Author: KarinsDad
Date: 09:48:26 06/08/99
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On June 07, 1999 at 19:26:13, Marc Plum wrote: [snip] > >Seems to me that this misses the point. > >Underpromotions are part of the game of chess, although admittedly a fairly >minor one. I don't like a programmer rewriting the rules of the game for his >own convenience, even if, hypothetically, his program will be more successful as >a result. Sorry about the other empty post. I have no clue what happened there (must have hit the submit button somehow). I agree with Marc. Underpromotions ARE important JUST because they are a rule of the game. One does not drop rules from the game just because they probably are not needed in a significant percentage of games. Playing without underpromotions (for one side in this case) is not playing chess. It is playing variant chess. If one computer program knows that another program does not underpromote (and this is REALLY writing your code to take advantage of other programs), it could prune it's legal move engine (the search portion for opponent's moves, not the the program's own moves) more in order to not check the underpromotions. That gives it an advantage in creating a smaller (a teeny tiny bit) tree. Now, of course, this is a silly example, but it shows that all chess rules should be taken into account by the programs. KarinsDad :)
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