To Christophe Theron

[geots]

Lost in all the hullabaloo and craziness of the last few days was your claim that if you so chose you could write a version ov Chess Tiger 200 points stronger than your latest release. I dont remember your exact words, but that was the jist i got from it. I have no earthly idea if you could or could not- i am just asking if you really think you can, please make the effort. Assuming you could and did, this would really make the chess scene interesting!

Best,

[Zach Wegner]

He said he could do it by cloning Strelka.

[geots]

He said he could do it by cloning Strelka.

Firstly, i didnt quite read it that way. I do not remember seeing the word Strelka even mentioned in that sentence. (Tho i could be wrong) Secondly, i dont see where cloning Strelka would be any answer at all- unless the whole deal was just said to make a wry point.

Best,

[tiger]

He said he could do it by cloning Strelka.

Firstly, i didnt quite read it that way. I do not remember seeing the word Strelka even mentioned in that sentence. (Tho i could be wrong) Secondly, i dont see where cloning Strelka would be any answer at all- unless the whole deal was just said to make a wry point.

Best,

Zach is partly correct. I just don't call this cloning. I meant I could improve Chess Tiger the easy way by taking the source code of Strelka, changing it line by line until it could not be recognized anymore and finally adding a number of search tricks that I have in Chess Tiger and that are not in Strelka.

This would give a program that would approximately by 200 elo points stronger than Chess Tiger 2007.1.

I could also do it in a less easy way by starting from the current source code of Chess Tiger, which would make the result look much less Strelka/Fruit/Rybka-like.

I'm not saying this is ethical or even interesting. It was just to illustrate a point.

I'm not serious about doing this because it's just not interesing at all. With Chess Tiger I have reached, in 1999 and 2001, the #1 rank on the SSDF and it was my source code, which I had been working on for several years, and for the most part without having access to any other chess source code. It does not mean a thing to me to achieve the same with someone else's code.

But I'm confident somebody else will find that this is a worthy goal and will actually do it.



// Christophe

[geots]

He said he could do it by cloning Strelka.

Firstly, i didnt quite read it that way. I do not remember seeing the word Strelka even mentioned in that sentence. (Tho i could be wrong) Secondly, i dont see where cloning Strelka would be any answer at all- unless the whole deal was just said to make a wry point.

Best,

Zach is partly correct. I just don't call this cloning. I meant I could improve Chess Tiger the easy way by taking the source code of Strelka, changing it line by line until it could not be recognized anymore and finally adding a number of search tricks that I have in Chess Tiger and that are not in Strelka.

This would give a program that would approximately by 200 elo points stronger than Chess Tiger 2007.1.

I could also do it in a less easy way by starting from the current source code of Chess Tiger, which would make the result look much less Strelka/Fruit/Rybka-like.

I'm not saying this is ethical or even interesting. It was just to illustrate a point.

I'm not serious about doing this because it's just not interesing at all. With Chess Tiger I have reached, in 1999 and 2001, the #1 rank on the SSDF and it was my source code, which I had been working on for several years, and for the most part without having access to any other chess source code. It does not mean a thing to me to achieve the same with someone else's code.

But I'm confident somebody else will find that this is a worthy goal and will actually do it.



// Christophe

What i am saying here doesnt have a hell of a lot to do with this discussion- but i would like to say that i disagree with you about a number of things. However when Chess Tiger 2007 came out and your prediction of a 100 elo increase did not pan out, you were man enough to admit that your testing method was wrong- and in effect apologized. That took courage, IMO. But still, i did not feel cheated by 2007, and i dont think anyone should feel that way. It was a decent >, more than a lot i have seen in the past. You are an excellent programmer and have a lot to be proud of. I truly think it's sad that you are, let's say, 95 % leaning toward giving this up, i.e. no more versions. It will be a loss to the chess community. And i think it best to leave the last 2 days in the past where it belongs, and go forward from here with computer chess. I jsut hope when i look up later you are still a part of it.

Best To You,

[Tony Thomas]

George, if I remember correctly he estimated an 80 point improvement and in bullet time controls the prediction was indeed correct. It was Naum that expected a 100 point improvement and later changed it to 80.

[geots]

George, if I remember correctly he estimated an 80 point improvement and in bullet time controls the prediction was indeed correct. It was Naum that expected a 100 point improvement and later changed it to 80.

