The Houdini guy will never answer your question(s) directly (he and Vas share this trait..).
The houdini guy will always give vague non-answers that would most likely protect him in court. And he also has the unique talent of sounding indignant while doing so.
I must admit the houdini guy's evasiveness is at least much more entertaining than Vas' silence and or use of his fall back word, SOON, when asked about updates and such...
LOL, here's a hug from the Houdini guy...
I am evasive when authors of competitive engines want to know why Houdini is stronger than their engine.
I am evasive when people make idle speculations about the internal workings of Houdini.
I am evasive when people come with long disassembly listings and then make claims which demonstrate that they haven't got a clue about Houdini.
Looking at the tone of your own post, are you surprised that so few top engine authors are active on this forum?
How much longer do you think I will continue to interact with the truck-load of nonsense that appears on this forum?
Robert
I think you are correct to be evasive when other authors want to know why Houdini is stronger. That is just protecting your ideas.
BUT I do think a less evasive answer when people speculate would be great!
Don't be like Vas! Answer straight up:
Was the first Houdini just a modified ippolit or not? (it is obvious you have made major improvements since then) Or did you create an engine and then use some IDEAS?
Don't do what Vas does and answer with a non-answer or even worse an answer that sounds like an answer but really says nothing. You are already better than Vas at updates! Now be better than Vas with answers.
bob wrote:"fully debugged chess engine" is a pure oxymoron. And you won't find a single programmer (emphasis on programmer here, defined as someone that has actually _written_ a chess program) that would disagree. Every time I hunt for a bug, I find another bug or two before I find the one I am looking for. And from one that _has_ been doing this kind of programming for 43 years now, nothing has changed with respect to this over those 43 years. I probably introduce fewer bugs now than 43 years ago due to experience, but I will always introduce them until I stop programming...
Stating the obvious means you also understood my writing in the literal way.
My answer was simply a protest to constant bashing of Ippo/Ivanhoe as buggy engines. This is simply not true.
If you wish an explicit statement I will provide it to you: Ivanhoe and even Robbo have probably less Elo hurting bugs than Crafty or Komodo. It is one of the reasons they are so strong. However, bashing something just because it's much better than your own baby seams to be really popular at this place...
bob wrote:"fully debugged chess engine" is a pure oxymoron. And you won't find a single programmer (emphasis on programmer here, defined as someone that has actually _written_ a chess program) that would disagree. Every time I hunt for a bug, I find another bug or two before I find the one I am looking for. And from one that _has_ been doing this kind of programming for 43 years now, nothing has changed with respect to this over those 43 years. I probably introduce fewer bugs now than 43 years ago due to experience, but I will always introduce them until I stop programming...
Stating the obvious means you also understood my writing in the literal way.
My answer was simply a protest to constant bashing of Ippo/Ivanhoe as buggy engines. This is simply not true.
If you wish an explicit statement I will provide it to you: Ivanhoe and even Robbo have probably less Elo hurting bugs than Crafty or Komodo. It is one of the reasons they are so strong. However, bashing something just because it's much better than your own baby seams to be really popular at this place...
What makes you think you are such an expert on the internals of these programs? From what I have seen you don't seem to be much of software engineer, and yet you pretend to know intimate details of those engines. For example you think you know how many bugs are there, and how they impact or don't impact the strength of the programs in question. In fact, you have promoted yourself as some kind of spokesman for these illicit engines and get real defensive whenever anyone says anything negative about them. Did they ask you to be their watchdog or something?
Nothing about these programs should offend ANYONE on this group. Nothing said about them is directed in a personal way towards anyone on this group so please stop being so defensive. As long as these cowards stay in the shadows, we should be able to speak freely about them without being attacked for it. You have your ego so tied up in someone else's work that I'm embarrassed for you - it really makes you look like a loser. Be a man.
lkaufman wrote:My own test confirmed the claim that 49 was stronger than 47, but I was unaware that Ivanhoe counted backward (!) I paid no attention to Ivanhoe until very recently. Anyway if they count backward then you have answered this question satisfactorily.
Thank you for having the courage to admit that your libelous speculation about Houdini and myself was based on a basic lack of information about Ivanhoe.
The stupidity of all this is beyond me, I think I'd better take a leave from the forum for a while and start working on Houdini 2.0...
Cheers,
Robert
Robert, what your reaction is saying about you, "Give me enough rope and I'll hang myself."
Don wrote:What makes you think you are such an expert on the internals of these programs? From what I have seen you don't seem to be much of software engineer, and yet you pretend to know intimate details of those engines. For example you think you know how many bugs are there, and how they impact or don't impact the strength of the programs in question. In fact, you have promoted yourself as some kind of spokesman for these illicit engines and get real defensive whenever anyone says anything negative about them. Did they ask you to be their watchdog or something?
