Main
Date: 03 Jul 2008 08:13:59
From: Martin
Subject: Dasher under wine (Linux)
Hi,

I am running Dasher under wine in Mepis (Linux). I have found Blitzin very
unstable which Dasher isn't. However (a bigish however) there is an awful
broken windows in my upper right hand corner of the screen. White and empty
and uncloseable. At least so far.

Anyone with any idea what this window is, and how I get rid of it? I guessed
at something under the Dasher "Windows" meny, but it doesn't seem to relate
to anything there. I am guessing (now) at a broken MSIE window of
something, but nothing shows up in "ps aux". Any input appreciated.

(xkill doesn't kill it either)

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Date: 09 Jul 2008 01:17:55
From: Sanny
Subject: Re: When only 1 legal move, GetClub will not think more.
> I've played it twice, and have better things to do than beta test.
> I'll play people on Pogo... better time controls.

Play again, As the game was improved today and it will play with
double strength now.

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

What is your rating? can you win the easy level now? I think Easy will
be very tough even for Help Bot to beat. But I find Help Bot always
get some way to win even after the game is improved.

It means Help Bot uses only partial energy to win and whenever
improvement is done he increases his strength to match the GetClub
level.

But this time it will be very hard to win for Help Bot.

Bye
Sanny

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





 
Date: 07 Jul 2008 21:03:52
From: help bot
Subject: Re: When only 1 legal move, GetClub will not think more.
On Jul 6, 11:29 pm, Patrick Volk <[email protected] > wrote:

> > You're splitting hairs; game theory/chess
> >game theory are the same thing, to me (i.e.
> >chess is a game).
>
> Game theory can be used in the routing of trains, or how to place
> your whiskey casks in a warehouse to move them the least (and store
> the most).

So then, whiskey is the reason? That explains
a lot. : >D




> Exactly why you need to be efficient. But if you're expecting a minute
> a move, and the program decides it needs to take 5, what do you expect
> the person to do?

The funny thing is, Sanny has just improved
the time management of his program just as
you say; it now allocates more time to the
tougher positions, and less to easier ones.
But this in no way aids in overcoming the
primary reason it loses to me or anyone
else (tactical errors).


> I've played it twice, and have better things to do than beta test.
> I'll play people on Pogo... better time controls.

Well then, that makes you quite the expert.


> When I work in a particular field, it's in my best interest to
> figure out what they do, and what the rules are. I don't mind reading
> to get the job done... Otherwise I'd be harping about how I took
> FORTRAN IV in college, like some people.

Wrong yet again. (I took it in high school.)
This pattern keeps repeating.



> Are you a chess programmer?

Can you read? I have written here over
and over and over that I wish I could help
Sanny with this, but I cannot... because___?

(Hint: it's not because I'm an arrogant
little snot like you.)


-- help bot





  
Date: 08 Jul 2008 07:02:14
From: Tony M
Subject: Re: When only 1 legal move, GetClub will not think more.
On Mon, 7 Jul 2008 21:03:52 -0700 (PDT), help bot
<[email protected] > wrote:
>
> Can you read? I have written here over
>and over and over that I wish I could help
>Sanny with this, but I cannot... because___?
>
> (Hint: it's not because I'm an arrogant
>little snot like you.)
>
>
> -- help bot
>
>

You invite such behavior with your own trolling arrogance. For the
longest time, I wondered what it is about you that is so irritating,
despite your outward benevolence, and I think I figured it out. It's
a combination of a complete lack of humility and thankfulness, and the
inability to accept a correction from someone else. I don't think I'm
going to bother to read any more of your messages, it's just not worth
my time.


 
Date: 03 Jul 2008 12:54:16
From: Patrick Volk
Subject: Re: When only 1 legal move, GetClub will not think more.
On Wed, 2 Jul 2008 21:20:15 -0700 (PDT), help bot
<[email protected] > wrote:

>On Jul 2, 11:29 pm, Patrick Volk <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>> When you write a chess program, I think it's a pretty fair statement
>> that you have to be knowledgeable in both fields, or at least know
>> someone.
>
> In reality, one can simply find a subroutine
>which generates all legal moves from a
>given position and "stick it in". That is what
>I would do, so I could focus on other things.
> You may not know this, but Sanny got
>stuck there-- for a long, long time; in fact he
>still hides the program's illegal moves.

Subroutine is an interesting choice of term. So basic.

>
>
>> Hate to burst your bubble, but pruners and hash tables are hardly
>> chess-centric programming techniques.
>
> You must be a very young bot. In my day,
>they had no hash-tables whatever, and it was
>a big improvement when it finally came along.
>The pruners have also improved dramatically
>over time-- which is what I was referring to.

Hmm. I'm 41, been in the business since I've been 19, and know hash
tables were in chess programs in the 80's.

