what he is
>doing in search, but it must be pretty amazing - but I have never viewed tactics
>as the primary problem in computer chess. As computers get faster, the tactics
>will take care of themselves naturally.
>
>Anyway, I don't really know what the future of computer chess will be, but I do
>know that I personally will probably not be reading CCC much in the future, and
>I guess I'm arrogant enough to make a big post out of it. I'm not leaving out
>of disgust at bad treatment or anything, so I might stop by from time to time
>(perhaps at Torino), but I won't be reading this forum regularly any more.
>
>Good luck to all,
>
>anthony
Hi Anthony,
i agree with your motivations - but is it necessary to announce retirement?
Yes, if you have a look to the archives from a few years back - CCC has changed
a lot. The ratio of (chess) programming issues versus tournament- or beta test
issues has become rather low. And if some for programmers interesting issues
come up they often disappear quickly in the stream of other posts. The lack of
an up-to-date CCC-archive to have all posts available is also not so much
motivating.
There were already waves and hypes in the past - specially after new strong
engines arised. Quantity versus quality and vice versa - fluctuation of people
and programmers. People change - interests and priorities change.
Also discussing same progamming topics over and over again becomes boring after
some time - specially if no newbies ask questions which in the past often starts
interesting threads. There seem to be some saturation on discussing low level
programming issues - what a shame ;-)
It takes time and energy (at least for me) to post here. Sometimes i am in the
mood to discuss, sometimes not. I feel that "wasting" too much time in CCC
hinders me to complete my new quad-bitboard engine ;-)
Take Vasik - he was very active here discussing very interesting
chess-programming topics. After he learned enough and got some ideas, he became
very quite since he recently announced his Rybka baby.
Cheers,
Gerd
btw. did you recognize my tribute to Frank Zappa recently?
typedef unsigned __int64 OneSizeFits;
typedef unsigned int HotRats;
const HotRats s = 0;
const HotRats heik = 457;
const HotRats y = 1;
const HotRats e = 2;
const HotRats r = 3;
const HotRats b = 4;
const HotRats o = 5;
const HotRats u = 8;
const HotRats t = 16;
const HotRats i = 32;
const HotRats ka = (1<< 4)-1;
const HotRats waka = (1<< 8)-1;
const HotRats jawaka = (1<<16)-1;
const HotRats jazzFromHell = 0-(16*3*heik);
HotRats freakOut(OneSizeFits all) {
HotRats so,fa;
fa = (HotRats)(all >> i);
so = (fa!=s) << o;
fa ^= (HotRats) all & (fa!=s)-y;
so ^= (jawaka < fa) << b;
fa >>= (jawaka < fa) << b;
so ^= ( waka - fa) >> t & u;
fa >>= ( waka - fa) >> t & u;
so ^= ( ka - fa) >> u & b;
fa >>= ( ka - fa) >> u & b;
so ^= jazzFromHell >> e*fa & r;
return so;
}
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