help bot wrote:

No, for me as a user I absolutely don't care about those constraints
for the programmer.

It is not the programmer which is constrained; it is the
user computer's resources.

Well, as he chose a browser-based program he was constrained in his
means he could use. That was what I wanted to say.

Heck, the mere fact that
I can run Windows and multiple browsers while Sanny's
chess program thinks in the background in itself shows
how this cannot be compared to any normal chess
program, which tries to hog as much resources as
possible to improve *playing strength* and for something
called *hashtables* -- two superfluous items which
Sanny's team have simply eliminated. ;D

The behaviour of the program depends on the Browser and the Java
Runtime Environment. On my system (WinXP, Pentium 4, Firefox, Sun JRE
1.6.0) for instance it takes all CPU he can get (which is 50%). I
doubt, that a desktop version of this applet starting in its own Java
Virtual Machine would be so much faster. If the same program would have
been implemented in C I would assume a speed gain of roughly a factor
of 2 - surely not much more. That Sanny's is running as an applet is no
explanation for its poor performance - at least not on systems like
mine.

This one is quite weak enough for me; perhaps you
should do your own search? ;D

Well, if I have time I might indeed look for weak programs. It would be
interesting which are the weakest programs available (instead of always
hunting for the strongest). I expect Sanny's to be a tough contender in
this "quest".

There was doubtless some progress, but it is still quite weak. I think,
when people lose against it, they just try too hard to win. Just relax
and play slowly. It will soon start making arbritrary moves without any
progress.

Proving my point. What you have just done is describe
in detail exactly how Sanny's program *used to* play.

No, it is still doing this. In a current game there is an attack
forming, and he has nothing better to do than ridiculous moves like h6,
f6 on the other side of the board. If you don't give him immediate
threats, he very likely makes nonsense moves.

Now
I find that things are a bit more interesting -- but then, I am
not merely shifting wood myself. It is possible that the
real issue here is that you are shifting wood, and expecting
the chess program to come up with some interesting ideas?

Well, if you did this with a strong program he would very soon come up
with interesting ideas... But no, that's not quite the way I play. I
just build up my attack very slowly. I bring my pieces in position,
double the rooks, prepare pawn attacks etc. He gives me all the time in
the world, no counter attack, nothing. He completely ignores my
preparations, as they don't include immediate threats. It's simply way
beyond his horizon. Even weak human players would realize what is going
on and would start *some* action. I couldn't win so easily against the
ELO 1400 players in my club. Have a look at the "best of" on his side -
the first 40 players have a record of something like 360 to 12.

Greetings,
Ralf