Nothing about these programs should offend ANYONE on this group. Nothing said about them is directed in a personal way towards anyone on this group so please stop being so defensive. As long as these cowards stay in the shadows, we should be able to speak freely about them without being attacked for it. You have your ego so tied up in someone else's work that I'm embarrassed for you - it really makes you look like a loser. Be a man.
You know almost nothing about me, I know quite a bit about you (and your Komodo ). Sorry about that, life's not fair sometimes. I might be a loser, but certainly I'm not a sore one like you .
Moreover, only one of us is bitter and jealous to others success. Guess who's that?
Don wrote:What makes you think you are such an expert on the internals of these programs? From what I have seen you don't seem to be much of software engineer, and yet you pretend to know intimate details of those engines. For example you think you know how many bugs are there, and how they impact or don't impact the strength of the programs in question. In fact, you have promoted yourself as some kind of spokesman for these illicit engines and get real defensive whenever anyone says anything negative about them. Did they ask you to be their watchdog or something?
Nothing about these programs should offend ANYONE on this group. Nothing said about them is directed in a personal way towards anyone on this group so please stop being so defensive. As long as these cowards stay in the shadows, we should be able to speak freely about them without being attacked for it. You have your ego so tied up in someone else's work that I'm embarrassed for you - it really makes you look like a loser. Be a man.
You know almost nothing about me, I know quite a bit about you (and your Komodo ). Sorry about that, life's not fair sometimes. I might be a loser, but certainly I'm not a sore one like you .
Moreover, only one of us is bitter and jealous to others success. Guess who's that?
Cheerful regards!
Would you please stop?
BTW, how did you gain access to the moderator forum?
bob wrote:"fully debugged chess engine" is a pure oxymoron. And you won't find a single programmer (emphasis on programmer here, defined as someone that has actually _written_ a chess program) that would disagree. Every time I hunt for a bug, I find another bug or two before I find the one I am looking for. And from one that _has_ been doing this kind of programming for 43 years now, nothing has changed with respect to this over those 43 years. I probably introduce fewer bugs now than 43 years ago due to experience, but I will always introduce them until I stop programming...
Stating the obvious means you also understood my writing in the literal way.
My answer was simply a protest to constant bashing of Ippo/Ivanhoe as buggy engines. This is simply not true.
If you wish an explicit statement I will provide it to you: Ivanhoe and even Robbo have probably less Elo hurting bugs than Crafty or Komodo. It is one of the reasons they are so strong. However, bashing something just because it's much better than your own baby seams to be really popular at this place...
I would claim that false, at least with respect to robo*. I can run 10 million games with Crafty on my cluster and not lose a single one to a crash and then time loss. Robo, on the other hand, crashes regularly and out of 6000 games, it will lose a couple of hundred by crashing.
I don't use it in testing for that reason. If I throw out the crashes, it is very strong. But with the crashes, it is significantly weaker.
bob wrote:I would claim that false, at least with respect to robo*. I can run 10 million games with Crafty on my cluster and not lose a single one to a crash and then time loss. Robo, on the other hand, crashes regularly and out of 6000 games, it will lose a couple of hundred by crashing.
I don't use it in testing for that reason. If I throw out the crashes, it is very strong. But with the crashes, it is significantly weaker.
As I already wrote you before, there is only 1 specific bug related to quiet check promotions which caused crashes (initial static array overwrites that Dann C. continuously mentions like a bad record cannot cause crashes, besides there are couple possible array overwrites in eval, but they are all false alarms). This was corrected later in Ivanhoe v64. With this bug corrected, I played couple of millions of games with different Robbo versions (single core, no ponder) without a single crash.
You actually never cared to get a working version for your tests, but preferred instead to constantly bash Ippo...
lkaufman wrote:My own test confirmed the claim that 49 was stronger than 47, but I was unaware that Ivanhoe counted backward (!) I paid no attention to Ivanhoe until very recently. Anyway if they count backward then you have answered this question satisfactorily.
Thank you for having the courage to admit that your libelous speculation about Houdini and myself was based on a basic lack of information about Ivanhoe.
The stupidity of all this is beyond me, I think I'd better take a leave from the forum for a while and start working on Houdini 2.0...
Cheers,
Robert
Hi Robert,
That would be an excellent idea. The stronger Houdini is, the more depressed Vas, Larry&co are going to be.
Yep,agreed here no matter of the real source of Houdini....
Dr.D
But the real source of Houdini matters just as much as the real source of Rybka.
). Sorry about that, life's not fair sometimes. I might be a loser, but certainly I'm not a sore one like you