>
>
>> The A-B table is straight out of
>> game theory (which comes into more mundane things now such as search
>> engines), and the hash table is pretty much used whenever you use any
>> database (Apache uses them. Java has them
>
> Nitwit! Those things did not exist when they
>first started writing chess programs. Java?
>Indians? You remind me of that punk kid who
>writes about how inflation/stocks/home prices
>are worse off than any time in the last couple
>of years; hello! What's the big deal? Wake me
>up when something /significant/ happens, like
>we go back on the gold standard, or there's a
>half-off cookie sale at Wal-mart!

Sure, I'm a nitwit. Whatever you say, sparky. Hash tables were part
of the original Unix implementation.
Guess you like linear or exponential algorithms. Logarithmic
algorithms are too new-age... lol.

>
>
>> Why are they pretty standard in the chess game toolkit? Because
>> chess has a massive amount of possible moves. Get 5-6 ply and your
>> move set is at least in the billions. Every pieces adds at least an
>> order of magnitude. A queen for example can have up to 28 different
>> places it can move (a knight or king 8, a bishop/rook 14, and even a
>> pawn has 4 possible moves).
>
> Wrong. A pawn can have anywhere from
>zero legal moves all the way up to twelve,
>depending on the position of course.

Any piece can have a minimum of zero moves. Oh, and I forgot the
promotion.

Given that Sanny still has illegal moves, I'd say he has an issue with
this. Which was the point.

>
>
>> If you notice, every respectable chess program scores the position.
>> Why? Because that score is used for A-B pruning. Basically, you don't
>> trace down the less-than-favorible lines (basically, this determines
>> the breadth. Depth is difficulty). Sure, you can put your queen next
>> to your opponents' pawn to be taken in the next half ply, but if you
>> have better moves, do you really want to analyze the permutations of
>> that?
>
> I think you're talking about selective search.
>I've read that those guys "lost" in the end,
>that the thuggish brute-forcers somehow
>came to dominate the field.

A-B is selective search. Even the massively parallel solutions use
some form of selective search, if for nothing else, to explore the
best-looking lines first.
What's your point?

>
>
>> In other words, it's sorting. If you want to tell me a decent chess
>> program can be made without sorting, I would have to say it's possible
>> a roomful of monkeys can write Shakepeare. Possible, but EXTREMELY
>> unlikely.
>
> That's because no one has bothered to teach
>them to write; you aren't even giving the poor
>monkeys half a chance; it's obvious you are
>unfamiliar with evolution. The fact is, even you
>cannot write Shakespeare, so why are you
>attacking the Monkeys? Giving them funny
>looks? The fact remains they are too busy
>singing, to put anybody down (unlike you).

Sigh.... You never read Gamow. 1, 2, 3... Infinity is a pretty good
book, dare I say entertaining for programmers, and essential for
mathematicians.

>
>Try this link: http://www.gorillatrade.com

And the point is... what, why don't they just have a mutual fund?

>
>
>> The fact that such things didn't occur to Sanny very much implies
>> that his code is written as a journey. A journey that burns bridges.
>> It's one thing to write a chess program, and not know one of the
>> domains. It's either arrogant or ignorant to not know either.
>
> I don't think you are aware that Sanny, so
>he tells us, does not write the code himself.

He's familiar with it.

>
> He presumably pays some unknown
>programmer or programmers to try to
>implement his many "suggestions" for
>improvements, and the result indicates an
>unfamiliarity with chess-- even the basic
>rules of the game. So, far from being a
>poor programmer, Sanny is in reality not
>a programmer at all.

Whatever.

>
>
>> I'm not so sure Sanny would pass a Turing test at this point... If
>> nothing else, he's optimistic. His website about management and stuff
>> gave me a chuckle.
>> Kind of reminds me of my 20's,
>
> You're not still a teenager?
>
>
>> where a bunch of us would sit around,
>> and talk of starting up a company. But none of us really had an idea
>> on what we wanted to do. That's where a plan comes in.
>
> Sanny has sprung up at a time when Vishy
>Anand has taken the world championship
>title-- which may or may not relate to his
>particular interest in chess. At a time when
>Sam Sloan keeps screaming that the USCF
>is "losing millions", it is funny to think that
>/compared to them/, Sanny is likely millions
>of rupees in the black, in spite of the quality
>issues of his chess program.
>
>
> -- help bot
>


  
Date: 03 Jul 2008 22:00:04
From: Guest
Subject: Re: When only 1 legal move, GetClub will not think more.
"Patrick Volk" <[email protected] > wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> On Wed, 2 Jul 2008 21:20:15 -0700 (PDT), help bot
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>>On Jul 2, 11:29 pm, Patrick Volk <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> When you write a chess program, I think it's a pretty fair statement
>>> that you have to be knowledgeable in both fields, or at least know
>>> someone.
>>
>> In reality, one can simply find a subroutine
>>which generates all legal moves from a
>>given position and "stick it in". That is what
>>I would do, so I could focus on other things.
>> You may not know this, but Sanny got
>>stuck there-- for a long, long time; in fact he
>>still hides the program's illegal moves.
>
> Subroutine is an interesting choice of term. So basic.

