Author: William Bryant
Date: 19:51:37 05/07/99
I'm not a programmer by trade or training, but do this as a hobby. As an OTB chess player I'm probably less than USCF 1000. But, with the help of this forum and its members, I have within the space of 12 months and 1000+ hours, a chess program that is ~2100 USCS by LCT II and by CCR test suites and getting better every month. I am, for the most part, a "lurker" on this forum, but as my knowledge and my program improve, I will have more to add. I have spent long hours on the emotional rollercoaster when my program does something very stupid -- identifying yet another bug. I also feel the joy of finding and fixing them and seeing it get a little bit better. This is the addiction that many have expressed on this forum and I do understand it well. I now understand, by example and discussion, alpha-beta, Null move, hash tables, PVS, aspiration windows, and other concepts mostly through discovering how simple little code changes make them break in a big way. I wish to thank Steve for giving us this forum. The forum works and I appreciated it. I wish to thank Tom for providing TSCP. This is the foundation from which my initial understanding of the basic elements of a chess program began. I must admit that, upon first reading crafty, I was very lost. It is much easier to understand once the basic concepts are understood. Once you understand the basic alphabet, you can then read the longer novels. I wish to thank Bob for answering my questions even though he has answered the exact same question already probably more than a 1000 time before. His answers to others have also been helpful. I have a years worth of posts saved of various topics to help me implement new features or to uncover the pitfalls discovered by others. I wish to thank Bruce for answering questions while Bob was away. You helped me understand Mate scores in my hash table. I didn't implement them the way you described for Ferret, but you halped my understand the problem, and now my program doesn't run away from the shorter mate pathway. I wish to thank Will for sending me a referance or two to help answer questions on this forum. I wish to thank every one else who offered suggestions or comments when I felt frustrated when my program just wouldn't do what I though I was programming it to do. In summary, I think CCC will continue as long as there are people interested in computer chess. The quality of the discussions can change with the knowledge and experience of the people involved, but CCC should continue. I think CCC will improve with the input and participation of everyone who enjoys the fun and frustration of this hobby. William wbryant@ix.netcom.com BTW, anyone who wants to try out the latest beta (and bug free ??) version of screamer, drop me an email or respond to this post. I is a powerplant based application that can run on any PPC or MC68020 or better Macintosh. It runs slow but does run on an old powerbook 165. (I also have a version of Crafty that runs on the powerbook, also very slow but good for analysis when the powerbook is all that is available.)
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