How many people are interested in computer chess ?

[Sylwy]

Hi all ( again ) !

Because a true "fan" of computer chess can't live without a computer chess forum ( ) , take a look to my short and "airy " statistics(1):

-CCC-745 members (today-13 GMT);
-Hiarcs forum-571 members (today );
-Rybka forum-1,335 members ( today in the morning-all unwashed masses with TurboJ &SidS add-in);
-the forum beeing on the road of lion ( don't shoot me please )-2,092 members (tonight)

Considerations (2):

a-They are some others minor forums.
b-Some ( if all of us ) are member in some forums( ).
c.- to be the owner of an computer chess GUI and engine (Chessmaster...) don't means necessary to be a computer chess fan.


Estimation(3):

Maximum 3,000 persons interested in computer chess.

Comments (4):
????????????????????......................


Regards,

Silvian

[jdart]

A relatively small community is actively involved in engine development or testing. But certainly much larger numbers of people use computer chess programs, for their own entertainment or instruction. So if you include these as "interested in computer chess', it's many, many thousands. For example, Arasan's website has recently gotten 100,000 hits per month and over 30,000 downloads.

--Jon

[Steve B]

CCC-745 members
Hiarcs forum-571 members
Rybka forum-1,335 members

Yes some would say that this is quite an accomplishment for a fledgling site only in existence for barely more then 9 months
already close to overtaking this forum which has been around for over 10 years and fast on the heels of the Fishkas

can you imagine what the Hiarcs membership will be like after 2-3 years when Fishka is no longer the strongest engine?

The World Is Our Oyster Regards
Steve

[sje]

It depends on the level of interest. A more pointed question:

How many people have written a chess program from scratch?

To qualify, the program must have at least one new feature not seen in previous programs. People who write chess database and chess publishing programs could qualify. But those who simply copy from a downloaded engine source do not.

[Tord Romstad]

A relatively small community is actively involved in engine development or testing. But certainly much larger numbers of people use computer chess programs, for their own entertainment or instruction. So if you include these as "interested in computer chess', it's many, many thousands. For example, Arasan's website has recently gotten 100,000 hits per month and over 30,000 downloads.

100,000 hits per month? That's truly incredible. Glaurung's website has gotten about 77,000 hits over the 29 months of its existance, or an average of less than 2,700 hits per month. In the busiest month ever, November 2007, there were 6,666 hits.

Tord

[smrf]

Are you interested in getting answers on that?

[michiguel]

It depends on the level of interest. A more pointed question:

How many people have written a chess program from scratch?

To qualify, the program must have at least one new feature not seen in previous programs. People who write chess database and chess publishing programs could qualify. But those who simply copy from a downloaded engine source do not.

How do you define feature?

You could write a chess program from scratch, not copying a single line of code from other programs, and still not have a new feature. I never studied the code of other programs and as a consequence I never included their code in mine. I am continuously reinventing the wheel (I do not care, this is a hobby ). I read articles, I read comments, etc. as source of inspiration, though. How do I know whether I have a new "feature"? sometimes I think I have a small original idea and later I found from comments here that someone else tried it. Or, for instance, I started with a bitboard generator that produced only legal moves. Very cute, but slow... I dropped it. My point is, my code is 100% original but the concepts most likely are not (and if they are, maybe they are not good! or I dropped them already). Still, I think I should qualify.

In other words, not everybody is cloning.

Miguel

[bob]

A relatively small community is actively involved in engine development or testing. But certainly much larger numbers of people use computer chess programs, for their own entertainment or instruction. So if you include these as "interested in computer chess', it's many, many thousands. For example, Arasan's website has recently gotten 100,000 hits per month and over 30,000 downloads.

100,000 hits per month? That's truly incredible. Glaurung's website has gotten about 77,000 hits over the 29 months of its existance, or an average of less than 2,700 hits per month. In the busiest month ever, November 2007, there were 6,666 hits.

Tord

Before we stopped logging, I had over 1,000,000 unique IP addresses that had downloaded crafty source files. And triple that that had downloaded one or more EGTB files. I disabled the xfer logging as it was not very useful. That 1,000,000 mark was reached about 5 years ago, which was something like 10-11 years after the source was initially made available...

[sje]

How do you define feature?

It seems to me that a program written from scratch without access to other sources should contain at least one new item: a move ordering trick, an evaluation term, or maybe a novel user interface feature. Now the new item may not be superior to what wight be available elsewhere, but it word be new.

But maybe I'm asking for too much here. I'll guess that back in the pre Internet days of punch cards and paper tape, it was easier to write a de novo chess program just because there were no other sources available.

Well, Greenblatt's MacHack VI was generally available to the AI and DEC communities. But that was about it for nearly a decade.

If someone were to compile the Truly Exhaustive List of Chess Programs, it would be nice if each program had a list of new techniques that it first introduced.

[swami]

Hi all ( again ) !

Because a true "fan" of computer chess can't live without a computer chess forum ( ) , take a look to my short and "airy " statistics(1):

-CCC-745 members (today-13 GMT);
-Hiarcs forum-571 members (today );
-Rybka forum-1,335 members ( today in the morning-all unwashed masses with TurboJ &SidS add-in);
-the forum beeing on the road of lion ( don't shoot me please )-2,092 members (tonight)

Considerations (2):

a-They are some others minor forums.
b-Some ( if all of us ) are member in some forums( ).
c.- to be the owner of an computer chess GUI and engine (Chessmaster...) don't means necessary to be a computer chess fan.


Estimation(3):

Maximum 3,000 persons interested in computer chess.

Comments (4):
????????????????????......................


Regards,

Silvian

Rybka forum attracts people new to computer chess, if a chess player has heard about new 3000+ something engine for the first time, he buys it and joins the forum and passes on the rumour to someone else who was not much into comp chess.

I wonder how many members are there in CSS and a Chessmaster forum?