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

Author: Imran Hendley

Date: 17:00:03 11/19/99

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On November 19, 1999 at 09:41:55, Poschmann wrote:

I doubt that grandmasters can't explain their moves.

>On November 19, 1999 at 06:45:57, blass uri wrote:
>
>>On November 19, 1999 at 01:56:01, Poschmann wrote:
>>
>>>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.
>>
>>I understand that you have less time to train yourself when you write a chess
>>program but I do not understand the reason grandmaster cannot write a chess
>>program.
>>
>A good chess player _see_ the best moves in a position mostly _without_
>calculating all answers. His brain automatically excludes bad moves from further
>consideration. But very often he can not explain why. If you write a program you
>must formulate rules for good and bad moves. All players know some basic rules:
>centralize your figures, attack the opponent king and so on. But good players
>know the exceptions and useful violations of this rules too. The problem in
>programming is: How you can formulate the differences between situations fitting
>the rules and the exceptions. The probable result will be a poorer program if
>you consider more exceptions.
>
>In tournaments I have seen grandmasters, walking from board to board. They stay
>some seconds at each, grasp the situation and go to next. They can rebuild the
>figures, they can announce the best move but mostly they can not explain why.
>This kind of pattern recognition they use is unprogrammable.
>Ralf
>
>>I think that they can stop playing chess if they want and start writing a chess
>>program.
>>
>>Uri



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