On May 4, 7:59 am, (Dr A. N. Walker) wrote:
In article .com,
help bot wrote:

Ah, but you seem to forget that the reason for Crafty's
success was simply the fact that Cray computers were
faster.

Whoa! Crafty is not Cray Blitz. Whatever success Crafty
may have had owes nothing to Cray


It would seem that no one is capable of reading my
posts *in context* anymore.

I was obviously replying to comments by IM Innes
which presumed that BH ought to have taken an
"academic" approach (i.e. teach his program to
truly learn chess, not just to win the easy way).

IM Innes' post (to which I was replying) stated
that Mr. Hyatt had at one time won the computer
world championship, and THIS is where the Cray
supercomputer entered the discussion, stage right.
I failed to specify the difference between BH's two
chess programs -- my error.


*except* that Dr Hyatt was able
to use his experience with CB

Right. Cray Blitz, not Crafty. Mr. Hyatt always
insisted that his chess program was *inseparable*
from the Cray, but then turned around and wrote
a chess program for PCs just the same, when it
became clear that others were having success
*without* super-speed. His open-source approach
was not enough to satisfy certain critics like PI,
however. One issue was the plugging in of rote
moves in the openings, ala GetClub's Sanny.


in designing and programming it.
RMH himself describes Crafty as derived from CB or as a descendant
of it, but the relationship is much more that of a grown-up baby
than that of a clone.

In the early years, the speed of the Cray was
credited by some for the success of Cray Blitz,
and this really ticked Mr. Hyatt off because he
wanted to get the credit. When critics requested
a conversion to PC code for comparison purposes,
the sh*t hit the fan. He insisted that his chess
algorithms could no way be translated, period.


As far as I know, the learning approach has stemmed
from neural networks, not Cray supercomputers.

There are several ways in which programs can learn, few
of which exploit neural networks.

Is that a challenge? :D

Give me a team of real programmers and a few
years, and we'll see if this brash dismissal was
justified.


Mr.
Hyatt, the creator of Crafty, simply exploited the raw
speed of a mainframe he had (virtually unique) access to.

Actually, it was Larry Nelson who exploited the raw speed,
and Bob Hyatt and Bert Gower who wrote the chess and the algorithms.

Wrote the chess? What does that mean?

I take it you are reminding us that although BH
often gets the credit, there were actually three men
involved in the creation of Cray Blitz, not counting
the multitude responsible for the development of
the Cray itself. Careful here; one false step and you
might incriminate Bob Hyatt, who has always insisted
that the chess algorithms could not be extracted from
CB, no way, no how.


The whole caboodle was *far* from simple, as anyone who tries to
write highly-parallel chess code soon discovers. There was some
very clever code, both high- and low-level, in Cray Blitz.

Too bad the PC guys soon began to catch up
in terms of results. The thing is, how can you
(rationally) take credit for awesome programming
skill, summarily dismiss the brute power of the
Cray, and yet watch the competition close the
gap in your rear-view mirror when they are
driving ordinary cars and you're in a Porsche?
Something is amiss. One should at least admit
that the fast car has something to do with it. If
it's a Ford Pinto you see closing in, well, find a
better driver.


Similar comments apply to Deep Thought and other programs
"accused" of "simply" being fast. Other things being equal, faster
is better. But other things are not equal, and there are seriously
bright people behind the successful programs.

Nobody is saying otherwise.

The real issue was the fact that despite vastly
superior hardware, the Crays and Deep Blues
were unable to maintain a substantive lead for any
length of time over programmers who chose to
work their skills on commonplace hardware.

Logic would seem to indicate that were the
conditions right, the best PC programmers might
switch places with these "geniuses" and we
would see a different story; perhaps a widening of
the gap. (Obviously, the PC programmers would
need to magically transmute their PC-programming
skills into Cray-programming skills, and vice versa
for the other guys.)

