* Many years ago, a fellow came from out
of nowhere with achessprogram that was
stronger than all the others. *It had a nice
GUI, nicerchesspieces than the number
two program, and most curious of all, it fit
on a single floppy disk as it was quite
small in addition to searching faster.

Even GetClub Chess Program will fit in a floppy Disk

GetClub Chess Program Size is Just 200 KB. While a Floppy can take 1.2
MB. So you can pack 5 Chess Programs in a floppy.

The thing is that the size is small but the complexity is very high.

I think GetClub program is good enough for all Human Players. Only the
player using other commercial programs are beating the higher levels.

Only you are able to win the Master Level rest all are not going
higher than Normal Level.

Bye
Sanny

Play Chess at: http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html

On May 10, 12:54 am, Sanny wrote:

Many years ago, a fellow came from out
of nowhere with achessprogram that was
stronger than all the others. It had a nice
GUI, nicerchesspieces than the number
two program, and most curious of all, it fit
on a single floppy disk as it was quite
small in addition to searching faster.

Even GetClub Chess Program will fit in a floppy Disk

GetClub Chess Program Size is Just 200 KB. While a Floppy can take 1.2
MB. So you can pack 5 Chess Programs in a floppy.

Ah, yes-- the single-sided, single density era is
long over. In fact, I think the entire 5.25" floppy
disk era is over. One day, my collection will be
worth a fortune, and I will then donate it to the
Smithsonian, along with my old 8-track tapes.


The thing is that the size is small but the complexity is very high.

I think GetClub program is good enough for all Human Players. Only the
player using other commercial programs are beating the higher levels.

Well, it is rumored that some kid called
"Nakamura" is now better than Roman D., who
himself was quite a computer-crusher in his
heyday. And if you recall, then-world champion
Kramnik was beating one of the world's top
chess programs... when he threw away the win,
and then overlooked a mate-in-one on himself!

Generally speaking, you might need to get up
to at least 2000 strength before declaring victory
over *all* humans.


Only you are able to win the Master Level rest all are not going
higher than Normal Level.

True. But then, nobody else can stand the
delay required to play the higher levels, so it is
not necessarily a case of being outclassed in
terms of strength.

One thing I have noticed is that when it comes
to attacking, your program is much too eager to
sacrifice material, and this makes it so that a
stubborn and patient defender can win without
much trouble. It is probably better to be a good
defender, and let the impatience of the human
animal work to destroy him.

Many years ago, I ran into a sort of "wall", a
rating line I could not get over. I decided to
play more aggressively, to /force/ my way to
victory against the lowly opponents I felt I was
superior to. This backfired, and I found myself
losing games I ought to have drawn. My rating
dropped, and this made me all the more
frustrated!

Then I decided to just stop making quite so
many stupid blunders, to force my despised
opponents to work hard for their wins or draws.
This worked much better, and I soon found that
in the course of many an even game, I needed
but one opportunity to seize the win, because
my technique was superior overall. I had no
"brilliancies", but I leaped ahead of those
other guys, into a new group of players. Now
my goal was to stop getting killed every time!
I began to nick them for draws, and eventually
became a real annoyance (deja vue)... .


-- help bot

On May 2, 10:56 pm, Sanny wrote:


Game Played between zebediah and advance at GetClub.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zebediah: (White)
advance: (Black)
Game Played at:http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html
View Recorded Game:http://www.getclub.com/playgame.php?...903&game=Chess
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

White -- Black
(zebediah) -- (advance)

1. e2-e4{6} c7-c5{0}
2. [etc]

Sanny, instead of the score provide a link
to the game, so that I can replay it on the
screen by click-clicking. Otherwise forget it.

Wlod

On May 2, 10:56 pm, Sanny wrote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zebediah: (White)
advance: (Black)
Game Played at:http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html
View Recorded Game:http://www.getclub.com/playgame.php?...903&game=Chess
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

White -- Black
(zebediah) -- (advance)

1. e2-e4{6} c7-c5{0}

Sanny, simply provide a link, so that
I will be able to replay the game on
the screen just by clicking on the moves.
Otherwise forget it.

