Author: Bradley S., Short
Date: 10:47:43 09/21/99
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Eric, Genius 2 (without hashtables) can mate in 25 moves or less with only 5 seconds to think per move. It seems to make no difference what the starting position is. It always gets it done fast. People are putting too much stock in these later versions of chess programs. Every time a new one comes out people test them on faster and faster hardware. I'm certain that all most no progress has been made in the algorithms. Only new features are added and the producers are counting on hardware to make them play better chess. If an older version of Genius like 2.0 were played on equal hardware with any of the new programs in a long series I'll bet it will still find itself in the top four. I've also been playing around with Chessmaster 4000 against 6000 and it seems no weaker at all. Last night it drew the game. CM6000 ran on a PIII 550 and CM4000 on a Celeron 366. I'm doing all this because I'm curious if there is much more that can be done to refine a world class program. Nowadays they are adding things like hash tables. Thats fine but its not really the machine doing the thinking. It seems we made rapid progress in chess programming up until about 4 or 5 years ago then we ran into a brick wall. It looks likely that about 90 percent of the improvement in new programs is faster hardware and maybe 10 percent is better algorithms. It will take time of course because I can only do this in my spare time but I will continue the games between Genius 2 and CM6000 until 20 games have been played. If 6000 is indeed stronger then it should be ahead by the 20th game. But its not getting off to a good start. (with the exception of championship mode I have 6000 at its strongest settings) Brad
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