Author: Uri Blass
Date: 02:10:59 01/17/06
Go up one level in this thread
On January 16, 2006 at 23:53:14, Dann Corbit wrote: >On January 16, 2006 at 19:47:48, Uri Blass wrote: > >>On January 16, 2006 at 19:31:52, Dann Corbit wrote: >> >>>On January 14, 2006 at 15:06:07, Reinhard Scharnagl wrote: >>> >>>>On January 14, 2006 at 13:57:40, Janosch Zwerensky wrote: >>>> >>>>>> I think, that >>>>>>freeware chess programs are dumping the whole scene, killing any respect and >>>>>>refund of creative programmers. So I am very demotivated and now about to start >>>>>>with programming the game of Go instead of improving the SMIRF chess program. >>> >>>There are a lot of very strong freeware chess engines available: >>>http://rwbc.volker-pittlik.name/chronology.htm >>>The progress of chess engines seems to be accelerating, despite their presence. >>>In fact, the recent trends seems to have provoked a large spike. Also an engine >>>with that name. Ironic? Yes, but not nearly so ironic as missing the irony >>>would have been. >>> >>>>>Note that one of the strongest presently existing Go programs (GnuGo) is open >>>>>source and freeware. Hence, if you feel demotivated by the existence of strong >>>>>free open sourced chess programs, I tend to doubt whether moving to Go >>>>>programming will help. >>>> >>>>Hi Janosch, >>>> >>>>well it is a hard job not to be misunderstood. I think that having OpenSource >>>>projects participate in brainsport events is unfair, when a lot of people try >>>>to compete by joined power with the work of single individuals. In Chess such >>>>projects have reached the playing strength of masters, in Go there is still >>>>sufficient distance between top players and programs to have some hope left. >>> >>>It is also unfair to read the work of others from a book then? >>>The effort of GnuGo is much more than that for any chess engine. Look at the >>>size of the project. It is ten times the size of Crafty, easily. >>>I expect that if you want to surpass the work of GnuGo, it will be much harder >>>than surpassing the effort of Fruit, for instance. >> >> >>size of the code does not tell you nothing about the difficulty to do something >>better. >> >>chess programs beat humans easily when go programs cannot do it and it suggests >>that there is more room for improvement in go and more chance for people with >>original ideas to develop something better in go. >> >>It seems that in chess programs already walk in the right direction or something >>close to it when in go people still did not find the right direction. >> >>> >>>>And of course, a lot of people are very satisfied patchworking foreign code >>>>pieces into a strong engine. Adding some percent of (hopefully) own thoughts >>>>seems to allow them then, to join their name to that result. I am not inter- >>>>ested in such a sort of 'programming'. Some days ago I read about the dog- >>>>picture-easteregg in PHP. Why could it take that long to be detected by all >>>>those OpenSource 'programmers'?. It seems, that most people merely are copying >>>>instead of understanding. Hardly that should be the purpose of OpenSource. >>> >>>There are also people who learn from what others did and then took their own >>>original ideas and succeeded. In fact, all of the startling discoveries came in >>>this way (Ruffian, Fruit, Rybka spring to mind). >>> >>>I find the work of Tord to be original and interesting. His engine is open >>>source. >>> >>>If you are not able to compete with your own ideas, and you do not want to study >>>someone else's ideas, then probably chess programming competition is not a good >>>area. >>> >>>>It might be the view of some freeware 'customers' always to have the best chess >>>>program available, not worrying at all about the sources, which might have been >>>>included. But that should not be the perspective of creative programmers. >>> >>>I wonder what that statement referrs to? There are not any professional egines >>>that have stolen code from open source engines, in my opinion. >>> >>>Some projects are clearly clones like Toga and the other Fruit Spin-off >>>GambitFruit. But that is allowed by the license, and these programs would not >>>be allowed to compete in major competitions because of their clone status. >>>Nevertheless, these excellent strong clone engines enable people with very >>>little money like college students to get a world class chess engine for >>>nothing. I would say that this is a good thing and not a bad one. >> >>This is bad news for the programmers who hope to make money from their program. > >I think you are wrong about this. I expect (for instance) that you will still >buy an excellent chess engine even though there are also excellent free ones. The question is not about me but about the general public. I know that one of the reason that people do not buy fruit is that they can get the free toga. > >If it were not for the excellent, free, open-source chess engines, would you >have been keenly interested in writing one yourself? I think that it did not change my decision. > >>They see that they have more material to learn in order to be competitive and >>they feel that they have less chances to compete by some original ideas. > >Learing is fun, so I imagine learning more to be an advantage. I like to read >new articles about chess programming and to go over the source code of someone's >new program. I think that it is dependent on the person. There are people who have more fun from thinking about a problem and solving it. I think that I have more fun from thinking about a problem and solving it and not from learning from other people but of course if the first way does not work you need to learn from other people. > >Alpha-beta was a new idea at some point. If you can come up with something just >as revolutionary, you will rule the chess world. I do not think that it is so simple. The algorithm of the top chess programs is based on alpha-beta but a lot of reductions and extensions are added. If you find some new algorithm that is better than alpha-beta it does not mean that it is still better than alpha-beta after all the reductions and extensions and also even if your evaluation is superior you need to have good evaluation. > >If you can make a chess program that examines the same good chess nodes as >Rybka, Shredder and Fruit but that has a branching factor of 1.5 instead of 2.0, >you will rule the chess world and nobody will even be able to compete with you. > >If a daunting challenge turns you away, then Tic-Tac-Toe is easier. > >If you are writing a chess program to get rich, I think it is utter foolishness. >Most of the money in the world is tied up in bean-counting. Nobody cares about >these chess engines than a few of us geeks. Maybe Johan de Konig got a lot of >money from it, but that is lightning in a bottle. Not so easy to catch it >without getting fried. I was talking about reinhard and tried to explain his reasons. This is a reason that maybe go programs are better than chess programs in order to earn money. go players that are better than every go program may be interested in a better go program to buy in order to train in go by playing against it. there are no chess players that are better than every chess program and chess players who try to improve by playing against chess programs and learning from mistakes can use a lot of free programs. Uri
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