Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 21:02:02 11/23/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 23, 1999 at 22:53:11, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>On November 23, 1999 at 11:59:46, Christophe Theron wrote:
>
>>On November 23, 1999 at 03:54:48, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>
>>>>Posted by Christophe Theron on November 22, 1999 at 18:25:35:
>>>>
>>>>>>Was it better than Sargon II, or just equal?
>>>>>
>>>>>It was better because Sargon was outplayed by search depth in most
>>>>>cases. In that days Rebel was able to look 6 plies deep all very selective
>>>>>and much holes involved but very effective playing a program thinking
>>>>>just 4 plies deep.
>>>>
>>>>6 plies on a TRS-80 in the time Sargon took to compute 4?
>>>>
>>>>I have the old Sargon II for TRS-80 manual just in front of me. A green manual:
>>>>"Hayden computer program tapes, Sargon II: A computer chess program by Dan and
>>>>Kathe Spracklen". I have kept it as a souvenir (I also have the cassette,
>>>>but I don't dare to open the box).
>>>>
>>>>The manual says that it took 6 minutes (average) to compute to ply depth 4.
>>>>
>>>>You are saying that in 6 minutes you were able to compute to ply depth 6 on a
>>>>TRS-80???
>>>
>>>6 plies indeed all very selective but a friend of mine had doubled the
>>>processor speed from 1.77 Mhz to 3.5 Mhz. On standard 1.77 Mhz Rebel on
>>>40/120 was only able to compute 4 plies and some moves on 6 plies.
>>>
>>>The first Rebel was a strange animal. I had to re-invent the wheel
>>>completely as I had no access to documentation, I wasn't even aware
>>>documentation existed.
>>>
>>>No alpha/beta, no windows, no Q-search, the program could only think
>>>in steps of 2 plies. Thus 2,4,6,8 etc.
>>
>>
>>???
>>
>>How did it work? Why the always even depth?
>
>Maybe he had a big odd/even effect. Funny that he didn't choose 1, 3, 5, 7 ...
>though.
>
>Dave
From the text I understood it was a search issue. But I don't see why, that's
why I ask...
The reason I'm interested in this is that in the early days of computer chess
programming, people did not know what were the efficient ways to do it. So they
tried to invent their own algorithms.
Some of them are maybe the future of chess programming.
That was one of my objections to the Crafty or GnuChess project. Reinventing the
wheel IS fun. Today many chess programs are almost identical. Where is all that
creativity gone?
God. I'm speaking like Chris W. now!
I like to hear about exotic algorithms designed at the time when the computers
were very slow.
Christophe
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.