-- help bot

On May 4, 3:24 pm, JohnnyT wrote:
raylopez99 wrote:
On May 4, 11:39 am, JohnnyT wrote:
[deleted: pean to Rybka, about how great it is and radically
different]

Bull Shiite. Rybka is kicking fanny because the number of games
played by it are still small. It's too early to tell. Regression to
the mean will follow.

Do you remember Fruit, and how it kicked everybody's ass a few years
ago? Look at it now.

I am not sure where you are getting your statistics from...

From the SSDF rating list http://web.telia.com/~u85924109/ssdf/list.htm



But the recommended place I would look at is here....

http://www.husvankempen.de/nunn/40_4...0_40%20BestVer...

This site is not as good as SSDF (a little bit), IMO, since the pool
is computer vs. computer. With SSDF the pool is computer vs. strong
human chess player. The advantage of the latter is that your program
cannot play tricks to win, such as having a database of known
positions where opponent databases tend to flounder (akin to a
'learning' function, which all modern chess programs have), and then
steering, via certain favored openings, to these known positions, in
order to win. Just a theory of mine but note that Rybka is rated a
bit lower relative to its computer peers on the SSDF site.


The advantages of fruit is that it is free, much better than most free
engines, and the source code is available. (Which sort of launched the
new breed of non chessbase engines).

But here you should note, better computers and many more games. Rybka
2.3.1 challenged by over 550 games with a 71% score

We'll see what happens when it reaches over 2000 games, like Fruit.
It should drop towards the mean.

RL

05.05.2007 11:13, raylopez99:
With SSDF the pool is computer vs. strong
human chess player.

Where did you get this idea from? Of course SSDF is purely based on
engine-engine matches.

Greetings,
Ralf

On May 5, 4:14 am, Ralf Callenberg wrote:
05.05.2007 11:13, raylopez99:

With SSDF the pool is computer vs. strong
human chess player.

Where did you get this idea from? Of course SSDF is purely based on
engine-engine matches.

Greetings,
Ralf

Maybe you're right. At one point is was based on humans, but with the
interface that allows engine-to-engine comparisons, that's changed. I
wonder how they play the handhelds? What interface?

Pocket Fritz 2 XScale 400 MHz

Pocket Fritz 2 XScale 400 MHz, 2517
Opponent Result
Fritz 7 K6-2 5½-14½
SOS K6-2 450 9-8
Hiarcs 9.5a 15-5
Resurre Fruit 12½-7½
Genius 3 P90 13½-6½
Rebel 7.0 P90 18½-1½


RL

05.05.2007 13:39, raylopez99:

Maybe you're right. At one point is was based on humans,

When was this? As long as I know the SSDF list (10 years or so) it is
based on pure computer matches.

I wonder how they play the handhelds? What interface?

Probably simply manual. Tedious but possible.

Greetings,
Ralf

"raylopez99" wrote in message
oups.com...
On May 4, 5:09 am, "Chess One" wrote:
Suppose that a version of Crafty favors "defensive" players like
Capa
and Kramnik, while penalizing "attacking" players like Tal and
Fischer. Call this version of Crafty "Defensive

---
Interesting post, and the para above identifies the flaw in
comparisons
of
player-to-player by engine analysis- that if you are evaluating
players,
then even Tal himself said that anybody at all could find his own
flaws
after the game, or the next day, or even next week. But he chose 'em
because
very few people could find them in real time OTB.

Yes, but this problem is also present in computer chess! Even if the
program is 'backsolving' or anotating a completed game, it has to look
in the chess tree, which means that it faces time constraints similar
to an OTB player vs a 'time is not of the essence' correspondence
player.

Quite so, Ray - in order to go to deeper plies and find a solution the
program must find a way to prune possibilities - and it does this by
scoring
each branching possibility on, say, ply 7 or 8, and if worse than
nominally -2 will prune that line [which may have been eg, a Knight sac]
that can perhaps offer a return of 3 pawns and the initiaitive by ply
15 -
or even something more compelling.

I did not realize pruning is employed at -2 pawns. Thanks for this
information. I assumed the cutoff was more like -3.

