Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 20:23:03 11/02/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 02, 1999 at 13:46:43, Christopher R. Dorr wrote:
>You hit on what I believe is the key issue: features. Crafty is a wonderful
>program (my favorite opponent), and Winboard is a wonderful contribution, but
>together they cannot do a fraction of the things Rebel, Fritz (and I assume)
>Chess Tiger can. This is not a slight; they are not designed to be databases,
>and tutorials...they are designed to play chess well and present an attractive
>interface...which they do admirably.
>
>Where the commercials shine is in their feature sets. Honestly, I get crushed by
>Crafty just as badly as I do by Fritz5...but with Fritz5, I can immediately look
>things up in the database, look at a graphical analysis of the game...these
>things are important.
>
>If you combine a strong program with a good feature set, you have a winner. Part
>of my earlier point is that I think we get focused on strength too much when
>evaluating chess programs for actual use by the average player...I would much
>rather have a 2500 opponent with wonderful features, than a 2600 opponent
>without. As long as programmers keep adding features, and making their programs
>more friendly, and useful, and attractive, I will keep buying them. If they are
>getting stronger (which they are) so much the better. I will keep using the new
>versions of Crafty, and keep buying the new versions of Fritz (and hopefully
>Chess Tiger).
>
>Chris
There are several peoples in our team. Each of us is working on something
different. I am in charge of bringing the best possible Tiger. Lex Loep is in
charge of the GUI, and all the features you mention. He has also written a chess
engine (LChess), which is part of ChessPartner (Tiger's user interface). Ed
Schröder is in charge of bringing you the best possible Rebel in a few months,
and is also our manager (which is a hard job in itself). Jeroen Noomen is in
charge of the opening books, and introducing the latest human theory in them.
So we can at the same time focus on playing strength AND on bringing you
wonderful features.
Christophe
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