Wlod

On May 10, 2:30 am, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:

Game Played between zebediah and advance at GetClub.com

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
zebediah: (White)
advance: (Black)
Game Played at:http://www.GetClub.com/Chess.html
View Recorded Game:http://www.getclub.com/playgame.php?...903&game=Chess
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

White -- Black
(zebediah) -- (advance)

1. e2-e4{6} c7-c5{0}
2. [etc]

Sanny, instead of the score provide a link
to the game, so that I can replay it on the
screen by click-clicking. Otherwise forget it.


Someone has not been eating his Wheaties... .

Sanny includes *both* in his postings: a link for
those who are lazy bots like me, *plus* the game
score, for those who prefer to cut-and-paste into
their favorite GUI program. Trouble is, his score
is non-standard, so the cut-and-paste method
most likely won't work. Even so, there are a few
really strong players who don't need a graphical
board to "see" what is going on; these few, I have
heard (but would have no way of knowing, of
course) can replay the games in their minds, just
by looking at the score!

Unfortunately, this foresight on Sanny's part is
always overlooked, since there are no really
strong players here in rgc... (snicker).

Oh, and it is of course a simple matter to type
"http://www.getclub.com/" into your browser,
then scroll through just the last couple of games
played... click... click... hmmm, I think Zeb may
like Fritz 10, or maybe Shredder 7, or maybe it
is Chessmaster. Zeb's program is stronger than
the GetClub program, by far. But I think Rybka
can give it greater odds, because it is stronger
still.


-- help bot

Sanny, simply provide a link, so that
I will be able to replay the game on
the screen just by clicking on the moves.
Otherwise forget it.

* * Wlod

View Recorded Game:http://www.getclub.com/playgame.php?
id=DM19903&game=Chess

I always give the link to Recorded game on top.

Bye
Sanny

Sanny wrote:
Many years ago, a fellow came from out
of nowhere with achessprogram that was
stronger than all the others. It had a nice
GUI, nicerchesspieces than the number
two program, and most curious of all, it fit
on a single floppy disk as it was quite
small in addition to searching faster.

Even GetClub Chess Program will fit in a floppy Disk

GetClub Chess Program Size is Just 200 KB. While a Floppy can take 1.2
MB. So you can pack 5 Chess Programs in a floppy.

The thing is that the size is small but the complexity is very high.

I think GetClub program is good enough for all Human Players. Only the
player using other commercial programs are beating the higher levels.

That seems very unlikely given that it is so predictable about
sacrificing N for 2P and going for spite checks. Its endgame play is
complete rubbish (but then even the top engines are still a little bit
flakey there at tournament time controls) I'd be surprised if it could
beat most serious club players reliably looking at the recent games.

I think it will now comfortably beat all casual chess players, but I
think anyone at ELO 2000+ will crush it (excluding careless slip ups).

Only you are able to win the Master Level rest all are not going
higher than Normal Level.

That is more because the humans die of boredom waiting for GetClub to
make a move at the higher levels. You would do well to find a couple of
local club level chess players with some mathematics or programming
background if you actually want to make the program stronger.

Playing toy matches and tweaking things isn't the right approach.

If you are serious you need to get a set of test cases that it should be
able to solve and regression test the engine against them after each
"improvement" - that way you can be sure you *are* making things better.

Some of the positions I have already picked out would be good ones to
have in your test suite.

A first step towards this is to allow the engine to accept FEN notation
for game positions and set up the board at the test position. Then a
modification so that you can display a table of move score in cp ranked
by evaluation as a function of search depth.