You may be right on the default value - but the issue for the computer is
that if you optimise ply-depth, then you effect pruning score, no? Otherwise
in the amount of time available for the move there is no way to achieve
sufficient ply searching.

---------

Yes - one of the MAMS recommendations is to pick a long line, preferably
giving up material for initiative and let the thing try to cook an
answer -
if its ply depth doesn't go long enough, then the interesting thing is
that
it begins to evaluate its own chances at +2 or even +4, and then half a
dozen moves later [and too late!] adjusts the evaluation to +1 or less,
or
even to -1 etc.

I surmised that MAMS must be the book mentioned in this thread on how
to beat Fritz, to be published. I recall a rather simplistic book
called "How to Beat your Computer in Chess" about 10 years ago that
was not that useful for me. Hopefully this book is better. At any
rate, I doubt that in an actual OTB game with fixed time constraints
you will find the opportunities to play some brilliant positional
sacrifice--you'll be mated tactically before you ever get to these
wonderful winning positions.

A have one draw against Rybka, but older programs could be beat by
positional play, time and time again. With book off no amount of tactical
finesse works. I wrote in about 1998 that Crafty with book off was maybe
1800-1900 level.

However, I will give Camp #1 credit in
one respect--they are essentially arguing how a human can beat a PC in
*CORRESPONDENCE CHESS*. The procedure is as follows: (1) fill a
database of positions where a positional sacrifice not within your
opponent computer's move horizon leads to victory, (2) play a series
of forcing moves that lead to the positions in step (1), and, (3)
execute steps (1) and (2) to win.

I see. This is very similar to beating people, and the central idea of the
postional player.

If this is what you seek, good luck to you, as you might find
"steering" the opponent program ala step (2) is a lot harder than you
think, because I posit these positional sacrifice positions will be
very far and few between in the chess tree--because chess is 99%
tactics.

Chess is how you play it! - Although I take your point, it can be played in
a 99% tactical manner. But to achieve the above position try as white, for
example to set up the standard Pelikan, and on black's b5, play the sac
against it, with either knight or bishop. There are then a series of forced
moves [unless black surrenders more than 2 pawns, including allowing an exch
sac against the rook at a8 - though that is not white's best play.]

If you are a positional player then I find these sequences relatively
common. Although I prefer to play people rather than computers, sometimes in
CC chess you realise you are playing a computer!

--------

OK, thanks for this information. For a moment I thought you were a
professor when you mentioned "end of academic year", but I see you're
referring to Bob Hyatt, who lurks here on occasion and once years ago
I think I even flamed him (I flame people recreationally, no offense
intended). I see you're just Phil Innes, but for a while you fooled
me with your high-brow posting, as I thought you were some sort of
chess programming intellectual.

Ah! No I no programming 'intellectual', I just started programming with
punch-cards and ticker-tape - then you had to input the 'operating system',
the program, and the data

What is intellectual, is that programming-as-we-know-it, is now semiotically
almost a technology rather than anything to do with science. Many
programmers do not realise the logic discipline that evolved into
programming, as a philosophical department, and neither do they recognise
the field terminology for the sort of work they do. They have no meta~ view
at all, and should you mention the part [they paly] to the whole, it can be
considered an attack, or obscurantism. In this sense, yes, my views are
hi-brow.

---------

OK, if I understand your point here--you're saying that Fritz in a few
seconds basically is "right onto" the correct analysis that 50 years
of amateur and GM effort have found. Doesn't that support MY point,
of Camp #2? That computers _can_ do an excellent job of analysing
positions, and not just tactical analysing? Sure seems like it.

In this instance, but in other instances computers are really dumb! So I
feel no generality is indicated. Obviously the computer proves its potential
in a specific line, but in terms of what we understand of what it does, why
this line and not another? If people claim there is something to be learned
about how computers play, then without being able to answer this question -
what is learned?


I won't traduce his book by copying it out too exactly here,

Is "traduce" a word? Lemme Google it at Ask.com...
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/traduce
1 : to expose to shame or blame by means of falsehood and
misrepresentation 2 : VIOLATE, BETRAY traduce a principle of law.
I'll be damned, it is a word. Lern something new everyday, thanks
Phil.