You may be right about the figures Tony, or close. But i do remember him saying that his testing method was not the best, hence the less than expected elo increase on his part. Whatever the figures- that is not the point with me. I just hate to lose a programmer of his ability. I used to say Chess Tiger would come out of the box saying "Where is that damn King". Very interesting and enjoyable style of play.

[tiger]

He said he could do it by cloning Strelka.

Firstly, i didnt quite read it that way. I do not remember seeing the word Strelka even mentioned in that sentence. (Tho i could be wrong) Secondly, i dont see where cloning Strelka would be any answer at all- unless the whole deal was just said to make a wry point.

Best,

Zach is partly correct. I just don't call this cloning. I meant I could improve Chess Tiger the easy way by taking the source code of Strelka, changing it line by line until it could not be recognized anymore and finally adding a number of search tricks that I have in Chess Tiger and that are not in Strelka.

This would give a program that would approximately by 200 elo points stronger than Chess Tiger 2007.1.

I could also do it in a less easy way by starting from the current source code of Chess Tiger, which would make the result look much less Strelka/Fruit/Rybka-like.

I'm not saying this is ethical or even interesting. It was just to illustrate a point.

I'm not serious about doing this because it's just not interesing at all. With Chess Tiger I have reached, in 1999 and 2001, the #1 rank on the SSDF and it was my source code, which I had been working on for several years, and for the most part without having access to any other chess source code. It does not mean a thing to me to achieve the same with someone else's code.

But I'm confident somebody else will find that this is a worthy goal and will actually do it.



// Christophe

What i am saying here doesnt have a hell of a lot to do with this discussion- but i would like to say that i disagree with you about a number of things. However when Chess Tiger 2007 came out and your prediction of a 100 elo increase did not pan out, you were man enough to admit that your testing method was wrong- and in effect apologized. That took courage, IMO. But still, i did not feel cheated by 2007, and i dont think anyone should feel that way. It was a decent >, more than a lot i have seen in the past. You are an excellent programmer and have a lot to be proud of. I truly think it's sad that you are, let's say, 95 % leaning toward giving this up, i.e. no more versions. It will be a loss to the chess community. And i think it best to leave the last 2 days in the past where it belongs, and go forward from here with computer chess. I jsut hope when i look up later you are still a part of it.

Best To You,

What happened is that in my tests CT2007 had a winning percentage that was 11.5% percent above the winning percentage of CT15.

11.5% percent more winning percentage turns into 80 elo points (approx), but with some error margin. This error margin was 2% (+/-14 elo points).

Also, the major improvement in the new version was a much better branching factor. It means that at fast time controls it was approximately 2 to 4 times faster than the previous versions, but at long time controls it meant 8 to 16 times faster (to reach the same depth).

From this I expected CT2007 to perform even better at longer time controls, and so to show a gain of more then 80 elo points. However we were only a week before the release date and it was impossible to run long time controls tests. It would have taken a month.

So from the data I had I expected a 80 elo points improvement at fast time controls, and more at long time controls.

This is exactly what you could read on the CT2007 product at Lokasoft.

I still do not understand why CT2007 does not show a clearly better improvement at long time controls. You see, time to retire.



// Christophe

[tiger]

George, if I remember correctly he estimated an 80 point improvement and in bullet time controls the prediction was indeed correct. It was Naum that expected a 100 point improvement and later changed it to 80.

You may be right about the figures Tony, or close. But i do remember him saying that his testing method was not the best, hence the less than expected elo increase on his part. Whatever the figures- that is not the point with me. I just hate to lose a programmer of his ability. I used to say Chess Tiger would come out of the box saying "Where is that damn King". Very interesting and enjoyable style of play.

"Where is that damn King"!

I just love this one. At one time I considered sending humorous comments to the GUI. It was not a novel idea, I remember a chess computer in the 80s (was it Boris?) displaying such comments while it was thinking. It added something to the magic of this computer.

I would certainly have added yours to the list of comments that Chess Tiger would have spit during the game!



// Christophe

[Tony Thomas]

Is it possible that the differences in strength is due to the fact that both versions of Tiger didnt play against the same opponents? Tiger 15 played against much weaker opposition in my opinion and that could have possibily influenced the results a little bit.