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Subject: Re: What is Botvinnik's legacy to computer chess?

Author: leonid

Date: 17:59:06 02/20/00

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On February 20, 2000 at 14:39:24, Christophe Theron wrote:

>On February 20, 2000 at 01:39:09, Drazen Marovic wrote:
>
>>What is Botvinnik's legacy to computer chess?
>
>
>That to write a good chess program it's better not to be a strong chess player.
>
>Strong players have too much prejudices about how to write a chess program.
>
>In order to write a good chess program you must be ready to forget all you know
>about chess, and re-discover it completely. Strong chess players have spent
>years in learning the game and improving their play, so they are obviously not
>ready to get into the process of forgetting everything.
>
>In the future, it will happen to me too. Chess programming will certainly
>evolve, but as I have spent nearly 20 years in programming Chess Tiger, I'll
>probably be unable to adapt myself to totally new techniques. I'll become a
>dinosaur and young programmers will take over me - and all my peers.
>
>I hope this is not going to happen tomorrow, though.
>
>
>
>    Christophe


I believe that reality is even more simple that what you have said. Problem is
not that much with the "big secret" to descover, in order to write the good
chess game from scrach, problem is in the hardware speed. 20 or 30 years ago it
was a shame and now it is only slightly better. Good game of today is able to
see, without any artificial tricks, only 6 plies in few seconds in mid game. All
the beauty of the best games is that they provide us with some decent chess game
even before our hardware will permit it. Good game make all kind of sofisticated
acrobatics in order to glance some next 4 or 6 plies deep into game, to make it
enjoyable right now. But when the hardware will privide us with all those 10, 12
plies brute search to start with? Then writing the new good chess game from
scratch will become as simple as doing our three years of college.

Leonid.





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