There is a ruder word in common use. This sense of traduce, would be to
spoil the effect of a more considerable appreciation by the two reviewers.

Now - here it is - Fritz is no better at refuting this maddening line

1 e4 e5
2 Nf3 Nc6
3 Bc4 Nf6
4 Ng5 Bc5
5 Nf7 Bf2

than 50 years of players, BUT - if you want to know the secret of beating
this Traxler line with its improvident 4. ... Bc5 then a few 'moves by
hand'
or MAMS moves, 8-13, allows Fritz to romp home with a solution to win for
white in 20

I'll wait for the MAMS book but now I'm confused. Don't bother
explaining it, but now you seem to say that after using the 50 years
of analysis to get to equality from +4.3, Fritz then finds some moves
at moves 8-13 to allow Fritz to win after all (!). Well, again,
doesn't that support my thesis of Camp #2? Sure seems like it.

No Fritz DID NOT find the moves 8-13. But via MAMS when forced to play them,
continued to demonstrate a refutation of black's play.


Now, to return to our evaluation thesis [or at last mine] what is
happening
above at moves 8-13 that Fritz can't find: No matter what ply depth you
allow it?

I'll be good god damned to hell! Let me burn in hell Sweet Jesus and
die of brain cancer!! You totally have f ucked up my brian now, I have
a pounding headache. I have no idea what you are saying. I give up.
You win, Phil Innes, you fucing win.

You are too attached to generality, and need attend more to specific items,
and also matters which we do not understand. To produce a thesis which
glosses these, and produces a general proposal is to fail because of
insufficient context. I understand your frustration, but the scienctific
basis which underlines these issues need more than quantification [brute
force in this instance], and you do not seem to understand the role that
qualification plays in programming chess.

Cordially, Phil Innes


S hite, I thought I was conversing with an intellectual but it turned
out to just be Phil Innes. The moniker "Chess One" should have given
it away.

You are conversing with an intellectual, but you don't know why that is
necessary - which is like many programmers whose efforts seem like a
complete waste of time, since they have not sufficiently bench-marked their
activity in the classical way to determine even if what they do is
redundant, and all increased in the programmers performace relate to
bus-speed in the CPU

This 'intellectual' question is not how fast the program can go, but in
which direction it will go? - and is something of a refutation of brute
forcing a result, since the logic of it is that increased ply depth is
acheived only by reduced evaluation pruning - and the engine will not look
at a -3 score any longer even though in 20 plies that variation wins.

Phil Innes


RL

"raylopez99" wrote in message
oups.com...

wonderful winning positions. However, I will give Camp #1 credit in
one respect--they are essentially arguing how a human can beat a PC in
*CORRESPONDENCE CHESS*. The procedure is as follows: (1) fill a
database of positions where a positional sacrifice not within your
opponent computer's move horizon leads to victory, (2) play a series
of forcing moves that lead to the positions in step (1), and, (3)
execute steps (1) and (2) to win.

Just to amplify this point, when I challenged Bob Hyatt on this long-string,
beyond event horizon playing strategm, he both agreed that it is effective
and [lol] accused me of cheating.

If this is what you seek, good luck to you, as you might find
"steering" the opponent program ala step (2) is a lot harder than you
think, because I posit these positional sacrifice positions will be
very far and few between in the chess tree--because chess is 99%
tactics.
---

OK, thanks for this information. For a moment I thought you were a
professor when you mentioned "end of academic year", but I see you're
referring to Bob Hyatt, who lurks here on occasion and once years ago
I think I even flamed him (I flame people recreationally, no offense
intended). I see you're just Phil Innes, but for a while you fooled
me with your high-brow posting, as I thought you were some sort of
chess programming intellectual.

If you want to really get into an argument with programmers, ask them about
their pre-set evaluations. Most programmers are not strong players, as with
Bob Hyatt, who gets his evaluations from a consulting GM. And there's the
rub, since all evaluations are pre-set, right? And they must necessarily be
generalisms.

