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Subject: Re: what is the strength of computer chess programmers?

Author: Poschmann

Date: 22:56:01 11/18/99

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On November 19, 1999 at 00:15:36, Baldomero Garcia, Jr. wrote:

>I was wondering how strong computer chess programmers are.
>On average, are they masters, experts, class A players or lower?
>Baldo.

One year ago I was very angry at my bad chess knowledge. At this time I got a
nice book in german "Schach am PC" (Chess on PC) from Frederic Friedel and some
other authors (for example Chrilly Donninger). My idea was to improve my own
chess playing strength by writing a chess program. Very soon I found out, that
this idea was completely false. Alpha beta and other well known algorithms have
nothing to do with the way of thinking by good players. Most of their knowledge
is "hard wired" in their head, created in their childhood. They cannot explain
how they find out good moves. In the book mentioned above I found the nice
sentence: "The only persons, who cannot write a chess program are grand
masters." Currently I think that is true. If you write a chess program, you have
not enough time to train yourself. If you spend much time to learn chess, you
cannot write a good program. It is a pitty.
In the last time I learned a lot about chess programming, but my own strength is
as bad as before.
Ralf




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