Author: Ed Schröder
Date: 03:24:46 10/30/99
Go up one level in this thread
>Posted by Heiko Mikala on October 29, 1999 at 17:54:08:
>
>Hello Ed!
Hi,
>>The first program who had null-move (in the it is used now!) was the one
>>of Don Beal during the WCC Cologne 1986, I remember it very well. And that
>>moment Don had null-move only in Q-search. After Cologne his article
>>"Selective Search without tears" came.
>>
>>Frans Morsch immediately fell in love with null-move after Cologne 1986
>>because of this talks with Don. In that time Frans and I almost daily phoned
>>each other to discuss computer chess programming and exchanged many ideas. I
>>decided not to use null-move, Frans did, you can see the result in Fritz.
>>
>>Then after some years the Donninger null-move article came in the ICCA, I
>>forgot about the year, maybe someone can have a look, and the ball got
>>rolling. I clearly remember the heated discussions in RGCC in 1995. From
>>that moment on null-move (using it as selective search) became kind of
>>standard in chess programs.
>>
>>Frans Morsch and Chrilly Donninger gave you null-move in the way it is used
>>now in chess programs. There is no single doubt on that.
>>
>
>No Ed, this is not true.
>
>I have been using Null-Move in my own program for many years, long before I
>heard that Chrilly Donninger had published something about it. Even long
>before I heard the name Donninger for the first time.
>
>I have been writing on my own chess program for more than ten years, only as a
>hobby. I do not fully remember, when I used null move for the first time
>(would have to search through my old sources which I hope I still have somewhere -
>and hopefully not on a 5.25 disk ;-), but for a very long time I used Null-Move
>with a depth reduction of 1 and non-recursive, because r=2 and recursive would have
>killed me on the 80286/80386 computers. But I already knew about r=2 and
>recursive Null-Move.
>
>Now here comes something interesting for this debate. In the early days of my
>chess program I started to make comments on top of my sources, mentioning from
>where I got my ideas (just like Bob does in Crafty). Unfortunately I stopped
>that, but fortunately this is the start of the comment in my search-function
>code:
>
>/****************************************************************************/
>/* Bibliographie: */
>/* ============== */
>/* */
>/* - NULL-MOVE Heuristik: */
>/* -------------------- */
>/* "Experiments with the Null-Move Heuristic", G.Goetsch, M.S.Campbell */
>/* in: 'Computers, Chess, and Cognition' von Marsland/Schaeffer */
>/* S.159-168, Springer Verlag, (1990) */
>/* */
>/* - PVS (minimal window Principal Variation Search) */
>/* ------------------------------------------------------------ */
>/* "Computer Chess Methods", T.A. Marsland */
>/* in: 'Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence', Vol.1 */
>/* S.159-171, (1987) - PVS: S.162/163 ("minimal window search") */
>
>So I got my ideas from Goetsch and Campbell, from reading the book "Computers,
>Chess and Cognition" which was published in 1990. I have it right here in my
>hands, and it says on the bottom of page 159: "An earlier version of this
>chapter appeared in the 1988 AAAI Spring Symposium Proceedings, pp. 14-18"
I have the same book only that I will have a hard time to find it :-)
The best book I have ever seen BTW for computer chess programmers.
>One more point (hey Bob, don't you remember this?!?): In the same book
>there is an article about Cray Blitz, pp. 111-130, and starting on page 112 there is a
>paragraph called "7.2.2.1 Null Move". It describes the null-move in exactly
>the same way as it is used today!
I disagree.
What Bob describes over there is the OLD (original) approach of null-move see
my other posting on this topic. It is only about pruning on ply-1 situations.
Nowadays null-move is done in the whole tree, quite a difference.
Am I wrong about this?
>I may well have learned about the null-move before this book was published,
>because at that time I used to spend hours in our Universities library,
>searching through all the artificial intelligence journals and books I
>could get my hands on, to find some more informations about chess programming (it was
>really hard at that time to find informations about chess programming - but
>I'm >sure you know that even better than I do :-)
>
>About Frans Morsch: He may well have been the first one, who used null-move
>succcessfully in a commercial program. I bought Fritz 1.0 when it came out
>(still a dos-program then of course, and sold by a company called "boeder" at
>that time, not chessbase) and still have it on my hard disk, so I just had a
>look and it is dated from 1991. I do remember that everyone wondered at that
>time how a chess program can be so fast and reach such deep search depths
>at the hardware that was used in these days. I guess he was already using
>null-move at that time, but at least I'm pretty sure that he used it in Fritz 2 which was
>again a bit faster IIRC. But there were others who used it earlier or at least
>at the same time as Frans. Not only Don Beal.
Sure.
And good to know too.
But think of this, I knew about the power of null-move all the time. It's a
very safe (and relative safe) way of doing selective search if you are able
to solve a few negative side effects of null-move.
Then when I read the Donninger article in the ICCA journal I immediately
recognized (and concluded) that this article had the power to come a lot
closer in playing strength to the so-called commercials if the information
was judged well. Apparently programmers judged well :-)
The Donninger article was one of the "turning points" in computer chess. I
repeat it again, after that the "null-move" ball got rolling. I point to the
huge RGCC discussions in 1995. After that (almost) everybody implemented
null-move in the way it is used today.
Null-move has been evolved from a simple bright idea to one of the most
powerful ideas (and development) in computer chess. The origin of null-move
is maybe not from commercials but the final evolution is.
>By the way, thanks for your development of Rebel. I love it!
Me too, I am a big fan myself :-)
Thanks!
Ed
>Greetings,
>
>Heiko.
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