Otherwise how do you evaluate the 2 bishops:-

a) the initial position
b) against one opposing bishop in closed positions
c) in open positions
d) middlegames when the queens are off the board

to answer

a1) if Kt = 3.0 bishop = 3.25 *?
b1) 2.9
c1) 3.35
d1) 3.15

maybe you agree or disagree with these quantifications, so, (i) how would
/you/ score them, and (ii) when does /the program/ re-evaluate their worth?

*Fischer's benchmark value.

Coridally, Phil Innes

help bot wrote:

I was obviously replying to comments by IM Innes

There's where you made your mistake. Innes is an idiot and
a tTroll, and the best policy is to ignore his blatherings.

'''
(0 0)
+-------oOO---(_)---OOo-------+
| Please don't feed the Troll |
+-----------------------------+
\ _ /
|||
ooO Ooo

"help bot" wrote in message
ups.com...
On May 4, 7:59 am, (Dr A. N. Walker) wrote:
In article .com,
help bot wrote:

Ah, but you seem to forget that the reason for Crafty's
success was simply the fact that Cray computers were
faster.

Whoa! Crafty is not Cray Blitz. Whatever success Crafty
may have had owes nothing to Cray


It would seem that no one is capable of reading my
posts *in context* anymore.

I was obviously replying to comments by IM Innes

You are not obviously doing anything more than trying to get attention by
scandalising an issue or a commentator, as usual - how easy it is to depart
from your speculations and write directly to the subject, since there is so
little subject of your own to address!

which presumed

which assumed, since funding was from public academic sources, and this very
often has some requirement that something is learned in payment for such
funding, even unto Alabama.

that BH ought to have taken an
"academic" approach (i.e. teach his program to
truly learn chess, not just to win the easy way).

well - Kennedy as usual begins with inserting his own presumptuous opinions,
and then not owning them, suggests they are the views of others, let me pass
from those pale realms

---------

what i wrote is that the program learned nothing at all. in response to a
line which failed, BH himself wrote me that it would randomise its next
attempt at that position - otherwise anyone could beat it! and what is its
rating then?

so the program learns nothing as the result of playing chess, and nothing is
learned from it. its the programmers who learn something, and who can then
proceed to adjust their evaluation matrix on a trial-and-error basis

---------

*except* that Dr Hyatt was able
to use his experience with CB

Right. Cray Blitz, not Crafty. Mr. Hyatt always
insisted that his chess program was *inseparable*
from the Cray, but then turned around and wrote
a chess program for PCs just the same, when it
became clear that others were having success
*without* super-speed.

Specially Chris Whittington - [whose engine achieved this from a superior
positonal evaluation]

His open-source approach
was not enough to satisfy certain critics like PI,
however. One issue was the plugging in of rote
moves in the openings, ala GetClub's Sanny.

This is indeed a disheveled understanding of anything. Critics like me were
right! And after its early success and porting to desktops, Crafty failed to
improve and lost ground to all other programs taking other approaches -
these, to be fair, used the Crafty framework as a basis, and their
'otherness' was relatively minor.

The idiocy of rote moves is that the program could not itself evaluate the
moves it was making. And in fact, no engine at all was necessary to
rote-move openings - not even a computer was necessary! ROFL. MCO 10 would
have done as well.

The effect of utilising the opening book was to not develop the program's
own evaluation function, since the program never had any need to evaluate an
opening, just take over the game at a pre-figured point.

There was fierce argument about the worth of the book, most programmers
justifying it because of its enhancement of winning chances, rather than
addressing either its legality or what it subscribed to our understanding of
computing.

Ironically, the same programmers reduced the numerical value of the book to
as little as 50 points - while I suggested it was 150 or 200 points. Even
though their own [untested] estimate of the worth of the book was so small,
it was apparently indispensible to them. The programmers were not themselves
strong enough to beat 1900 chess engines, so /they/ didn't know from
first-hand experience, and there are no other tests!

