One ply chess engine

[JVMerlino]

Although I know it isn't what you are trying to accomplish, you might be interested in what we tried in Chessmaster. There is a personality named Lacey who has identical settings to the Chessmaster personality, except with a max search depth of 1.

Lacey will never hang a piece, but is easy to trap with the simplest of combinations. HOWEVER....

We didn't have settings available such as "don't extend" or "don't use qsearch", so while the search does indeed stop after finishing a normal depth 1 search, it still extends/prunes/reduces just like normal, and has a qsearch.

So, for example, in this position:

[d]7k/3b3p/1p6/3p1P1P/2p3r1/2P1R3/7r/2RK4 b - - 0 40

Lacey has no trouble finding the forced mate in 7 with Ba4+, because each move by Black is a check and White always has only one legal move as a reply.

We also found that Lacey has an enormous psychological effect on humans, because she moves instantly (no matter what the time control) and doesn't APPEAR, at first glance, to ever blunder. I have seen a Master lose to her when we simply said that he was "playing against Chessmaster" -- implying the program, but not the personality.

We also estimated her rating to be around 1300 USCF, but mostly due to the psychological effect. It would be MUCH lower against engines.

jm

[ethanara]

Interesting , i would like to hear more about it

[JVMerlino]

Interesting , i would like to hear more about it

Not much more to say, really. Lacey was one of 100+ personalities that were created for Chessmaster 6000, released in 1998. It was just one of several things we tried, as much to amuse ourselves as anything else.

Look at the settings for the weaker (sub-1500) personalities and you'll see lots of wacky stuff. Part of the point of that was to try to make it into a game of sorts for the user; find the silly weakness and figure out how to exploit it. Aaron, for example, values rooks as much as queens -- how would you go about beating him?

Or, a fair bit trickier because he plays at the level of a strong Master, Sven values his opponent's pieces (not pawns) at 10cp higher than his own. How do you take advantage of this?

jm

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Thorsten,

which version of CheckCheck by Wolfgang?
My version, the first one with number 1.0, reach on 486/33Mhz 3PLYs. This engine is from the year 1991. Come out around in the same months as Nimzo Guernica 2 and the clown Greif 1.16.

For around two months I played vs. CheckCheck my latest game
Very nice grafics and this programs come out with the first available endgame databases after my knowledge.

Best
Frank

[mclane]

the name of the 1 ply program was CHAT frank.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi Thorsten,

tomatos, means on my eayes.
Wer lesen kann ...

Have a nice day!

Best
Frank

[Sarciness]

Interesting , i would like to hear more about it

Not much more to say, really. Lacey was one of 100+ personalities that were created for Chessmaster 6000, released in 1998. It was just one of several things we tried, as much to amuse ourselves as anything else.

Look at the settings for the weaker (sub-1500) personalities and you'll see lots of wacky stuff. Part of the point of that was to try to make it into a game of sorts for the user; find the silly weakness and figure out how to exploit it. Aaron, for example, values rooks as much as queens -- how would you go about beating him?

Or, a fair bit trickier because he plays at the level of a strong Master, Sven values his opponent's pieces (not pawns) at 10cp higher than his own. How do you take advantage of this?

jm

Interesting stuff, JM. I never fared well against those personalities which moved instantly becasue I sped up my own play and didn't think things through! As soon as I could beat all or most of the instant-moving personalities I stopped playing CM becasue it seemed like they played strongly for 15 moves then played a crazy move to purposely blunder a piece.