It is a proper term. Not realistic considering data structures will be
different, and a little outdated, but still a proper term.




>>> Hate to burst your bubble, but pruners and hash tables are hardly
>>> chess-centric programming techniques.
>>
>> You must be a very young bot. In my day,
>>they had no hash-tables whatever, and it was
>>a big improvement when it finally came along.
>>The pruners have also improved dramatically
>>over time-- which is what I was referring to.
>
> Hmm. I'm 41, been in the business since I've been 19, and know hash
> tables were in chess programs in the 80's.

Hash tables were first used in Mac Hack VI back in 1966, when it was first
being written. That was the first truely significant chess program, as well
as the first one that used transposition tables.

Most significant mainframe chess programs also did hash tables.

Microcomputer programs weren't as eager to add them for some reason.

Even an 8 bit micro, with 64k could profit from them, but most didn't
bother.

Even many IBM PC programs, where you had 256k or 512k often didn't use them,
for some reason.

It's possible that many programers prefered to use refutation tables
instead. For shallow searches (less than 6 ply or so) a refuation table can
guide a search about as well as a trans table can, with a lot less memory.

Possibly they simply assumed that trans tables wouldn't be much of a benefit
for their limited search depths, considering the extra overhead involved.

Hyatt once published a paper and gave one example position where he had
CrayBlitz use just a few K bytes for the trans hash, pawn hash and king
hash. The hit rates were 19%, 90% and 80%.

Not great for the trans table itself, but pretty good for pawns & king
safety. But probably not too useful for micro programs because they often
had limited pawn structure & king safety terms because they had so little
time to perform the evaluations. A hash table would have let them put in
more knoledge, but they probably didn't realize that for some years.

I don't know what micro program was first to use trans tables, or when they
became common for micro programs.


This kind of reminds me of how Sargon 2 & 3 were. Sargon 2 still used a
static exchange evaluator. It wasn't until Sargon 3 that they switched to a
capture search and along with other improvements got a vastly faster search.
(Sargon 2 & 3 were only about a year apart, but they were sold commercially
for years. Kind of stupid to sell Sargon 2, but they did.)



>
>>
>>
>>> The A-B table is straight out of
>>> game theory (which comes into more mundane things now such as search
>>> engines), and the hash table is pretty much used whenever you use any
>>> database (Apache uses them. Java has them
>>
>> Nitwit! Those things did not exist when they
>>first started writing chess programs. Java?
>>Indians? You remind me of that punk kid who

AB alogorithm (AB table???) has a fuzzy origin.

Although we all know the official story of its origin, it's possible that
Aruther Samuel's checker program from the 50's used some similar idea.
However I certainly can not verify that.

Newel's 1955(ish) program used it. It provided such a massive performance
boost that was the reason that Herbert Simon made his famous 1957 statement
of "within ten years, a digital computer will be the world's chess champion,
unless rules bar it from competition."


>>> If you notice, every respectable chess program scores the position.
>>> Why? Because that score is used for A-B pruning. Basically, you don't
>>> trace down the less-than-favorible lines (basically, this determines
>>> the breadth. Depth is difficulty). Sure, you can put your queen next
>>> to your opponents' pawn to be taken in the next half ply, but if you
>>> have better moves, do you really want to analyze the permutations of
>>> that?
>>
>> I think you're talking about selective search.
>>I've read that those guys "lost" in the end,
>>that the thuggish brute-forcers somehow
>>came to dominate the field.
>
> A-B is selective search. Even the massively parallel solutions use
> some form of selective search, if for nothing else, to explore the
> best-looking lines first.
> What's your point?

Alpha-Beta is not selective. It's a pruning method that guarantees
identical results to a search without it. Just faster. (The same is true
of other search methods, such as Scout, NegaScout, PVS, etc. They all
guaranteed correct results.)

If you do a full width minimax search to 8 ply, you see everything. Nothing
is missed.

If you do a full width minimax search with Alpha-Beta to 8 ply, you see
everything. Nothing is missed. It's just faster, is all.

Things like null move, razoring, LMR and so are forms of selective search.
(As well as traditional selective search, such as MacHack VI, etc.)

Selective search does not guarnatee correct results. If you do a selective
search to 8 ply, it is possible for it to miss winning moves.

(Transposition tables can also cause some errors in the search, although
they aren't normally considered a form of 'selective' search but an
accelerator.)

My guess is that GetClub chess uses selective search. Probably the more
traditional definition, like MacHack VI, Awit, Chaos, etc.








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