And underneath the time taken, number of nodes processed and terminal
nodes evaluated (this may require adding diagnostics to your code).

eg.
Ply: 1 2 3 4 5 6
e4 05
d4 03
c4 00
Nf3 -01
....
Nodes
Evals
Time
(this table should be sorted by the deepest evaluation available)

The objective is to try and get the ply 1 evaluation to be self
consistent with the deeper evaluations and so minimise the number of
nodes the program has to evaluate to get to a given depth.

The maximum depth examined by selective extensions is also possibly
useful here too. We need to see how it is thinking and what its internal
evaluation is for the moves to be able to give sensible advice.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Fri, 9 May 2008 09:57:41 -0700 (PDT), Sanny
wrote:

Yes, I will see if that can be corrected. It is very difficult to
modify the code as changing one line of code brings new Bugs and then
a week is wasted in correcting the Bugs.

That statement tells me quite at least 2 things:

1) There's a lot of copy and paste in your code (parts tend to look
alike, with minor modifications... some question as to whether making
a change is the right one).
2) You're probably not using the benefits of Java. Your display might
be OO, but I doubt that your chess analysis part did. What I know
about some contemporary chess engines (the company I work for built
the boards for Deep Blue) is that they evaluate each space.

You can score the piece count, but you also can score position...
Simplistically by how many squares are controlled. You only have 3
different kind of squares.
Also I have to agree with what someone else said. For testing
purposes, you really should work on handling position notation. One of
the beauties of chess is the state of the game can store in so few
bytes (64 and be comfortable). If you have a position that is, say, a
mate in 5, you can try that position against different versions (and
load it against different opponents as well).
Checks and draws should be some sort of function... I forget whether
you play a particular sound when the person is in check, but you can
use it for that, and also to put a '+' in the notation (or '#' for
checkmate).



Its like when we fly Kites. When the threads messup how difficult it
is to correct the jumbeled threads.

This Program is so large that if I have to read whole program line by
line, it will take me full day. So its very difficult to go through
all the codes and correct them.

200K isn't that large, even for a one-person project.




Bye
Sanny

Patrick Volk wrote:
On Fri, 9 May 2008 09:57:41 -0700 (PDT), Sanny
wrote:
Yes, I will see if that can be corrected. It is very difficult to
modify the code as changing one line of code brings new Bugs and then
a week is wasted in correcting the Bugs.

That statement tells me quite at least 2 things:

1) There's a lot of copy and paste in your code (parts tend to look
alike, with minor modifications... some question as to whether making
a change is the right one).

It would make sense to split the code into clean separate modules (even
if there was initially a slight performance penalty).

It is probably well worth profiling it to see exactly where it spends
all its time. Getting the thing to run faster would help a lot. You will
probably find that it spends all its time in the terminal node eval.

2) You're probably not using the benefits of Java. Your display might
be OO, but I doubt that your chess analysis part did. What I know
about some contemporary chess engines (the company I work for built
the boards for Deep Blue) is that they evaluate each space.

That is a hardware accelerator tactic which can consider all the squares
using a local sub processor per square. I don't think it works so well
on a PC.

You can score the piece count, but you also can score position...
Simplistically by how many squares are controlled. You only have 3
different kind of squares.

I get the impression it is already a bit better than that, but that
there is something horribly wrong with its quiessence search. Perhaps
because it thinks that pinned pieces can move or something... see the
game with the mobile phone.

Also I have to agree with what someone else said. For testing
purposes, you really should work on handling position notation. One of
the beauties of chess is the state of the game can store in so few
bytes (64 and be comfortable). If you have a position that is, say, a
mate in 5, you can try that position against different versions (and
load it against different opponents as well).

Regression testing at least means that you can be sure the program still
gets right all the test cases you have tested and fixed so far as well
as any new ones.

Checks and draws should be some sort of function... I forget whether
you play a particular sound when the person is in check, but you can
use it for that, and also to put a '+' in the notation (or '#' for
checkmate).

Human readable output needs a couple more tweaks and it would be OK.
Like for example putting the players and dates in the right sort of
brackets and format for standard engines to read.

