Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: What went wrong with P.Conners and Zugzwang in WCCC?????

Author: Robert Hyatt

Date: 06:49:39 06/29/99

Go up one level in this thread


On June 29, 1999 at 01:28:28, Jouni Uski wrote:

>These superfast programs only got 3 resp 3.5 points! Specially P.Conners was
>one of the favourites before WCCC. I hope someone can give explanations.
>
>regards Jouni


I think it was an issue of 'robustness'.

I have said many times that the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me
was winning the 1983 world championship, because our parallel search was only
completed two weeks prior to the event.  And at round-one time, we had not
played a complete game, although we had done plenty of testing, and we did a
very simple parallel search for that reason.

This was one of the reasons I expected both Ferret and Shredder to do well,
because _both_ play lots of games on ICC.  And the first step toward becoming
a world champion is to play a _lot_ of games and have a bug-free program.  The
"research" guys have always hurt themselves here (me included) because access
to the 'real hardware' is often quite limited.  Which means you do lots of
testing on 'baby hardware'.  But an additional ply or two changes things a
lot, and without testing, bad moves are not uncommon.

When everyone figures out that ICC is 'there', this will change...  :)



This page took 0.01 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.