Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 10:11:33 10/29/99
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On October 29, 1999 at 03:24:40, Will Singleton wrote: >On October 29, 1999 at 02:34:23, Ed Schröder wrote: > >>>Posted by Robert Hyatt on October 28, 1999 at 21:39:17: >>> >>>I have been to them since they first started holding them. In the early 70's, >>>we all talked. In the 80's, the 'research groups' talked, the commercial >>>programmers 'lurked'. To see this, just take a gander through the JICCA, and >>>see how many published articles you find by commercial programmers. >>>Prepare to >>>look long and hard. And prepare to find only a tidbit here and there that is >>>5-6 years out of date. Compared to those of us doing this for fun... >> >>I am sorry to say but the only thing I found useful in the ICCA journal (for >>Rebel) was an article how to implement the hash table and that was 10 years >>ago. After being an ICCA member for 15 years and 60 magazines I would say >>that ain't much. > >> >>Your argument is in contradiction also. The MAIN improvement for nowadays >>programs since 4-5 years comes from NULL-MOVE, right? This includes Crafty >>as well. >> >>And who gave you null-move? >> >>Right, 2 commercial chess programmers :-) >> >> >>>>Ever asked Chrilly Donninger about how he has implemented Null >>>>Move? Ask him and he will tell you! >> >>>maybe he will, and maybe he won't. >> >>:-) >> >>Wasn't it Chrilly Donninger who made NULL-MOVE world famous in the ICCA >>journal? >> >>NULL-MOVE gave every program who had not a decent selective search algorithm >>an improvement of over 200 elo points and for some certainly more. >> >>History of NULL-MOVE: >>Inventor: Don Beal >>Creator: Frans Morsch (commercial) >>Publisher: Chrilly Donninger (commercial) >> >>Please stop your bickering on commercials as you using the most powerful >>idea since times in Crafty yourself which came from 2 commercials. >> >>About Crafty's source code, I have downloaded Crafty's source code twice >>(version 9.xx and 16.6). I found nothing special I could use. Just to let >>you know that not everybody is lurking your source code as you imply. >> >>Ed > >You mean, please start the bickering? :) > >ICCAJ is and has been an extremely good source of information for many chess >programmers, there is no doubt of that. If you have not found it so, perhaps >you are the exception. There is certainly no requirement for you to share the >fruits of your labor; you are after all in business, and do not want to give >away your work. That's fine. But don't put it down, the ICCAJ is a fine and >important resource for the rest of us. > >As for your history of Null Move, I will defer to your experience, since I am >again at home and without my ICCAJ <g>. However, was the technique not >generally known long before Fritz and Nimzo (and certainly more than 5 years >ago)? I recall reading a paper written in the 1970's by the authors of Kaissa, >describing the "blank move" technique. They could have gotten it from someone >else, I don't know. Do you know the origin? "Selective search with no tears" by Don Beal got me started. Closer to 15 years ago. Several used this in the later 80's... I think Kaissa's team used this in a different way. In the early 70's version of my program, we used a null-move as well, but for a different reason. I was (at that time) doing a full selective search. And had about 50,000 lines of code that was very good at detecting which moves had tactical threats. But I didn't want to do the same for 'defending'. What I did, then, was to play a null-move. change sides, and use my tactical detector to find out what kinds of potential tactics were there. I could pass this back up one ply, and use that to tell me what I needed to defend against. But it wasn't null-move as we used in the late 80's. I think Kaissa did similar things, although I don't think they were selective like I was, and they may well have been 'closer' to the null-move search described by Beal. > >And you go on to say that you have downloaded and reviewed Crafty's source, but >found nothing useful. I would certainly call that lurking, since if you *had* >found something useful, you'd have used it. Right? > >Lastly, I'd like to point out that I don't like the idea of distributing highly >advanced source code, I think it's detrimental to the spirit of discovery and >individual achievement. It dissuades the true amateur from the game. I know >this because I have looked at crafty's code and found it beautiful, elegant, and >good. And I won't copy it, though others do. The way to advance the theory of >chess programming is not to publish your code, but rather to publish your ideas. > >Will Certainly a good point. I don't think publishing source is actually detrimental as I do my best to not look at other's programs. Bruce had offered to send me a copy of Ferret's source several times. I always turned him down, because his program is very strong, and it would be very hard to not use something I thought was good. And the ideas are his. And other commercial programmers have looked at the source in far more detail than I would have thought. Chris Whittington once gave me a blow-by-blow description of my code that tries to prevent a rook from getting trapped in odd places on the board. And the code was not particularly obvious. And there were no comments explaining exactly what was done. So it took a bit of studying. Which is certainly fine by me. The thing that Ed is missing is this: I was doing this in 1970. He hadn't even thought about computer chess in 1970. I know how open we _all_ used to be. The real fun from 1970-1986 or so was to discover something new, keep it a secret until the next ACM or WCCC event, spring it on everyone, and then tell them (in discussions during dinner, or during games, or at technical computer chess presentations) what you had done the last year. And then everybody sort of "caught" up with each other, and everybody went their separate ways for a year, and then we repeated this the next year. But slowly as the PC platform got faster, the number of commercial entries got larger. And we ended up in these group discussions with the 'research engine' authors describing what they had done, and the 'commercial engine' authors doing a fine job of emulating a black hole. That is the difference that I see.
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