Book=off ratings of chess engines do not exist - since there is no interest
by programmers in advancing our understanding of its evaluation function,
and all interest lies in winning. Chess players, OTOH, do have an interest
in understanding the evaluation [and re-evaluation] functions of the
engine - and this, more than anything else was the factor that ****ed Garry
Kasparov off - its why he signed up to play Deep Blue, then they killed the
results!

Now - below there is talk of more cognate machines, in the guise of neural
nets and other models which are predicted to do M-flips as solution. This is
the usual paradigm for engines.

And this is why chess is now a backwater in AI research, since in 10 years
there are no real advances in other than emulation paradigms, [it looks like
its playing, but it ain't, or there is insufficient material to be learned
from it] and those recent increments mostly attributable to CPU and BUS
speed - though neither are those bench-marked sufficiently to able to
warrant any further interest in programming!

And while 95% of the programming community resented all these factors being
raised 10 years ago, the 5% of people who thought otherwise are proved
right.

Phil Innes

in designing and programming it.
RMH himself describes Crafty as derived from CB or as a descendant
of it, but the relationship is much more that of a grown-up baby
than that of a clone.

In the early years, the speed of the Cray was
credited by some for the success of Cray Blitz,
and this really ticked Mr. Hyatt off because he
wanted to get the credit. When critics requested
a conversion to PC code for comparison purposes,
the sh*t hit the fan. He insisted that his chess
algorithms could no way be translated, period.


As far as I know, the learning approach has stemmed
from neural networks, not Cray supercomputers.

There are several ways in which programs can learn, few
of which exploit neural networks.

Is that a challenge? :D

Give me a team of real programmers and a few
years, and we'll see if this brash dismissal was
justified.


Mr.
Hyatt, the creator of Crafty, simply exploited the raw
speed of a mainframe he had (virtually unique) access to.

Actually, it was Larry Nelson who exploited the raw speed,
and Bob Hyatt and Bert Gower who wrote the chess and the algorithms.

Wrote the chess? What does that mean?

I take it you are reminding us that although BH
often gets the credit, there were actually three men
involved in the creation of Cray Blitz, not counting
the multitude responsible for the development of
the Cray itself. Careful here; one false step and you
might incriminate Bob Hyatt, who has always insisted
that the chess algorithms could not be extracted from
CB, no way, no how.


The whole caboodle was *far* from simple, as anyone who tries to
write highly-parallel chess code soon discovers. There was some
very clever code, both high- and low-level, in Cray Blitz.

Too bad the PC guys soon began to catch up
in terms of results. The thing is, how can you
(rationally) take credit for awesome programming
skill, summarily dismiss the brute power of the
Cray, and yet watch the competition close the
gap in your rear-view mirror when they are
driving ordinary cars and you're in a Porsche?
Something is amiss. One should at least admit
that the fast car has something to do with it. If
it's a Ford Pinto you see closing in, well, find a
better driver.


Similar comments apply to Deep Thought and other programs
"accused" of "simply" being fast. Other things being equal, faster
is better. But other things are not equal, and there are seriously
bright people behind the successful programs.

Nobody is saying otherwise.

The real issue was the fact that despite vastly
superior hardware, the Crays and Deep Blues
were unable to maintain a substantive lead for any
length of time over programmers who chose to
work their skills on commonplace hardware.

Logic would seem to indicate that were the
conditions right, the best PC programmers might
switch places with these "geniuses" and we
would see a different story; perhaps a widening of
the gap. (Obviously, the PC programmers would
need to magically transmute their PC-programming
skills into Cray-programming skills, and vice versa
for the other guys.)

-- help bot

On May 5, 4:53 am, Ralf Callenberg wrote:
05.05.2007 13:39, raylopez99:

Maybe you're right. At one point is was based on humans,

When was this? As long as I know the SSDF list (10 years or so) it is
based on pure computer matches.


SSDF has been around more than 10 years; I recall reading they used
human players early on.

RL