Its like when we fly Kites. When the threads messup how difficult it
is to correct the jumbeled threads.

This Program is so large that if I have to read whole program line by
line, it will take me full day. So its very difficult to go through
all the codes and correct them.

Bulk spagetti code is not a viable programming model. It is time to
restructure the code and separate the evaluation, move generation and
alpha-beta search into clearly separate modules. Ultimately the majority
of the changes should be in eval once the other components are stable.

200K isn't that large, even for a one-person project.

It is large if there is no well defined overall structure.

Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

On Mon, 12 May 2008 08:38:04 +0100, Martin Brown
wrote:

Patrick Volk wrote:
On Fri, 9 May 2008 09:57:41 -0700 (PDT), Sanny
wrote:
Yes, I will see if that can be corrected. It is very difficult to
modify the code as changing one line of code brings new Bugs and then
a week is wasted in correcting the Bugs.

That statement tells me quite at least 2 things:

1) There's a lot of copy and paste in your code (parts tend to look
alike, with minor modifications... some question as to whether making
a change is the right one).

It would make sense to split the code into clean separate modules (even
if there was initially a slight performance penalty).

It is probably well worth profiling it to see exactly where it spends
all its time. Getting the thing to run faster would help a lot. You will
probably find that it spends all its time in the terminal node eval.

C&P is a consequence generally of wandering design. You find some code
that could work, and instead of re-factoring it to fulfill all cases,
you copy and modify it for each.

One of the levels of programming hell (hell not only to maintain, but
to test)!


2) You're probably not using the benefits of Java. Your display might
be OO, but I doubt that your chess analysis part did. What I know
about some contemporary chess engines (the company I work for built
the boards for Deep Blue) is that they evaluate each space.

That is a hardware accelerator tactic which can consider all the squares
using a local sub processor per square. I don't think it works so well
on a PC.

It used at least one processor per square. A PC could thread it, yeah,
not as fast, but it lends itself to replication.


You can score the piece count, but you also can score position...
Simplistically by how many squares are controlled. You only have 3
different kind of squares.

I get the impression it is already a bit better than that, but that
there is something horribly wrong with its quiessence search. Perhaps
because it thinks that pinned pieces can move or something... see the
game with the mobile phone.

Where A-B pruning comes in. At the level it's at, I don't think you're
going to find a queen sacrifice 4 plies down. Bail!


Also I have to agree with what someone else said. For testing
purposes, you really should work on handling position notation. One of
the beauties of chess is the state of the game can store in so few
bytes (64 and be comfortable). If you have a position that is, say, a
mate in 5, you can try that position against different versions (and
load it against different opponents as well).

Regression testing at least means that you can be sure the program still
gets right all the test cases you have tested and fixed so far as well
as any new ones.

Sanny's idea of regression testing is release, and saying how it's
improved 200%.


Checks and draws should be some sort of function... I forget whether
you play a particular sound when the person is in check, but you can
use it for that, and also to put a '+' in the notation (or '#' for
checkmate).

Human readable output needs a couple more tweaks and it would be OK.
Like for example putting the players and dates in the right sort of
brackets and format for standard engines to read.

Its like when we fly Kites. When the threads messup how difficult it
is to correct the jumbeled threads.

This Program is so large that if I have to read whole program line by
line, it will take me full day. So its very difficult to go through
all the codes and correct them.

Bulk spagetti code is not a viable programming model. It is time to
restructure the code and separate the evaluation, move generation and
alpha-beta search into clearly separate modules. Ultimately the majority
of the changes should be in eval once the other components are stable.

Exactly my point. His comments indicate he may not have painted
himself into the corner just yet, but there's probably no doorways or
windows around.
A program isn't philosophically a journey - it's more like a tour.
You have a list of sights to see.


200K isn't that large, even for a one-person project.

It is large if there is no well defined overall structure.

Very true.



Regards,
Martin Brown
** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **